I can’t imagine the Tablet PC without WiFi. It’s tremendously liberating. However, Evan describes how the original Tablet design didn’t include WiFi support. Makes sense. It also makes sense that some of the first Tablet users started experimenting with WiFi on their own and how the extension became a built-in option that many of us can’t live without.
In a sense, WiFi is to the Tablet what laser printers were to the original Mac. You don’t need it, but when you have it, new products and usage emerge.
Before the Tablet, I’d used WiFi in a startup as a way to connect our notebooks together between different offices. It was terrific. As the business expanded to new offices across the hall we didn’t have to lay out new wire. We just carried our notebooks with us. Looking back, WiFi was useful because it saved extra work. We didn’t have to think about laying CAT cable. We didn’t have to plan out where all the permanent wall connections should go. We just set up the WiFi and used it. (Actually, the early Symbol and 3Com access points had their own issues–particularly with the configuration, but after a bit we got used to it.)
It’s interesting. While using the WiFi-equipped notebooks I thought of WiFi in terms of portability and minimal hardware configuration. At the time, simple things amused us. We could run live demos across the Internet in the lab, in the conference room, or in each other’s office.
With the Tablet, portability is taken even further, and so is how I think about using WiFi. Now I envision ad hoc networks where people can join together to work on or share information. For instance, in a classroom students could divide up into small groups and work together, not by huddling around a single monitor and keyboard, but as they hold and scribble on a Tablet they hold in their handl. And the teacher could walk around and effortlessly jump in to join each group’s work with her Tablet. It doesn’t take much to dream up a similar conference room scenario. Or even a meeting spread across the Internet.
What I find interesting is that these were things I’d considered before in passing, but with the Tablet PC they become features I’d like to live with. It’s amazing how one piece of hardware–in this case WiFi–can change the way I think about using a computer.
Instead of iPods, Duke should be giving tabletPCs to incoming freshmen.
http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-502513.html
The utility of the iPod is limited to creating 1,600 new customers for iTunes. The utility of a tabletPC is limited only by the students’ imagination.
James, you’re right. It’s time to nudge our Duke friends.