As you may have ascertained by now, I am an attendee at the Microsoft Windows Anywhere [The Tablet and Mobile PC Developer Conference] conference co-lo’d with VSLive! here at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
Think about that phrase “Mobile PC” for a moment; what do you think of? It is my guess that in a Microsoft Windows context, most people will think Pocket PC. Did you? I’ll be honest, I certainly did (which, in retrospect, is no surprise given my focus on Windows Mobile / WinCE solutions). Nonetheless, I think that that was a mistake on my part. Why? ..because I lost sight of the bigger picture.
“Mobile PC” is a term that we are going to be hearing a lot of out of Microsoft moving forward. Essentially, a laptop or a Tablet PC is a Mobile PC. I think of it this way: if it runs Windows XP (or, in the future, Longhorn) and it is mobile then it can be classed as a Mobile PC.
Over the next year, as one speaker indicated, we’re going to see Tablet technology as a feature [not something specifically different]. She indicated that some OEMs [Gateway was specifically mentioned] are producing hardware that, with a difference of having Tablet features, is otherwise identical; “less than $100” was her statement as to the cost difference for Tablet / non-Tablet hardware. I would love for my next computer to be a laptop that has Tablet features (just thinking about turning the lcd panel around and down so that I can take notes by hand makes me smile).
Unfortunately, we’ve really not seen the really powerful laptops having Tablet features. For example, I love my Dell [Latitude C640 – company issued] (ok, I have one issue – it only has one USB 1.1 port – but i have a hub, so move on) – 2.4GHz Pentium 4m, 1GB RAM, 40GB hd, 14.1“ LCD panel that does 1400 x 1050; from a horsepower perspective, I think I have a good dev box (not the heaviest heavyweight fighter, but a damn good one) I’ll admit to not having looked recently, but last time that I did, I didn’t find a Tablet-enabled Mobile PC that had all of that (particularly the screen resolution). Tablet PCs came out of the gate as rather lightweight devices; I wouldn’t call one of the 1st generation Tablets a desktop replacement, and the 2nd generation are much closer. I think we’re starting to see the tide turn on that issue.
The Day 1 sessions that I attended certainly spun my head around and took off my Windows Mobile blinders (which have been taped down pretty hard lately). I’ve got a number of crazy ideas running around in my head now about possible applications, and even some things I saw done on a Tablet that I would like to try to reproduce in .NET CF for a WinCE/Windows Mobile device (you can take the blinders off, but it’s still in the blood…).
Throughout the day, we heard about the Four Pillars of Mobility :
- Data Management
- Don’t assume access to data / consider disconnected scenarios
- Handle online / offline synchronization gracefully
- Power Awareness
- Applications should not assume PC power state
- Consider battery life when doing:
- Large transfers of data
- Polling status
- Writing files to disk
- Complex computations
- Heavy display
- Have a lower power option for your application
- Handle suspend and resume gracefully
- this is HUGE!
- An oft-cited violator of this was MS Word (Save File Dialog on suspend/resume, anyone?)
- Network Awareness
- Applications should not assume connectivity
- Consider bandwidth of connection when doing
- large transfers of data
- background transfer
- database updates
- Have a lower-connectivity option for your application
- Outlook 2003 is a great example
- Only download headers
- Postpone data sync
- Display
- Applications should not assume previous display configuration
- Monitors may come and go from users configurations
- Support for portrait and landscape display must be added
Some of these points have begun to be addressed with things like the Offline Application Block; however, the others are largely a self-implemented thing. Nonetheless, it’s quite a bit to think about compared to writing a desktop app five years ago!
Oh, doing some searching on microsoft.com for “Mobile PC“ brought me back this gem: Mobile PC Platform Design - Overview
-Nino
Update: I did some Googling and found that the Toshiba M200s will do 1400 x 1050 (although that is on a 12” LCD).. anyone have a 14.1” (or 15”) SXGA+ (or better) LCD on a tablet ?