Incremental Blogger

Here are some of my photos from the Tablet PC Gathering that was held at this year’s CES.

One great thing about this year’s gathering is that people brought lots of Tablets and UMPCs with them to share and show. Here are three of the ultra-small notebooks Via brought, for example:

Which one would you like?

Feeling lucky? Here are the business cards ready to be drawn for one of the many prizes that were given away, including four Tablets.

More Tablets on display–kind of like a mini-show. In fact, is it time for another Tablet-specific conference? Hmmm.

More giveaways and Gottabemobile shwag.

This year at CES a couple things struck me. One of them is that “touch is in.” There was Microsoft’s Surface with its well-publicized multi-touch:

The Surface units got a lot of attention in the Microsoft booth–too bad the three units they had on display were tucked away in a cave on the side of the mammoth Microsoft booth.

Of course, Surface is lots more than a true, multi-touch device, it is capable of interacting physical devices and tags so that Surface can interact with them in interesting ways. But for this discussion, I’m focusing on the fact that Surface supports touch and from what I was noticing in the crowd reaction that most people were interested in seeing it.

The Surface wasn’t the only large surface touch device at CES however. Sanyo was showing a short throw projector with an integrated touch technology (the booth rep said the technology came from another company, which they didn’t have any information on). Here’s a snapshot of a person demoing this clever vertical touch surface:

Sanyo was demoing a couple touch games that got my imagination going. It’s not a Wii killer, but it shows how powerful interactive projections can be.

Touch wasn’t just big on large displays. There were plenty of iPhone-influenced small touch devices too–some were phones, some were MP3, some were MIDs and some were UMPCs.

One of the more interesting devices along these lines that I saw was a square shaped UMPC-looking device from Toshiba.

Like the iPhone, this as yet unnamed device supports capacitive touch as well as simple, single-finger gestures. I’ll blog more about this device in another post. I just wanted to mention its touch support here.

(Toshiba says the device will be available sometime later this year–depending in large part on when Intel releases the low-power processor it uses. This will probably be sometime around the second half of the year.)

Of course, touch is also become more and more common on the Tablet PC side. HP introduced a new, sleek and stylish Tablet called the TX2000 that supports both an active digitizer and touch.

Smartly the touch capability is disabled when the digitizing pen is near the display–so you don’t get any false actions if you rest your hand on the display when writing or drawing.  I can’t wait to see more Tablet software optimized for touch. There’s lots that can be done here.

There’s no doubt in my mind, touch is here.

The Tablet PC/UMPC Gathering at CES this afternoon was a total blast. In all we think 102 showed up, which was enough to pack the area we were using at the cheeseburger restaurant. Next year we’re going to need a bigger place!

Each year the crowd is a little different and this year was no different. There was a good showing of end-users–some bloggers, some forum members, and even a handful of enthusiastic soon-to-be Tablet owners. I also noticed that this year quite a few people brought their Tablets and UMPCs with them. That was great to see.

It also felt like there was an increased presence of Tablet manufacturers. Representatives from HP, Motion, Fujitsu, TabletKiosk, OQO and others were there–and all of them came with their most recent products. There was no single place at CES that had as many Tablets from so many different manufacturers in one place.

Besides a free meal courtesy of Microsoft, TuxReport Network (TabletPCPost.com, WhatIsNew.com, and UMPCBuzz.com) TabletLawyer.com, JKOnTheRun.com, TabletPC2.com, and MobileDemand, there was also a large number of giveaways–including four Tablets–yes four. Lenovo gave away an X61 Tablet, HP donated one of the just-released TX-2000’s, Fujitsu handed out a U810 UMPC, and Motion gave away one of their Tablets configured any way the winner wanted. And this is only a partial list of everything given away. Let’s put it this way, there were pretty good odds at winning at least something for those that attended the gathering.

I’m editing a video now which I recorded that includes many of the items given away. I’d post if now–as is–however, the video is simply too long. It needs editing.

I wanted to live stream the whole event, however, we had connectivity problems. My EVDO service from Verizon didn’t work and others had similar problems. AT&T didn’t seem to work well either. Last year I think Layne used EVDO from Sprint in the restaurant, but unfortunately no one had Sprint service. Oh, well.

This Tablet gathering was aslo my first chance to meet Scott Eckert, CEO of Motion Computing. It also gave me a chance to talk with Otto Berkes–one of the creators of the UMPC. We compared thoughts on several of the UMPC/MID designs that we saw at CES and the direction he sees these devices heading. I only wish I’d recorded our discussion.

Which reminds me: I have a ton of pictures to post and some videos, which I hope to get up within the next day. Stay tuned.

The CES Tablet PC Gathering is at 3PM at Cheeseburger Las Vegas located in the Planet Hollywood Hotel. Should be a blast.

I’m getting ready this morning for CES….extension cord/mini-power strip, video cam, still camera, webcam, Toshiba M700 Tablet PC, Samsung Q1 UMPC, extended batteries for the M700 and Q1, USB mini-hub, power cords, car power adapter, EVDO PC card and USB stick, biz cards, CES badge…hmmm….have I forgotten anything???

….oh, clothes.

Want to go to CES virtually? Catch the PodTech bus to CES on Mogulus. It’s broadcasting live now (1PM Pacific Time).

I missed CES last year, but this year I’m going to be sure to make it.

It’s just not all the cool new tech stuff that makes it worthwhile.

It’s the people I meet. The things I learn.

I need to get my plans in order.