Tablets, Tablets, Tablets !

I have been watching all the news about Tablet PC’s for some months now and while it is peeks my interest, I don’t see much that interests me yet.

Why ?

To be honest, I am a “late adopter” of technology. While many will spend big bucks to buy the latest fad in technology, I personally only buy what I need, when I really need it, and even then only if I can get it for a really great price.

So if I had my way, what would I want for a Tablet PC ?

I think the Intel Atom processors are a great concept. Low cost, mass produced, lightweight CPU’s. Now a lot of people are critical of the Atom, saying it has too little horsepower. The Atom is very powerful, IMO. The problem is that software has become bloated (big and slow), so it makes a decent PC look terrible. So what is needed ?

(1) Make a Tablet PC as low priced as possible and I mean low priced. The target price is $99, but no more than $199. You don’t need a lot of “bells and whistles” either.

(2) Microsoft needs to take Windows 7 and to make a Tablet version (Intel based only) which is basically the same operating system on desktop PC’s, but to literally remove all the bloat they can from it. If the average person doesn’t need it, then take it out of Windows.  I don’t need dot.net runtimes. I don’t need anything fancy on the Tablet. I just want the core operating system which will run apps I write.

(3) Encourage a new breed of developers who can write apps which require minimal amount of memory and hardware.  Leave all the Visual Studio stuff, dot.net stuff for the big PC’s. The target size for the average application for this Tablet should be 1 meg in size or less. Large applications for such tablets should be no more than 5 meg in size.

At this point a lot of programmers will say, you can’t write apps that small today, which don’t need any fancy hardware!

(4) My answer to that comment is, YES you can !

One of the best kept secrets in the software industry is the PowerBasic compilers. Programmers who use it are writing powerful apps which can fit a on floppy disk and which require little in memory and hardware. My own GUI engine (see my web site for more info) can be used to build large (in task), complex applications, which can fit on a floppy (meaning use little drive space), use little memory and can run with minimal hardware, such as the Atom CPU.  My EZSprite (standalone sprite engine in a DLL) runs great on the Atom CPU and doesn’t require any hardware support at all. The next generation of EZGUI will be sporting some exciting new features, one which is an OpenGL Canvas control which only requires the minimal OpenGL support (version 1.5, possibly even only 1.2), but can do some amazing things.

The problem with Tablets is the the software today keeps getting bigger and bigger and slower and slower, so it makes the current CPU’s look slow (I mean 2 and 3 ghz CPUs). IMO even a 500 mhz CPU is extremely powerful and fast. The Atom CPU’s which range in the 1 ghz to 2 ghz range are very fast. Its the software which is the problem, not the hardware.

A tablet PC probably could be made which is very affordable (less than $200), which would sell like “hot cakes” to the average person, which could run applications at a good pace, but the problem is with the software developers. The operating system is bloated. Have you taken a look at how many services are running on the latest Windows 7 PC’s ? Application developers all gravitate to the latest Microsoft development tools which on the average are bloated too.  The problem is with programmers. Often they want the programming language to do all the work, so the programming environments get bigger and bigger, the runtimes get bigger and bigger and the software uses more resources than ever before.

If software developers (and the guys who make operating systems) would just step a back a bit and reconsider how they write software, maybe the $99 Tablet PC could be a reality.

You may think that is a “pipe dream”, but I don’t. The good old “faithful” Visual Basic 5.0/6.0 was put out to pasture in favor of even more bloated programming languages. Yet, in all fairness, my own EZGUI 5.0 (in development) plus the inexpensive Powerbasic Classic (currently only $49) compiler together, can do more in less than 900 KB of runtime DLLs, than the VB runtime (1.4 meg runtime DLL) plus all its supporting common control, richedit and common dialog OCX’s combined.  Now VB is considered a lightweight programming language compared to the current tools and EZGUI/PB can produce apps half the size or even smaller than VB 6.0. So I don’t think I am offbase with my comments about software development. EZGUI 5.0 will be adding even more ways to customize controls (will come with a number of new prebuilt custom controls), a new component engine and even 3D Graphics with the new GLCanvas control (OpenGL based) (the 5.0 runtime will probably be less than 700 KB, while the OpenGL control will add another 150 to 200 KB in size in another DLL).

If Tablet makers could create the “perfect” low cost Tablet today, running a lightweight version of Windows 7 on an Atom 1 ghz CPU, with at least 1 gig ram and just a couple gig drive of some kind, I would be happy. I’ll write the software for that and it will run like “butter”. I won’t be using any dot.net runtimes though. Don’t need an programming languages with the word Sharp (#) in them either.

Anybody out there listening ?

Now that would be a real choice compared to the Apple IPad.

Well, I can dream can’t I ?