The Liberation of Laptop Design?

Since the notebook computer evolved into its present form about a decade ago,
its design has remained fundamentally unchanged. Laptops have packed a lot more
capability into smaller and lighter packages, but the basic layout–display in
the lid, a keyboard with a pointing device in the base–hasn’t changed.

Now, at a time when a tough market has made most hardware manufacturers more
conservative, the coming of the Tablet PC is forcing a rethinking of the
notebook. Whatever the shortcomings of the Microsoft Tablet PC software (Tech
& You, Nov. 18), the liberation of laptop design could be a lasting
contribution.

Although Microsoft set specific hardware requirements for the tablets, it
gave manufacturers considerable design freedom. So, unlike the lookalike,
work-alike Pocket PCs, there’s a lot of variation among tablets. I took a look
at four of the initial products, representing three different approaches:
modified clamshell notebooks from Toshiba and Acer, a pure, no-keyboard tablet
from Fujitsu, and a unique hybrid with a detachable keyboard from HP.

The Toshiba Portégé 3500 ($2,299) and Acer TravelMate C102Ti ($2,199) have
similar designs. Each looks like a standard ultralight notebook, but the screen
pivots 180 degrees and folds flat over the keyboard to form a tablet. The
Toshiba is the speediest of all the tablets, with a 1.3-GHz Pentium III-M, and
it features a 12.1-inch display rather than the 10.4-in. screens found on other
tablets. There’s a price for those goodies: It’s nearly a pound heavier than
the others and runs just over three hours on a charge–about an hour less than
the competition. The Acer goes with an 800 MHz ultra-low-voltage Pentium III-M.
All of the tablets come with 20- or 30-gigabyte hard drives and 256 megabytes of
memory.

Each also has a big problem when working as a tablet. The Acer comes with a
tiny pen, about the size of a Palm stylus, that quickly becomes uncomfortable. A
larger pen is also supplied, but there’s no way to store it in the notebook.
And the Toshiba is much worse than the others at emulating the feel of a pen on
paper when writing on the tablet. The screen is too slick, which makes it hard
to write accurately and legibly. Another concern is the durability of the
complex screen hinges. A standard laptop hinge has to move on only one axis, yet
it is the largest source of mechanical failures. The tablet design multiplies
the chances of trouble.

The Fujitsu Stylistic ST 4110 is probably the tablet most likely to succeed
because it has a small but solid built-in market. Fujitsu has been selling
tablets for years, using cobbled-together software to handle pen entry. They are
used mainly in specialized markets, such as insurance, largely for filling out
electronic forms. For these uses, the Tablet PC software is a vast improvement.

In many ways, the HP Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 is the most interesting of the
bunch. The basic unit, powered by a power-thrifty 1-GHz Transmeta Crusoe
processor, resembles the Fujitsu. But it attaches to a clever keyboard that can
serve as a base, somewhat like a standard notebook, and can fold behind the
tablet, like the Toshiba and Acer. The Compaq slides into a docking stand with
or without the keyboard attached. And with prices starting at $1,699, the Compaq
is the most aggressively priced tablet.

At this early stage, it’s difficult to tell how the tablet PCs will evolve
or what impact these novel products will have on laptop design. The fact that
two of the three largest laptop makers, Dell Computer and IBM, aren’t making
tablets reveals deep industry skepticism. Still, I think that as the software
gets better and the hardware–especially the relatively expensive
radio-frequency pens and digitizers–get cheaper, pen entry and maybe even
pivoting screens will become options on many standard laptops. The more radical
HP Compaq might even inspire a jolt of design innovation in a notebook market
increasingly dominated by all-but-indistinguishable PCs.

By Stephen H Wildstrom
in BusinessWeek. Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc