The election in the U.S. wasn’t the only thing going on this Tuesday (November 7th), the Tablet PC turned 4 years old.
It’s been a fast four years, that’s for sure.
We’ve seen the Tablet PC grow from the early first-gen devices that were passable, but honestly often not at the same level as many of their peer notebooks. Then came Centrino. Then Service Pack 2. And along the way displays got better, battery life started hitting a sweet spot, and prices became more reasonable. Today Tablets are begging to become mainstream.
Yes, the Tablet world has come of age–even after four short years.
So to celebrate the Tablet PC’s 4th birthday, a few of us Tableteers got together for dinner while at Mobile Connections. In all there were 11 at the gathering. Yeah, not as many as in the past for similar Tablet gatherings, but that was very much my fault. I didn’t promote this gathering very much and I only posted the location at the last minute. As it turned out, we decided to go to the Mandalay Bay buffet for dinner and pleasantly Microsoft’s Tablet PC team volunteered to pay for everyone’s meal. It worked out wonderfully. It was a blast. Thanks Microsoft!
Also as part of the Tablet PC birthday celebration, I decided to give up to 100 InkGestures licenses at Mobile Connections. Here’s what I did. I printed up 100 gift cards and then each time I saw someone with a Tablet PC I gave them an InkGestures gift card. It was a blast giving away the InkGestures licenses and seeing the smiles on people’s faces. In all, I gave away just under 70 licenses. The last ones I left in the Tablet PC Hands-on Lab, so I’m not sure if they were handed out in the last hours of the lab.
I also gave Rob Bushway 20 licenses to do whatever he wanted with them. He decided to share the joy by opening up a thread on Gottabemobile and giving away a copy of InkGestures to the first 20 posters. It’s amazing how fast they went. The thread started at 10:30am and by 11:58 all the licenses were given away. Wow, I didn’t expect them to go that fast.
Congratulations to all the winners:
Panserbjorn
MarkLewis
mpolino
Anton P. Nym
c.penzien
Josh Bancroft
dmcohen
Amstel
jlee
Yonatan
jimmy_d
tobemobile
Sumocat
areef
Mike_B
tmarman
tbb2006
Kendal
DRTigerlilly
getcloth