Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Strangedisk on November 25, 2002, 10:20:59 PM
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Hello. I've been thinking about the future of the Amiga and have an idea which I'm sure has been thought of before, nevertheless, I will share it.
How about, for the next Amiga after AmigaOne (AmigaTwo?) it is made into a Tablet formfactor. Now hear me out!
Firstly, this message is prompted by the lively discussion about how Amiga supposedly made a mistake by not choosing the ix86 over the PowerPC. I don't think they did, but the CPU is not really the issue. Amiga's future is. And in the final analysis, although I am a fan of Motorola (used to work for them) and have nothing but respect for their excellent engineering, and the PowerPC in particular, ultimately I don't care what CPU is in it.
The Amiga has an opportunity here that should not be lost. I remember watching the Bernie video off of Aminet. I saw him boot an Amiga (AmigaXL in this case) on a CD with only 3MB's written to it. That included some demos, the OS, the UAE layer, and the Linux substructure. THREE MEGS. And a more native port would be smaller. The Amiga can fit ANYWHERE, even as it is (even without DE, although I love DE, anyone else here take a good long look at it?). I hear a lot of talk about how we need 3Ghz chips, and ultra-fast video cards, and that we need ... well basically we need to chase PC's around. No, we don't.
Amiga should, as it always has, go its own route.
Look at the 500, the 600, and the 1200. These were wonderful computers that fit into peoples lives. The lights didn't flicker when you turned them on. They didn't sound like a vaccuum cleaner. They didn't take the entire desk, unless you expanded them to infinity. Plus they were cheap. I'm going to repeat that. They were cheap. That's important. Not poor quality, by any stretch of the imagination. But cheap. Everyone could get one.
We have the advantage here. Microsoft also wants this market, because Bill Gates is blessed with a KEEN SENSE OF THE OBVIOUS. It's going this way, and not only do I want the Amiga there, I want her to be first, where she belongs.
Imagine a tablet (not a tablet pc, it aint a pc, it's a tablet) which runs AmigaOS. You take it around, you throw it on the couch. You stuff it in your bag. It's not a laptop, it doesn't have to be "opened" and although it does "boot" in the technical sense, it happens so fast only programmers need to know about it. Apps don't need to be "loaded" either (from human persepctive). You just touch the icon, the app appears before you take your finger off the screen. Browse the web with it, it's wireless of course. You still need a desktop? Prop it up on the desk. And stick a USB keyboard into it. There -- it's a desktop. Stick the same HD into it that the iPod uses. Add some flash RAM, the os should boot off of that. Flash cartridges replace floppies. And the batteries would last 10 hours not 2.
Meanwhile you just plop around on that screen. Touch it, draw on it. Write on it. Touch a text box then write in it (doesn't have to be in the lines!) This is the future. Talk to it -- it will recognize your speech and dictate it.
Billy wants this market, but Billy has a problem. You see, Billy wants to OWN this market, like he wants to own all markets in the software field. But -- in order to do so, he must find some way of wedging his currently monopoly widget, Windows, onto the goddamn thing. Windows XP no less. Good luck, that thing is huge and slow and boring. Windows CE won't cut it -- no apps, and it's still basically Windows (all of the boredom, none of the compatability!). XP can't fit, either in the technical sense or in the "fit into ones life" sense. Oh sure Billy will shove the behemoth on that, and it'll look like you're hauling around the thickest book in the Encyclopedia Britannica around with you. Real chic. We need an OS that is light and fast, and fun. And we have one. With AmigaOS 5, it will be hardware agnostic as well.
My point is that the Amiga to me has always been a much more "personal" computer than any PC. This is the natural next step. Anyway how can you get any more personal a computer than one named "Amiga"? It means "friend!" (it does not mean "girlfriend" by the way, that would be a little too personal for a computer :-P -- it's just a feature (or a drawback?) in Spanish that words are inflected by gender. You can't say "friend" without indicating the gender of the friend, in this case female)
Also it's worth noting that people are not upgrading their PC's as much anymore. Why? Well, the economy is one, but another reson is that current PC's are enough, and even overkill for doing what most people want to do with their PC's. And if it's overkill running Windows, it's EXTREME overkill running AmigaOS. I ask the people at Amiga Inc (if they read this site) to give the Amiga a new body, a slim, modern one that shows off her best features while making her drawbacks (compatability with PC's) irrelevant. Make her fast, slim, long-running, fun, and friendly. Make her cheap, because everyone deserves one. Make her compatible in the only way that really matters -- compatible with her users.
Erik
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I've always liked the idea of data tablets (a la Startrek), but you're not the first one in the Amiga realm to think of this. I remember seeing official amiga concept art in an old Amiga Format, which depicted a tablet Amiga. I think that was with Gateway and Jim Collas, might've been earlier. Of course, little came of that.
Amiga is heading in an excelent direction for this. Motorola is moving away from desktop processors to embedded, and the PowerPC architecture is becoming more scalable in that respect. Lower G2 or G1 chips are perfect for tablet computing. And we've an O/S that can run FAST on these chips. There is potential.
I would love to see Amiga Tablets, but time will tell.
Clark
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Wow... i really like that idea. Amiga tablet... I would take it anywhere and proudly show it to everyone. I really hate microsoft and their "os" and im not the only one. If a tablet like that would be marketed as pure non-microsoft computer, I think there would be plenty of customers. And the fact that its amiga, well... great :o)
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We have the advantage here. Microsoft also wants this market, because Bill Gates is blessed with a KEEN SENSE OF THE OBVIOUS. It's going this way, and not only do I want the Amiga there, I want her to be first, where she belongs.
Only one tiny eenie weenie little snag. Microsoft TabletPC based devices are already shipping.
e.g. Acer C100 (http://global.acer.com/products/news.asp?id=6200), Compaq TC1000 (http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/tabletpc/index.html?c=smbtabletpc_CPQHome&n=D_I_DR_X_T_x_1699newcompaqtabletpctc1000&r=CPQ_Home_O&t=ad) and ViewSonic ViewPad 1000 (http://www.viewsonic.com/products/tablet_pc_viewpad1000.htm).
*sniff*
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Well, I took a look at those and the only one that looks like the vision I had was the ViewSonicViewPad 1000.
At $1699.
Not there yet!
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The other two are basically traditional laptops with rotatable screens that fall flat back on the keyboard. You get the best of both worlds... a tablet when you want to do simple, light work, or graphical stuff... and a keyboard when you want to do anything serious.
Heck... you're right on price though. Call me a cynic but it all seems to me like a marketting exercise to enable PC manufacturers to sell sub-standard PC's at high prices.
I mean... sheesh... when was the last time you saw a laptop with a 10.4" screen? And the processors are hardly anything likely to make you salivate either.
Combine this with Windows XP... Ack!
Not to say I wouldn't like to see AmigaOS run on a tablet form machine. That'd be way cool.
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Hmm...to a guy who just spent an entire week ridding his PC of viruses, and eventually reinstalling winblows...
THAT SOUNDS GREAT!!!
sackbut
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er..............
www.psionteklogix.com
netpad 5000.
tao intent
has it all and a drop from 3ft onto concrete and still
duin it
regards
sarkis
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I'll check out that one. But -- the price is important. And the reason it needs to be that high for the other ones that are mentioned is because it needs to have a processor, memory, and harddrive space that can deal with a big, bloated OS. It would be much cheaper with a PDA type processor, a few megs of flash (no harddrive at all possibly) and enough ram to work. Basically what I have in mind is a big PDA (basically so that the screen is usable for real tasks, such as browsing the web, balancing your checkbook, watching videos over the net possibly (not sure if high end StrongARM's are capable of this yet or not), and IM and so on. But without a PDA OS, rather with AmigaOS and Tao. Rugged and cheap. $500 at most. It would sell like hotcakes. But no keyboard to get in the way -- that complicated and an extra gadget to break. Rather, if you want a keyboard, plug one into USB and use it. Otherwise, write to it or talk to it or tap on "screen keys".
Erik
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@namochan
"Wow... i really like that idea. Amiga tablet... I would take it anywhere and proudly show it to everyone. I really hate microsoft and their "os" and im not the only one."
Let's hope you are. If the best marketing strategy you can come up with is that it doesn't involve Microsoft or Windows that's pathetic. Who is honestly going to invest in the development of an unproven technology and direct it towards a niche market? And who is going to buy it?
There is a simple way of appealing to mainstream consumers and making the same technology available to Amiga diehards: port the operating system to other architectures. Then encourage developers to create applications that make use of it.
See the reason why many of us keep chirping about x86 support?
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"Billy wants this market, but Billy has a problem. You see, Billy wants to OWN this market, like he wants to own all markets in the software field. But -- in order to do so, he must find some way of wedging his currently monopoly widget, Windows, onto the goddamn thing. Windows XP no less. Good luck, that thing is huge and slow and boring."
Er... have you read any of the specs? These tablets run a special edition of XP on 800 MHz+ PIII chips. And just to be interesting they throw in minor technologies like handwriting recognition to make it useful. Oh... and if you're not sure what to do with your slow and boring tablet it's compatible with software that runs on 600 million other PCs.
If people want to come up with an Amiga pipedream think small before taking over the world. Like maybe a portable MP3 player/phone/game system that someone else develops and you can OEM just for funzies.
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Actually, right now the tablet PC is more of a solution looking for a problem. Eventually people will start thinking of ways to take advantage of the form factor, and that's when it will really take off. The tablet PC is now at its infancy, so the entire market is a niche. If the AmigaTablet comes out within a year or so it will be a contender, regardless of what CPU it uses. If it uses a low-power-drain CPU and a lightweight OS it will favourably compete with the big monsters (3 hour battery life? come on!)
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@ne_one:
Actually, I have a counter-example for you - Windows CE. All Windows handhelds use CE, which is binary incompatible (and partly source incompatible, CE uses a subset of win32) with "big" Windows. Yet my Ipaq interfaces pretty well with my Windows box. If I had a Palm handheld, that would interface pretty well too, and it doesn't run anything remotely resembling windows. Most Windows desktop apps assume you have a mouse and/or keyboard (and why not?), so they would be cumbersome to use on a Tablet PC. If you're going to have to write a special tablet version, you might as well make it run on a different OS. I believe that the important thing here is interoperability. As long as I can plug the two things together, I don't really care what they're running.
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Well why x86 particularly? Rather, if it goes onto something like this, it needs to be StrongARM. If and when Amiga is running under DE, if that's the direction they go, it will run on Intel just fine. And everything else, which is the point.
Well, I like the little psion machine but it's not quite what I'm thinking of, although it's the closest I've seen so far. It's too little for starters, since it's made more for data entry in warehouses and stuff like that. It's got a 640x240 screen. Imagine a 800x600 screen with about the same pixel-size, and the size of the machine adjusted accordingly. I'm thinking a home machine, made for around-the-house websurfing, looking up recipes in the kitchen off of it (and not having to worry too much about a little water or flour on it) Just a little larger. The weight is fine, and I think would still be even if it were a little heavier (it was about 1.5lbs and even 2 or 2.5 would still work).
I definitely don't want it to have a keyboard built into it, which would make it both bigger and much, much more delicate. Keyboard should be a USB or PS/2 or whatever, external.
The $1700 one suffered from several other problems other than just price. I'm sure it was fairly delicate. One drop and that's it. Also, it was heavy. Since it runs XP, you have to dick around with the OS. In other words, it's got to boot, it takes time to shut down, load software, or whatever. Someone will have to administer this machine. It's a desktop or server OS, running in a different form factor. So is AmigaOS (as a desktop OS) of course, but I am saying that changes to the OS should be made to make it work in a more "instant on, instant off" kind of way. It's already easier to use than XP.
Battery life is another problem. It lasts for about 2 hours! That's useless. I want 10 hours. That's a lot easier to accomplish with a StrongARM than with an Intel Celeron, mobile edition or not.
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Er... have you read any of the specs? These tablets run a special edition of XP on 800 MHz+ PIII chips.
Not exactly state of the art though, are they? You pay's your money... you get's less ;-)
And just to be interesting they throw in minor technologies like handwriting recognition to make it useful.
Not to knock handwriting technology 'cause it sure seems impressive to me but... I can type way faster than I can write. This kinda thing seems, to me, to be aimed at the 'newbie' - for whom it is probably very beneficial = but not to a seasoned user.
f people want to come up with an Amiga pipedream think small before taking over the world.
A dream, perhaps, but I'd buy one if it was one of those rotatable screen things with a keyboard. I guess the best we can hope for is when AmigaOS allegedly becomes hardware agnostic and runs quite happily on existing TabletPC stuff :-)
Well... perhaps!
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Actually, right now the tablet PC is more of a solution looking for a problem. Eventually people will start thinking of ways to take advantage of the form factor, and that's when it will really take off.
The most obvious one is graphics work. Drawing directly on the screen. Seem's pretty obvious to me ;-)
Prolly not exactly mass market though.
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Well why x86 particularly?
To survive in the desktop market an eventual shift to x86 is pretty much inevitable.
Rather, if it goes onto something like this, it needs to be StrongARM.
I'd go with Intel's implementation of the StrongARM - the XScale. 400MHgz - 1GHz last time I heard.
The 206MHz StrongARM in my iPAQ is pretty damned mean. There are 3d games to put low-end Amiga's to shame on this thing - even Quake's been ported to it. The thought of a 1GHz XScale chip at the heart of a decent tablet is extremely tempting. I'll go with what you say on the keyboard... I'd accept such a machine so long as I can add a keyboard via USB.
I'd want a minimum of 800 x 600. 1280 x 1024 pro'lly asking too much. At the size TabletPCs are I'd be looking for it to take over some of the tasks of my main machine - for that I'd want a decent resolution.
I've often wondered about an XScale based machine and what could be achieved if Amiga and RiscOS Ltd. got together for mutual gain. At least there seem to be a reasonable range of companies designing and selling complete StrongARM based sollutions for the RiscOS market.
They wouldn't have to co-operate OS wise... but from a hardware developers viewpoint the idea of being able to sell the same machine to both AmigaOS and RiscOS users might be quite tempting.
But then, perhaps I'm thinking a load of bull ;-)
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@Strangedisk
Excellent idea ... an Amiga Tablet ... :-D
I would really like to add some of them to my home network. Then I could sit on the sofa in the living room or outside under the tree and run my favourite Amiga programs, transfering data back and forth between my Amiga Tablet and my "Amiga server" in the house.
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redfox
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@CodeSmith
"I believe that the important thing here is interoperability. As long as I can plug the two things together, I don't really care what they're running."
And on this (hypothetical) interoperable Amiga OS what would you be running in terms of applications that would justify laying out $1500?
See the issue?
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Er... have you read any of the specs? These tablets run a special edition of XP on 800 MHz+ PIII chips. And just to be interesting they throw in minor technologies like handwriting recognition to make it useful. Oh... and if you're not sure what to do with your slow and boring tablet it's compatible with software that runs on 600 million other PCs.
You are wording it like you are disagreeing with me, but how so? I said Windows XP was huge and slow and boring. And you answer, "have you read any of the specs, it runs a special edition of XP on an 800 MHz" -- my point exactly. I've read the specs, and they suck. For your $1500-$2000 you get a machine where the batteries last for two hours, and the machine weighs 3-4 pounds. There's already a name for machine like this, it's called a laptop. If I wanted a laptop, I'd buy a laptop.
What I want, is a rugged, light, cheap system. For the batteries to run for any length of time, it needs to run one something like a StrongARM or similiar. Well, Windows can't do that. And even if it were binary compatible with it, XP would suck at 200Mhz, special edition or no. But AmigaOS wouldn't -- that's the point. With a responsive enough OS, and a fast enough GUI, the only issues would be streaming video or similiar. Even that might be no problem.
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@Strangedisk
"Well why x86 particularly?"
Because even a fractional percentage of 600 millions PCs is more than all the other markets combined. This doesn't preclude other architectures, it just makes sense to go with volume first.
"Rather, if it goes onto something like this, it needs to be StrongARM. If and when Amiga is running under DE, if that's the direction they go, it will run on Intel just fine.
DE already runs on x86 and Amiga has indicated that XScale is something that they/Tao are considering. The point is, the market will bring forth new hardware not Amiga.
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@Strangedisk
"You are wording it like you are disagreeing with me, but how so? I said Windows XP was huge and slow and boring. And you answer, "have you read any of the specs, it runs a special edition of XP on an 800 MHz" -- my point exactly."
No I *am* disagreeing. I'm running XP Pro on an Athlon 550 right now and it's fine. 'Special' doesn't mean inferior. Obviously tablets have specific requirements.
"I've read the specs, and they suck. For your $1500-$2000 you get a machine where the batteries last for two hours, and the machine weighs 3-4 pounds."
Tablets aren't designed to compete with notebooks - right now they are portable desktop machines that can operate standalone for limited periods of time. Like most laptops, they can be plugged in and expanded.
"With a responsive enough OS, and a fast enough GUI, the only issues would be streaming video or similar."
People will buy tablets to run their favorite --software -- . Like PDAs, current models will increase in power until the delta disappears. A smaller, faster operating system is not going to change this.
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Well, I can give you the problem and the market. Also a market that is already looking for such a solution.
School kids.
Here in Hong Kong there is a serious problem with the weight of school kids bags. They are heavily packed with books. On average a 7-9 year old carries 20% - 30% of there body weight. Several kids have been killed due to this weight causing accidents. They need the books for homework as most kids have upto 2 hours of work each night.
The solution is a low cost and workable system that can be used to store the text books in digital form. Compatability is not really a big issue since work can be transfered using HTML, Jpeg or simple text.
The key factor of this would be to organise production of PDF text books that are used by the Schools.
The specs of the machine need not be big. A 1024 x 768 12" screen, Mobile Radeon, 256 ram.
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ne_one wrote:
@CodeSmith
"I believe that the important thing here is interoperability. As long as I can plug the two things together, I don't really care what they're running."
And on this (hypothetical) interoperable Amiga OS what would you be running in terms of applications that would justify laying out $1500?
See the issue?
Ahhh - but you see :-) a PPC or XScale-based tablet PC would not need a lot of memory, a huge hard disk or a monster battery, so it would be less than $1500 (besides the fact that I wouldn't spend that much on something unless I really wanted or needed it - that's a lot of bread!). Another thing is that right now, the only software you'd want to run on the Tablet PC (besides the vertical market stuff like Amazon and eBay use) is Office for Tablet. It's a nice enough set of programs, but there's not nearly as many programs as I can get for my desktop. I suspect this is the reason 90% of the tablet PCs out there right now are regular laptops with touchscreens.
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@ne_one
An Athlon 550 consumes too much power. A tablet that runs out of electricity every 2 hours is useless. If you have to keep in constantly plugged in to use it, might as well be a desktop.
As for software, people have specific needs for software and it differs between what they might have on their PC and what a tablet is good for. Browsing the web, checking your e-mail, IMing with your friends are things that any computer can do. I don't specifically see the the likelyhood of the need, for example, for using tablets to perform complex scientific computations on the spot, or whatever. Games, internet, home office, and stuff like that is what might be useful for these things. An Athlon 550 is fine -- but if it cuts into my "free from cords" time, forces the makers of the machine to make it heavier, or need a fan (louder), or more expensive, I'm not interested. It's better if you can take it with you and use it on and off all day without worrying about having to charge it anywhwere but home. Better still if you don't have to charge it every day, but every other day. And a 10-12 hour battery life would do that for you.
It's true that these things will get more powerful. But it's exactly now, while the industry is in its infancy, that a smaller/faster OS will make a difference, because the hardware just isn't there yet. Smaller, faster software lets me make a smaller, longer-lifed, cheaper, more convienent tablet.
As for software, why not alternatives? Are you saying it needs to run W2K (or whatever) + Office? Why not Linux + StarOffice? I realize that these are equally big as Office, but my point is that it is possible to use alternatives for common tasks. They don't really have to be that big. I use all four every day at work. StarOffice and MS Office are, for everything I do, interchangable, as are IE and Mozilla. My point is, why not work on more efficient software for the common things? Basic things, like browsing and other internet stuff, and "officey" stuff (in the broadest sense of the word), including things like keeping recipes and CD collections organized, alarm clocks and calendars going, and so on, can be done without needing even as much as an Athlon 550. And, after all, "cheap" must also include the software licenses, which is probably a big part of why these things are still $1500-$2000. An OS that came with the common stuff that a tablet might be used for is that much more useful. Tablets don't necessarily need to replace desktops for people who need more powerful solutions and don't need them to be portalble. Yet another reason for these to be cheaper -- at these prices you would choose one of these as a replacement for a desktop PC, unless you were rich.
Imagine the one extreme. The Gameboy advance, at $69, is a complete computer, with memory, external storage, software, an interface, and so on. It's quite specialized, and small, and good for only one thing. (on a plus note they are quite rugged actually, I've dropped mine a few times, and there appears to be no problem) Now imagine these tablet PC's, at the other extreme. I'm claiming that there's middle ground here, middle ground that still lets you take advantage of most of the good points of both systems (cheap, powerful, flexible, rugged) ground that the AmigaOS fits into quite well. A tablet at less than half the cost of these current tablet PC's, which is rugged because there's no moving parts, and useful because, for example, you could bundle it with some software to handle the common tasks, but cheap because it would need only 64MB of ram, and a 250Mhz cpu, or whatever. It's price that's keeping these tablet's from taking off. People don't need another PC, even one with a more flexible form factor.
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@ne_one:
"People will buy tablets to run their favorite --software -- . Like PDAs, current models will increase in power until the delta disappears. A smaller, faster operating system is not going to change this. "
Oh, come on! this is EXACTLY why the Wintel world is in such a mess. Why write tight, efficient software? the prices of memory, hard disks and CPUs are going down all the time! get a faster computer, you bum! :-)
Tell me this - why is it that my 1.3GHz Athlon with 640MB of RAM feels about as fast as my old 80MHz 486 with 8MB? Because the software I'm running now is WAY less efficient than what I was running on my 486. The standard response to this is "well, the stuff you're running now does a lot more". OK, so why is it that when I run software that *is* optimized (like 3D renderers) I *do* feel the speedup? On my 486 I did not even dream of rendering anything more complicated than a few solids, on my Athlon I don't think twice about adding weird bumpmaps, CSG, etc. And it still renders WAY faster than on the 486 (as it should).
Fast hardware is no excuse for sloppy software.
(I'm going to get lynched for this next statement) I believe we owe a lot to current software practices for the Amiga's legendary ahead-of-its-time performance - if software had been written efficiently all this time, there'd be no way anyone in his right mind could say "My A500 feels faster than my P-3". Yes, the A500 *feels* faster, but that's because most current software *sucks* in terms of efficiency. A 1GHz machine should wipe the floor with a 7MHz machine, regardless of how well the 7MHz box was built. The fact that it does not do so all the time speaks volumes.
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Ok. First off, I am not a tablet person. I have always been a PDA person. As such, I have gotta point out that the Strong Arm is NOT the top of the line for light portable processors.
I wiould look to the MIPS series by NEC. There you could pull out a 64-bit, cheap processor and get some real speed.
Now if Amiga did this, I would want it with comparable specs to my IBM Z50. I want a minimun of 16 hours of battery life for an extended battery and 8 for a standard. I want it about 2 to 2 1/2 pounds.
I want a hard disk (adding a 2 GB to my Z50), and I would like a ram upgrade.
I want a KEYBOARD. Do not give me a damn tablet.
Oh well... I can emmulate an Amy on my Z50... never tried it. Might be interesting.
Think on it.
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I looked up the IBM z50 and it came closer to my "vision" than any other so far. But, I do want a tablet, with a disconnectable keyboard. Perhaps there should be two options! This sytem is very close. I remember I had an Amiga 3000 with what I thought at the time was a very extensive software collection and it only took 1/3 or so of my 50MB drive! :-D I guess 32MB would be enough but 64MB is what I would look for. If you put AmigaOS in the ROM along with DE and a bunch of basic software (web browser and so on) it would be easier to get away with 32MB, but I'd rather have 32 and nothing in ROM but the bootstrap. The only differences I would see here are, even if it increased the cost $100 or so, are:
1. AmigaOS and DE instead of WinCE (of course) and software package
2. a little bigger
3. A tablet, no built in keyboard. Keyboard would be separate.
4. connect via a mini-USB or similiar (unpowered)
5. touchscreen including writing recognition software, no "keyboard joystick" thingy. Although, in addition to the optional separate keyboard, a separate game controller would be nice too! But it wouldn't have to come with it at that cost.
6. 800x600 instead of 640x480
7. 80211.b
The IBM z50 sells for $275 but I would pay $450 for one in the above configuration.
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I had this idea a while back too. I was annoyed when MS and their "research team" came up with it
too. What I would like would be.
800x600 minimum->1024x768 prefered
As I do graphics work I would always like bigger resolutions.
No keyboard
USB/ Wireless keyboard specially designed for the device.
Robust design
Can be dropped and is water proof.
Touch screen
Obviously.
AmigaOS
Obviously. Windows ain`t upto it.
Fully wireless
Bluetooth or what ever. It would be cool if it could network with your computer and share data.
Also maybe even use your computer for saving temporary files every now and then. If it was fast
enough that is. Also if it could link to other external device that would be cool too. If you
could use it as a remote for your curtains lights etc. That would also make it useful for other
things. I remember seeing a remote for over £2000. It wasn`t as big as what this would be (Screen size)..
I don`t care what CPU it has as long as it uses low power and is fast.
Anyway i`ll add more later. Somebody wants to go on the net now.
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@ne_one
Well, I think I got myself misunderstood. I just think that there are plenty of pepole sick and tired of microsoft.
If someone showed these pepole that you can make system that is better, faster, compatible, more stable and most of all, less expensive.
All the things that Microsoft does not represent.
Thats what pure non-microsoft means to me :-)