I have three friends that are in the market for a new computer. Two currently have desktops and one a notebook. None of the three are in the market for a Tablet. Why? They don’t see a need.
Well, actually they all are looking for sub-one thousand dollar notebooks and there aren’t any Tablets in this range. (Lora reminds me that the Averatec is in the range they are all looking at.)
So what they are really saying is that the perceived added value that a Tablet provides is less than the couple hundred more a Tablet would run. Of course, they aren’t just against Tablets. They aren’t in favor of spending any more money than they have to cause generally Windows runs good enough on just about any computer. They’d vote down any performance or ultra-light notebook priced above the $1000 mark.
What’s really going on here too is that they are satisfied with a desknote-style notebook. They aren’t really looking for ultra-mobility. They just want a deskspace-friendly, cheap, good enough computer that’s easy to use and setup.
But how they use their computers, could make the difference.
Now if only the software they used supported ink they might think differently about Tablets. Let’s see. That means one or more of the following tools that they use needs ink:
* Yahoo mail
* Google search
* Skype
* Outlook Express
Hmmm. Would the Tablet landscape change if half these commonly used tools supported ink directly? Nah, it can’t be that simple. Word has ink, for instance. But I see why that’s not good enough. These people don’t live in Word. They’re Internet and email bound most of the time. And ink doesn’t play well there.
It’s interesting to think about “mainstream” apps and uses. I wonder, for instance, if an ink-enabled eBay would have any impact on Tablet exposure. Again, nah, it can’t be that simple. Sure would be nice if it were.
Loren, I think two things need to happen to both raise the awareness of the utility Tablets bring to almost anyone and also demonstrate the worth of the ink enabled PC.
The first is (of course) marketing- a concerted multi-front campaign that not only publicizes the benefits of Tablets but also demonstrates concisely what they are. The average person doesn’t know what they are. The second front must be to put them in publicly accessible locales for hands-on demonstrates and sampling.
The second thing that needs to happen is for Microsoft to ink enable all of their PC programs. All of them. I don’t think one killer app will do it- it hasn’t yet even though there are a few out there (for many people). The entire UI experience needs to have thorough ink integration and if Microsoft can’t make all their apps ink optimized then what message does that send to consumers? I realize that all the many MS apps come from different groups and business units but consumers don’t care. They want at least all MS apps to be fully inkable.
Sounds like a tall order. For now, I just have my fingers crossed that ink will make it into Longhorn as a first class citizen. 🙂
The costs of adding ink are probably so great that in most cases it won’t be done or will be done only partially. This is true for Microsoft as well as any other software company.
I agree, though, that if there’s a way to do it, it should be done.
I’m still hoping for a cross-platform ink chat: send inked IMs from Linux, a cellphone or a PDA.
Also, for ink to progress it needs to work in Firefox and maybe other browsers too. Otherwise, developer adoption is going to suffer, imo.
Julien: Yeah, if the goal is to encourage ink usage, Microsoft has to go where the users are. And Firefox, Google, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Skype (Messenger) is where the action is.
So how do you get ink in Skype, Google, or FireFox?