Tablets are Making a Big Come Back – CES Keynote with Steve Ballmer

In case you missed the CES keynote yesterday, here’s a portion as relates to Tablet PCs. If you have read this blog long enough you know I am a huge fan and user of Tablet PCs, the slates as shown in the video. The one I currently use is 2 years old and has touch screen capabilities and I use it all the time. A while back I used to do some training for Intel and the touch screen was great for not having to pull out a stylus to run videos and with the Tablet I could walk around and and be productive. I used to always say, why walk around with an “open pizza box” notebook when you can have a tablet.

The biggest change for most is getting acquainted with interacting in different ways than a keyboard. The Sahara I used has dual array microphones, so speech recognition is great with no headset required. I use both Dragon and Vista speech products. By the way, if you are not aware if you have Vista, you have speech recognition on your computer, it seems I surprise people with this all the time, but it has been around since Vista was introduced. You may need hardware like a microphone if one is not built in to your computer, but many notebooks have them built in.

I also used an add on Wacom tablet device with my desktop to take advantage of “inking” as well. For those who do not type well, adding on a tablet to the desktop certainly makes data input a lot easier. It’s been a long road with tablets but looks like the time has finally arrived! I do have to say the iPhone though has really helped break down the barrier with interacting with devices via touch for many too, so perhaps this is also fueling the need and desire for Tablet PCs too and we have the up and coming announcement too from Apple on their device coming soon as well. BD

With The New York Times triggering a rumor that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer would announce a new Microsoft tablet computer that would pre-empt Apple’s eagerly-anticipated tablet announcement on January 27, there was a lot of buzz swirling around Ballmer’s opening keynote at CES 2010 in Las Vegas.

Breakdown and full video clip of Ballmer's 'Slate PC' launch at CES | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com