The Evolution of Tablet Computing

For well over 5 years (probably closer to 10 but I hate admitting that) I have watched the PC Tablet market take shape. The early advantages of the technology in industries like healthcare and pharmaceutical industries (to mention a few) were incredible. However, the technology limitations of battery life, weight and clumsy human interfaces often kept all from admiring the Vista. Even with these limitations, I couldn’t help but to admire the potential. For many years I struggled with my data collection process and note taking procedures. Taking hard copy notes in a meeting has always bothered me since I ultimately wanted to save this information and have it electronically available to me for reference. At first I would grab the yellow pad and have them transcribed. This was way to time and effort consuming and it lost a lot of the content since the right side of my brain is heavier I would loose much of my content since I often draw pictures and schematics during a meeting. Then came the first Palm device. With it’s pen based human interface – this was surely my savoir to my note taking dilemma. After several attempts in meetings to produce valid note taking data, the Palm settled into technology stack as a really good day timer. I even gave Mimeo a shot. Remember these devices? I think they are still available but they would hook up to a whiteboards and allow you to capture the contents of a board and download them to the PC. Again the human interface as well as the entire process of preparing to use the device really slowed it down and took the awe away.

But over the many years of trial and error, the tablet PC kept evolving and getting better and the early adopters of the technology (like Pharmaceutical sales reps) really help to take it to the next level.

One observation and credit that I would like to point out over this journey goes to IBM. I have brought a lot of product from IBM (as well as the others) over the years. My approach with product selection has been to stick with the economies of scale and only deviate from your standards for absolute necessity. While in Pharma the need for a notebook device was imminent and at that time Fujitsu was leading the pack in this territory. All of the manufactures were working on some type of tablet device. That is with the exception of IBM. With the potential of the tablet market exploding, I never understood why IBM held back and did not develop the technology right away. As hide sight would have it I think I now have a better understanding of IBM’s planning and why they held back on the technology. The overall marketplace needed to mature a bit - why get into it now – let the others make the mistakes and learn from them. The risk of not entering the market early on was huge, but I really think the payoff worked since products like Microsoft OneNote (See Microsoft OneNote - Is it the death of the pen and yellow notepad? ) have really helped bridge the gap on the Tablet PC’s value proposition.