What's wrong with a slim notebook like the Sony Vaio, voice recognition, 3G data rates with onboard wireless modem by Q? Does it have to be fancier than that?
Nothing's wrong with it Dave.
It's my opinion that Laptops will converge on Portable Internet Appliance target before cell phones do. As you have pointed out, an onboard (or PCMCIA card) wireless modem would provide the connection. What I think people forget is how much functionality and usability they will give up in going to an ultra-miniature device like a cell phone or Palm-like device.
Reasons why I think laptops will evolve into the Internet Appliance of the future:
1) Laptops have fast, powerful, processors compatible with hundreds of thousands of applications.
2) They make web use easy and satisfying because web pages are written to be viewed on them. Translators and converters will be cludgy and rewriting may work for a select minority of sites (stock quotes) but only for a tiny minority.
3) Laptops already have keyboards big enough for human fingers. PDA devices using tiny QWERTY keyboards are ok but slow to use. Handwriting recognition is a pain to use because of all the mistakes and phonepad input is atrocious for anything but a few characters. Heck it's even a pain to use to look up names in your addressbook.
4) Laptops already have big, high quality, color screens, and they're getting cheaper all the time.
5) Laptops already have lots of memory and hard disk storage. These will be a pain and expensive to add to cell phones, but that ill be solved. However, compare a cell phone with and without these devices, and the other stuff we're talking about, when you want to use it as a phone. A plain cell phone will be much cheaper, will weigh much less, have a better form factor for use as a phone, live much longer on its batteries, and will, all things considered, be a much better phone for voice use.
6) E-mail is increasing continuing attachments which need applications to use or view. This is especially true in corporate use which is who will drive the use of these devices early in their evolution. A laptop will have the apps you need, will your PDA?
7) A laptop already has sound and a microphone, and could easily get a small video camera. Not only is there more room for it, but the laptop is facing the right way.
8) PCs are continuing on their assent up Moore's curve to ever cheaper/more powerful/both devices. Sure cell phones and PDAs are going to benefit from this as well, but the PC only needs a tweak here and there, the others need complete re-designs, maybe several. |
