The first thing I need to say here is that personal choice comes into this in a sizable way.  I for instance like using large computer screens, 23 inch and above, on which I can see complete web pages and other programs and documents simultaneously.  I extensively use Windows 7′s Aero Snap feature which allows me to pin programs and documents to the left and right of my screen so that I can compare them.  That’s when I’m working however.  A tablet for me is something that I will commonly use lounging on the sofa or sitting on the train.  It’s purely an entertainment device and, currently, will only be used for checking my email, a little light web browsing and gaming.

Weight and portability will also factor in largely depending on your own personal view.  Some people won’t mind having a slightly larger and heavier tablet with them as they commonly carry a bag that suits it.  For other people who might carry a smaller bag, or dislike such things, then portability and even pocket-ability is a major factor.

In the image below you can see three different tablets.  The 11.6 inch EXOPC Slate running the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, the 9.7 inch HP Touchpad running WebOS and the 7 inch Blackberry Playbook running QNX.  This will not be a review of usability of the individual devices and their operating systems, just of their size, weight and form-factor.  So which do I prefer and why?

Clearly if you are using a tablet for light duties anything above a 10 inch screen is going to make for a weighty machine that you simply won’t be able to hold comfortably in one hand.  The EXOPC weighs in at around one and half kilos and the ASUS EP121 was just as heavy, if not slightly more so.  I would say that these tablets aren’t for using casually or for travel.  They are for people who take their computing seriously and want a tablet they can actually do some work with.  I’ve seen people using iPads with docks and bluetooth keyboards on trains and it can safely be said this is by far the best way to use a tablet over the size of 10 inches.  In a way this actually negates the point of it being a tablet as it’s easy to argue that adding a keyboard to a tablet turns it into a laptop, or at least means that it suddenly isn’t a tablet any more.

So what of the 10 inch tablets.  Now this category includes many Android machines and also, most famously Apple’s iPad and iPad 2.  It is in this arena that Apple are on to a winner as weight does become an issue.  You might remember Steve Job’s address when he first unveiled the iPad.  Many people criticised him for resting it on his knee while he was working on it.  While this might have been necessary it still remains that the iPad and iPad 2 are two of the lightest tablets available in their class.  The HP Touchpad, seen above, is almost a third heavier than the iPad 2 and it shows.  In use I almost always have to rest it on something when using it, but as I’m usually relaxing on the sofa it doesn’t really bother me.

On the plus side, that 10 inch screen does allow me to see an entire web page or a whole document at one time.  There’s no swiping and scrolling around all the time so that I can read everything.  This is a huge plus for people who just want to be able to relax with their devices.  This form factor is really very portable too, though you’ll quickly notice the bulk when carrying it in your luggage for a trip away and for using it on a train.

One of the reasons that 10 inch tablets are more bulky is that this is the size of tablet that still uses the traditional 4:3 screen aspect ratio.  It’s very true that this allows you to see much more at one time, but if you’re after an entertainment device to, for example, watch movies then you will be using electricity to power parts of the screen that won’t be doing anything.  If you’re in an airline seat too this aspect ratio can get in the way and make what is in effect a small device suddenly feel bulky.

So it must be the 7 inch tablet then that wins?  Well, let’s not be too hasty as while these machines are certainly small and light, some will even fit in an ‘oversized’ jacket pocket, that small screen isn’t very suitable for today’s modern web browsing.  You will find yourself scrolling around a lot to read the information you want, though in portrait mode they can make excellent eBook readers, being the only tablets you can comfortably hold with one hand.

One major advantage of the 7 inch tablets is also one of their largest failings.  I feel with the Playbook that if I go out, perhaps to walk the dog, I want to take it with me and carry on web browsing while walking round the common or sitting on the bus.  Alas far too few tablets these days come equipped with SIM card slots and this is where these ‘mobile’ devices begin to fail.  If you’re after a tablet, whatever size you want, I would strongly advise getting one that’s 3G or even 4G enabled.  Mobile data costs are plummeting and a device such as this, unless you watch video on it, will use much less data in general usage than you might expect it to.

I firmly believe that all mobile computing devices these days should support mobile broadband, it’s a no-brainer given how we now work and play.  It is a shame though that too many manufacturers don’t include this, or charge significant premiums for it, when it’s such a cheap and accessible technology.  My EXOPC for example didn’t come with it, but the company fitted it for me for just £40 (around $55).

It’s this lack of portability on some 7 inch tablets that makes me ask why I should use that if I’m going to be tied to my home, why shouldn’t I use a 10 inch tablet instead?  For this reason I believe the 10 inch tablets are the overall winner, and clearly Apple believe this too as they currently make no other sizes.  If you can get a 7 inch tablet with a SIM card slot then I would advise to think seriously about it, but if a SIM card slot isn’t available, or is out of your budget, then 10 inch is definitely where the best value for money lies.

As the next twelve to twenty four months goes on there will come more and they will be even more commonplace in portable computing devices than they are now.  Windows 8 supports more types of sensor than ever before too with technologies such as Kinect, NFC and more being integrated directly into the platform.  But what is this going to do for the prices of the computers that we buy and is it even affordable to do so?

The latest rumour is that ASUS is testing Kinect sensors built into the bezel of laptops.  This type of integration won’t come as a surprise to many people and it’s only to be expected.  This type of technology isn’t cheap however and integrating it into a laptop will come at a cost penalty.  This is also at a time when PC makers are telling us that the profit margins on PCs and laptops are now so tight that they’re beginning to focus on the high-end computing devices such as ultrabooks in order to get us to part with more cash.

My own laptop contains a four-point capacitive touch screen, 3G SIM card slot, drop-sensing accelerometer, fingerprint reader, TPM chip and GPS.  It’s a high-end model yes, but when you think about where consumers are now with technology it’s likely that people will want to get these types of devices, along with Kinect, already integrated with their new computers, monitors and laptops, and that PC makers will capitalise on this fact to hike prices and push people towards buying even more expensive computers that improve their profit margins and balance sheets.

To be honest I firmly believe that some of these sensors are pretty much essential for work in the modern age.  3G/4G is one such example with mobile broadband now so ubiquitous.  GPS is also something that’s extremely useful in a mobile device and security systems such as biometric fingerprint readers and Trusted Platform Module chips are now essential for any business laptop.

Then we have to face the fact that by the time Windows 8 launches or at least early in 2013, over 80% of new laptops will ship with a multi-touch screen.  Next year’s consumer electronics show will be full of such devices and laptops packed with sensors and NFC readers of all description.  Each will have a use, every last one will be justifiable, and all will be more expensive than they are today.

So what is your attitude to sensors and extra tech on PCs?  Do you already have a laptop that includes some of these devices and do you use them?  I might not use my laptop’s GPS a lot but the 3G module is used several times a week.  Are you happy that the prices of laptops seems to be steadily rising, at the same time as many are predicting the death of the traditional desktop PC with a tower that’s easy to upgrade and cheap to build.  Why not let us know in the comments below.

Now after much speculation the prices of RIM’s Playbook 7 inch tablet are also beginning to crash with the 16Gb, 32Gb and 64Gb versions all for sale on the RIM website in the US for an equal $299.  It’s not clear why all models have been pitched at the same price but this presents a $400 discount on the most expensive model and is almost 50% off the cheapest.

I have spoken to several people who were either given or bought themselves a Playbook for Christmas simply because of the price, and all of them told me the same story as was heard when the TouchPad fire sale was on.  This being that the tablet is an excellent device for both home and work but that the price was simply too high before.

This is where Android tablets have a slight advantage, with the core operating system being free, but it’s a common trend because a tablet is seen much more as a consumer electronics device than a computer and, thus, people simply don’t want to spend PC money on something that will only be for light usage.  This makes complete sense when compared to the pricing of other “dedicated” devices such as the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii.

So what does this mean for the tablet market going forward, and what might it mean for Windows 8 where Microsoft will levy a charge for the core OS on each tablet sold.  Clearly consumers are speaking loudly with their wallets and saying that, overall, tablets are far too expensive.  There’s still a good market for tablets but at $400 each they’re too expensive for most.  While many people are anticipating Windows 8 tablets it’s very likely that overall sales will be sluggish, pushed downwards by tight profit margins and the high cost of hardware.  Apple too could see sales figures drop and the iPad become a high-end product, unless they choose to release a 7 inch version sometime soon that is.

It’s also a pity that two really great tablet operating systems now look set to be lost forever as the TouchPad and Playbook disappear.  Both operating systems, and some of the associated hardware such as the Playbook’s touch-sensitive bezel, were highly innovative.  Having lived through the all-exciting home-computing revolution of the 1980′s I can say that it was inevitable that the number of tablet operating systems on the market would dwindle, but competition breeds innovation and, as such, it’s always sad to see something go.

If you’re in the market for a tablet then it might be a good time to buy a Playbook.  In the UK the 16Gb and 32Gb versions can currently be bought from the Carphone Warehouse for just £169 and £199 respectively and it’s entirely possible that these prices might fall further and extend to other suppliers.  Keep an eye on these prices because if the TouchPad fire sale taught us anything, it’s that the final few days could come and go very quickly indeed, and once they’re gone… they’re gone.

A few website will offer a mobile version for smartphones, but when it comes to tablets you’re out of luck.  Out of luck that is unless the company has invested in an app for your specific device.  If they have you will have a far better experience navigating their site.  The differences between websites and apps can be huge, with the usability offered by device-specific apps far ahead of anything the company’s website can offer.

It’s interesting to note too that in the last couple of years the big players on the Internet have made absolutely no attempt to make their websites touch-friendly.  This is despite tablet computing taking off a big way and even the near-imminent arrival of the super-touch-friendly Windows 8 operating system.  Personally I find this disappointing and that it demonstrates a lack of understanding and vision on the part of these companies.

How many more people could they reach for instance if they made their websites more touch-friendly?  Certainly the disabled and the elderly are an enormous and mostly untapped market for Internet businesses.

So this got me thinking, which do you prefer?  From websites and their corresponding apps such as Facebook and Twitter, to Amazon, eBay and more we’re very interested to hear if you’ve begun to abandon company websites in favour of their much more user-friendly apps.  Alternatively are there companies that have provided apps for other platforms that are yet to accommodate your own platform?

Let us know in the comments as it’s clear this is not only an issue that is frustrating many web users, not just myself, but that is it a problem that is only going to get worse unless and until these companies embrace touch on their website themselves.

However, it does raise additional questions, the most important being do we now need websites at all?  If we are all going to be used to downloading and using apps on our smartphones, tablets and desktop computers through Apple’s app store for OS X and the forthcoming Windows 8 store, why do we still need the websites?  Surely a visit to amazon.com should just present you with a links to their various apps on their various platforms?

Tell us what you think in the comments.

According to a report by NeoWin an unnamed HP employee has been quoted as saying “There’s a 95 (percent) chance we all get laid off between now and November, and I for one am thinking it’s for the best.”

In the last couple of months several companies have expressed an interest in buying WebOS, and as a TouchPad owner I can say it’s a remarkably capable and usable tablet OS.  So far nothing has come of it and HP haven’t given any indications that they would wish to sell it.

But could the company just kill it without selling it?  While unlikely this is a possibility and it begs the question where does this leave existing TouchPad owners?

Some people will install Android on it, and I suppose this is always the nuclear option for some.  Many people however will have no idea how to perform such an operation and will be left with a device that will no longer be supported.  In it’s simplest form this just means that the operating system won’t be refined and developed over time.  At it’s worst it means that any bugs and flaws in the system that could be exploited by others won’t be fixed.

Even if WebOS is sold it will be a very significant amount of time before the new owners can begin rolling out updates.  In short this is very bad news for TouchPad owners generally if the rumour turns out to be true.

To add weight to this, HP announced this week that they will be producing Windows 8 tablets for 2012, and we can assume they are already testing prototype hardware now.  It’s even been rumoured the TouchPad hardware might live on with Windows 8 on board, though this is unlikely.

Of equal concern is what will happen to owners of the HP smartphones that are also running WebOS.  These people will need security updates and patches more than tablet owners, because of the direct billing capabilities built into phones.  These people will need firm answers from HP, and pretty soon.

HP has previously said it was committed to WebOS, though the company has changed its mind so much in recent months that nobody would really believe them now whatever they said.  Only a couple of months ago they were talking about offloading their entire PC division, but now they’ve decided that they would really rather hang on to it.  This is company with serious decision-making issues!

For now we’ve just had another update to WebOS rolled out.  I love my TouchPad and wouldn’t want it to be the last.  WebOS is extremely capable and has huge amounts of potential.  In my view it is quite simply the finest tablet operating system available currently.

It’s such a shame then that it’s been so poorly managed.  Do you have a WebOS phone or tablet?  What do you think about this rumour?

Now however we have more types of computing devices than it’s possible to shake a stick at, and one thing is becoming clear, the good old desktop PC is becoming sidelined.  I wanted to ask you all, which is quite ironic given Martin’s post of earlier today, what your opinion is of these devices and what you think of them generally.

The main computing devices we now have include desktops, all-in-ones, desktop replacement laptops, everyday laptops, ultraportables, convertible tablets and traditional tablets.  In fact it’s possible within all these types not just to get what is probably the perfect form-factor for you, but also something that fits perfectly with the aesthetics of where it will go.

To kick off the discussion I’ll start with my own thoughts on my home and home office.  I have a desk in my living room with a desktop PC on it, as many of you will have too.  It is my aim to replace this with an all-in-one PC before too long.  The barrier here for me is that my desktop has a graphics card with the grunt to properly run modern games like Battlefield 3 and all-in-ones often compromise on gaming ability.  I also have a laptop, a desktop replacement Dell which I use for work in my home office upstairs.  This is a big, heavy machine and hardly portable.  It does offer me the storage and power to be a true desktop replacement however in every sense of the word, rather than some of the weedier desktop replacement machines that really don’t offer a viable alternative for you.

I also own two tablets, a Windows 7 ExoPC and an HP TouchPad.  The ExoPC is now used only for work and presentations and the TouchPad is for lounging about on the sofa occasionally when I’m tired.

I have had a couple of Samsung ultraportables on test though, and I’m very happy with the form factor.  These new breed of ultraportables, pioneered by the Macbook Air, are sexy enough to suit the modern living room while small and light enough not to get in the way.  This is important for a laptop as I doubt many people really want a big grey block in front of them when they’re watching the evening news.

If I had to pick one though it still comes back to the traditional desktop for me as this is the only form factor that really offers me the flexibility I need in terms of hardware and storage.  Much as I want to banish the desktop from my living room forever, I just don’t feel that all-in-ones are there yet in terms of true power and flexibility.

So what’s your preference?  Are you a desktop person or a laptop guy?  Do you prefer all-in-ones and why?  Do you have an ultraportable, or do you want one to replace what you have?  Have you indeed banished your computer upstairs forever and it’s tablet all the way in your main living space?

In short, what is your perfect computing device and why is that?

Each week will see different prizes with a grand prize in the final week. The prize breakdown and dates for the competition are as follows.

Week 1

Monday 17th October to Sunday 23rd October 2011 – Prizes 1 copy of “Windows 7 Plain & Simple” and 1 signed copy of “Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out” as a bundle for one winner.

Week 2

Monday 24th October to Sunday 30th October 2011 – Prizes 1 copy of “Windows 7 Step by Step” and 1 signed copy of “Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out” as a bundle for one winner.

Week 3

Monday 31st October to Sunday 6th November 2011 – Prizes 1 copy of “HTML5 Step by Step” and 1 signed copy of “Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out” as a bundle for one winner.

Week 4

Monday 7th November to Sunday 13th November 2011 – Prizes 1 signed copy of “The Windows 7 Power Users Guide” and 1 signed copy of “Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out” as a bundle for one winner.

Week 5

Monday 14th November to Sunday 20th November 2011 – Prizes 1 copy of “The Windows 7 Resource Kit“, 1 copy of “Windows 7 Inside Out Deluxe Edition” and 1 signed copy of “Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out” as a bundle for one winner.

Week 6

Monday 21st November to Sunday 27th November 2011 – Prizes 1 Acer Iconia Tab W500 Windows 7 Tablet with a 10.1 inch multi-touch screen, 2GB memory, 32Gb SSD, 2 in 1 card reader, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 3, 1.3MP built-in webcam, Windows 7 Home Premiun 32-bit and Office 2010 Starter Edition preloaded. 1 copy of “Windows 7 Inside Out Deluxe Edition” and 1 signed copy of “Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out” as a bundle for one winner.

Entry Rules

• People following Mike Halsey MVP on Facebook may enter this competiton a maximum amount of once per week, duplicate entries will not be counted.
• Competiton questions will be posted once on the wall of Mike Halsey MVP each Monday throughout weeks 1 to 5.
• Entries can be accepted from people worldwide.
• All entries MUST contain the full name, postal address and contact telephone number (required by some couriers) of the participant. Entries submitted without this information will not be counted. This information will be deleted at the end of the competition and will not be shared with third-parties.
• All participants must be 16 years or older to comply with competition rules in some countries.
• All participants must be able to receive packages via standard postal mail or by courier.
• People may only win one of the weekly prizes (weeks 1 to 5) and the grand prize maximum. People cannot win two weekly prizes.
• People who have won a weekly prize may still enter following weeks to increase their chances of winning the grand prize, though their entry will not be counted in the week they enter.
• Each week’s competition will be slightly different to reflect the prizes on offer and may include open and multiple-choice questions and tip suggestions
• Each person must submit a tie-break tip each week on the subject provided, this subject will change each week.
• Entries must be emailed to mike@MVPs.org with the subject Competition during the weeky period of the competition, as stated above. NOTE: If this email address repeatedly fails (which it does sometimes) try mike_dot_halsey_at_live_dot_co_dot_uk
• Lost, late or undelivered entries cannot be counted.
• The winner of the grand prize will be selected from the best tie-break tip over the full course of the competition. There will be no separate way to enter during week 6.
• Winners will be notified by email within 6 days of the end of each week’s competition and will be required to accept their win within a calendar week. Any person who is non-contactable by email, or who does not accept their prize within the time permitted will forfeit their prize, which will be reallocated to a new winner.
• Prizes will be sent by a variety of methods including regular mail. No replacement prizes can be sent for any items lost or damaged in transit and no cash alternative will be available.
• Delivery of prizes can take 6 to 8 weeks depending on the location of the winner and the delivery method used.
• The winner will be chosen by Mike Halsey and judged on the quality of the answers given and their tie-break suggestion. Mike Halsey’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
• Entry to this competition constitutes acceptance of these terms and conditions.

The tablet, which has been rumoured for some time, would run on Google’s Android operating system which would be specially modified to get the best from Amazon’s Kindle eBook app, and to give the best full-colour eBook reader experience possible.

What we do know about this tablet is that it runs on a single-core processor with 6Gb or storage, a 7 inch screen, speakers, a micro USB post and, oddly, no cameras.  The new Kindle interface is rumoured to be reminiscent of Apple’s CoverFlow and the unit is expected to retail for around $250.

This will price it aggressively compared to other 7 inch tablets and with Amazon’s reputation for quality hardware already confirmed with the current generation of Kindle readers, should be widely sought after and very popular.

Personally I find Amazon’s choice of Android disappointing given the ongoing, and unanswered by Google, security concerns about the platform.  For being open-source however and light-weight it would remain the obvious choice given that neither Apple nor RIM are currently prepared to licence their tablet operating systems to third parties, that HP’s WebOS is currently hanging under a very large gallows axe and that Microsoft’s offering is not only far from finished, but probably wouldn’t be suitable for such a device anyway.

Currently the only direct competition to an Amazon tablet would be the Barnes & Noble Nook Color, which is scarcely available outside of the US.

It’s also possible that Amazon will use the event to announce a refresh to its current Kindle eReader range with possible additions including a touch-screen.

Whatever the outcome, as I mentioned previously, any Amazon tablet would almost instantly become a best-seller and would probably become the most-popular Amazon tablet around, besting the Samsung Galaxy Tab devices.  We’ll keep you informed of what Amazon announce.

So far as WebOS goes, this was a stellar mobile operating system that HP acquired when they bought Palm last year.  HP said they had big plans for WebOS, announcing new phones running the OS, a couple of tablets running it and even plans to port it to touch-screen PCs in a dual-boot system with Windows.  They’d updated the operating system and it was the most anticipated tablet operating system since iOS.  All in all things were looking very good for the new upstart.

Then HP decided they needed to rid themselves of the devices and so fire sales began.  The company reduced the cost of the 16Gb TouchPad down to $99 (£89) and the 32Gb version to $149 (£115).  This was amazing considering that the TouchPad reportedly cost $328 to manufacture, $10 more than the iPad 2.

So on the face of it, anybody who actually bought a TouchPad in the fire sales was getting a complete bargain, right?  Well thousands tried, watching Twitter and the #touchpad hashtag for any word on when the next sale would begin.  I spotted that Dixons group, one of the largest electrical suppliers in the UK, was having a sale here on Monday from 6pm so I got online and registered in advance with their website.  As to be expected the website crashed and many people failed to get anything.

It was a similar story at other retailers, Staples in the UK sold about a thousand more TouchPads than they actually had, and the next day had to phone round customers to cancel the orders.  Amazon meanwhile was criticised for delivering cases that people had bought with their TouchPad, while cancelling their order for the TouchPad itself.

I was one of the lucky ones, picking up a 32Gb touchpad on Tuesday morning.  But questions are now being asked if it’s going to be worth it.

This is because while HP have announced they will continue to support WebOS, after what I can only call a fiasco, it’s entirely possible that all the software developers for the platform will have been frightened away.  Indeed Microsoft has been offering free development tools and Windows Phones to all WebOS app developers who want to move to their platform instead.

For WebOS to succeed in the future, hardware partners will need to be attracted to produce hardware running the OS.  The lack of available apps and a dwindling number of developers, coupled with HP’s scare last week over the future of the platform and the uncertainty this brings, will make it extremely difficult, perhaps even impossible, for the company to attract new hardware partners.  It’s entirely possible that this highly-acclaimed operating system could die here with this tablet.

In a way this makes me feel like it’s the height of the home computing revolution in the 1980′s, something I whitter on about now and again, in that here we’ve seen a potentially fantastic device and proprietary operating system muscled out by market forces.  Back then we lost so much innovation in computers from Sinclair, Commodore and the like that it’s hard to put a price on what the actual cost of losing it all might have been.

My own WebOS TouchPad has literally just arrived this morning, and as I write this it’s still in the box, as you can see in the image above.  In the next few days I’ll publish a full review of the device here and try to answer the all important question “have people who’ve bought a fire sale TouchPad wasted their money?”

Now I’m a teacher by my first trade, and a tech author second.  I’ve been spending the last few years teaching Literacy and Numeracy to the long-term unemployed who need better skills and qualifications in order to be able to get back into the workplace, or to those people who are already employed and need qualifications to progress their careers.  I’m very interested then in the use of technology as an educational aid and, if you’re interested, you can read an essay I wrote on the subject for my teaching qualification here where I talked about some of the issues and barriers for the use of technology in the classroom, including the legal, physical and mental barriers that some people need to overcome.

It’s always with great interest then that I read news stories about how the latest technology is being used in classrooms.  In the last year I’ve seen schools, mostly in the US, giving iPads to each student and writing custom apps for the platform to help improve learning in class; one particularly interesting app was using the tablet’s accelerometer with a special app that helped the students simulate earthquakes.  I’ve also seen the use of videoconferencing to enable schools to share teachers with specific expertise and to bring in experts from the worlds of business, science and society.

Why is it then, six years after the launch of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project that intended to create laptops for developing countries for only $99 that we don’t have schools rolling out laptops, netbooks or tablets to their students every year?  From the perspective of the technology companies this is an enormous market and opportunity; indeed Bloomberg are reporting today that Apple are bidding to sell 15 million iPads to schools in Turkey.

The single biggest barrier however is still price.  In order to make mobile devices that will appeal to the consumer and trample upon the competition, companies are still going for quality, brushed metals, high quality plastics and IPS panel screens.  What they’re not focusing on is the schools and colleges mass market where what’s required is ruggedness and affordability; after all these machines will be designed to only be used in educational establishments for their purposes.

Next week does see the launch of a new affordable Android tablet, the affectionately named (for anyone of a certain age in the UK anyway) AndyPad.  Starting at just £129 this is finally approaching the price levels that technology needs to be at to appeal to the huge volumes and limited budgets of schools worldwide, and of course some of the money can be saved elsewhere in providing cheaper eBooks instead of the traditional paper copies (while being more environmentally friendly into the bargain).

The fact remains though that back in 2005 when Nicholas Negroponte announced his plans to create a $99 educational laptop for the developing world the whole world got very excited.  Then companies like Microsoft decided that they wanted a piece of the action, muscled in and muddied the whole situation.  Now we don’t have any $99 laptops and there’s no immediate prospect that this will change.

It’s worth noting that some smaller companies have tried to release $99 tablets, certainly here in the UK, and all have so far been rubbish.  What must be needed then is the technological know-how and the manufacturing clout of a big name player.  Could Apple make a $99 iPad?  The company certainly makes enough money to subsidise such a device and it would sell in enormous volumes.  How economical that would be to a company with shareholders to pay though is up to Apple’s board to decide.

So I find it a pity that in what might turn out to be the ‘golden age’ of mobile computing that children are still being left out, especially the millions of them on low household incomes who still don’t have a computer at home.  It’s time I think for the technology companies to step up to this challenge and prove that $99 can still be achieved for the benefit of everyone.

The project, which was announced on a Mozilla forum, aims to provide a direct competitor to Android on these devices now that Nokia and Intel’s tablet OS, Meego is being discontinued.

In some ways the platform will be a hybrid of two Google operating systems, Android and Chrome OS, in that Mozilla want to harness their Gecko rendering engine from their Firefox browser and Thunderbird email package, to run applications that are web-centered but that run independently of the need of a browser.

This isn’t a new concept, Adobe’s AIR platform has been doing this for some considerable time now, but Mozilla’s offering will aim to bring HTML and other web apps out of the browser.  While we can be certain they are not the only technology company headed this way, they’re certainly the first to announce it.

The project is currently in its “infancy”, but the core building blocks of the OS already exist.  Mozilla began publicising the existence of their new OS to try and get experts from within their user communities to help and contribute.  This will make it the first properly open-source mobile OS.

While Google’s Android is powering ahead in popularity it has been plagued by security and malware issues.  Mozilla’s Firefox browser has a tremendous reputation when it comes to security, and as such the goodwill carried with the Mozilla name will inevitably give any new product form the company a huge boost both from hardware vendors and the public at large.

The ultimate goal of the project is “breaking the stranglehold of proprietary technologies over the mobile device world” and making an open source operating system “the way we think open source should be done.”

The tablet operating system market is already very crowded with products already available from Apple, Google, HP and RIM dominating the space and Microsoft releasing their Windows 8 OS next year.  Some people may say therefore that another OS may confuse matters and consumers even more or even dilute the market to the point where any new OS release becomes pointless.

Anybody who lived through the home computing revolution of the 1980′s will be familiar with how successful multiple consumer operating systems can be when made available side by side.  Back then, companies such as Sinclair, Acorn, Commodore and Texas Instruments were among literally dozens of companies all releasing products with their own proprietary operating systems.

The difference between then and what we have now is the the communications technologies that bind devices together have become standardised.  Therefore anything that you could ever want to do on one tablet is possible on all the others.

This means that the operating system itself is becoming less of an issue as it essentially disappears, to an extent anyway, into the background and the focus is placed on the content that users want to access and the web pages they visit.  This was what Microsoft said they want to achieve with Windows Phone, and many people will argue they were successful in bringing the content to the front and centre of the user experience.

How successful Mozilla are in this space though depends on a variety of factors.  These include the amount of time it will take to develop the OS and what their competitors do in the mean time.  Mozilla have a very fast development process, with a new version of Firefox out every three months.  This is aided by a strong user community of programmers and developers.  What they don’t have though is money and we can see from operating systems such as Google’s Chrome OS that development of a mobile OS can be a complicated and time-consuming process.

We’ll bring you all the latest updates on Mozilla’s entry into the tablet space here at gHacks.

Scientists and researchers have been saying for several years now that we’re getting too much email.  They began saying this when the Blackberry was gaining popularity and more and more people suddenly began using email on the move.  The complaint then was that we were all expected to be able to answer work email outside of work hours.  This wasn’t giving people adequate time to switch off from their daily lives and relax in their own private time.

The Blackberry soon became known as the ‘Crackberry’ as people became addicted to the email facility on the handsets.  Now though the situation has spread like an epidemic, not only to smartphones, but also to other connected devices such as tablets and netbooks.  Questions will need to be asked again though if we’re not spending too much time addicted to email (and other forms of messaging) and if it isn’t having a negative effect on our lives, and on society, that could begin to cause real social problems if left unchecked.

I was down the pub the other evening with a friend.  We sat down with our drinks and he spent a few minutes checking Facebook on his smartphone, and sending a few messages.  With nobody to talk to for a while I dived into my email.  Here we were, probably looking like two incredibly unfortunate individuals, not talking to each other or anyone else but instead locked to our phones, heads down and concentrating.  This only lasted for a few minutes fortunately and then we put them away.

It’s not an unusual experience though by any stretch of the imagination.  Wherever you go in modern daily life you’ll see exactly the same thing.  Everywhere there will be people checking their smartphones, as if the world has moved on considerably in the five minutes since they last checked it.

I will admit to being an email twitcher on my phone.  I’ll go and visit a friend but the phone will be out and all too all too often I’ll flick it on and do a quick email check.  This is despite the facts that the phone is set to automatically check for email every fifteen minutes and I don’t get that many exciting or interesting work or social emails every day anyway.  It’s a problem, and I know it.  I find myself feeling embarrassed that I clearly have a stronger connection to my email than I do to the person I’m visiting.

But what are the emails we’re all receiving and are they really that important anyway?  If I examine my own emails, I’ll wake up every day to a few Google alerts (for my work here) and emails from Groupon and perhaps some shopping websites telling me about offers.  I’ve long since switched off from the barrage of social networking emails inviting me to play this, or join that on Facebook and telling me that @person mentioned me on Twitter.

I’m lucky then, as a great many people will still be receiving five or six emails a day from Facebook.  Every one of them reminding them that they haven’t logged into their Facebook account and interacted with their friends in, oh, must have been at least half an hour.  That’s all the shopping emails are like too.  I’m hardly likely to forget that Debenhams exist on the high street and only really want to know when they’ve got a sale going on that’s relevant to me.  Alas this means I have to sign up for a barrage of emails that aren’t relevant to me in the slightest.

In recent days I’ve finally had enough and have been undergoing a cull, hitting unsubscribe on many of these emails.  I know though that it’s only a matter of time before more companies tempt me to sign up for email alerts, or that I wake up one morning and don’t feel there are enough emails there (an odd feeling that one) so I’ll go and sign up for another.

It should come as no surprise to you then that all of these companies hire psychologists to advise them on things exactly like this.  Email is becoming a major social problem, especially since they started playing with our heads to get our attention and to get us hooked.

It would be interesting to hear how many emails you receive every day, let us know in the comments.  Of that total try to answer these if you can.  How many are from companies marketing themselves, how many are from social networks, how many are from work (and outside of work hours) and, crucially, how many of them are actually relevant or important?

The concept was a clever one, at the time anyway.  It featured an 11.6 inch tablet and a laptop dock with lid that the tablet simply slotted inside.  The laptop ran Windows 7 (which was still in beta at the time) but when you pulled the tablet out of the casing, which you could do with the machine still switched on, it would change to a custom implementation of Linux, the first Android tablets didn’t appear until the end of that year.

We can expect that the hardware specification will have changed significantly since the initial unveiling more than 18 months ago.  Then the laptop component was running an Atom with the tablet using an ARM processor.  With Windows 8 around the corner it is likely that the U1 now would use a single ARM processor in the tablet itself to power both devices.  It may also now not be a dual-OS machine any more having made the switch exclusively to either Windows 8 or Google Android.

The U1 is an important device as this was the tablet that generated the most excitement of all the devices at CES in 2010.  Back then, with two hardware specifications needed and twin operating systems required, it would have made for a very expensive machine.  Now though the world has moved on quickly and the U1 has finally become a viable proposition.

It’s also interesting to note that Lenovo are one of the few major technology companies to have released tablets so far.  This is despite rumours that the company was working on a huge 23 inch monster.  This could be for a whole variety of reasons, but these include the desire to get the U1 design, hardware and software right.  Ultimately though, we may never know the real reasons for the delay.

Since the U1 was unveiled, many other convertible tablets have appeared with varying amounts of success.  Acer’s W500 is an interesting concept that I reviewed myself on our sister site Windows 7 News and didn’t much like.  The ASUS Eee Pad Transformer is a very different machine though.  This Android tablet with a keyboard dock that hides extra hardware such as a second battery, is widely considered to be the first convertible tablet to market to get the concept right.

There can be no doubting though that the U1 is a lovely sight to behold.  It would need nothing changing externally from the 2010 prototype, and it would surely be a popular tablet regardless of what operating system, or operating systems reside on it when it is finally released.

There’s no word yet on when the U1 will be released commercially, or even if for that matter.  At the moment all we have to go on are reports of the machine passing Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval.  Lenovo have kept us waiting for so long however that people may be quite willing to wait some time longer for this lovely tablet.  On the flipside however the company also needs to step up a gear and release a product soon, if it’s not to be left behind completely in this ever-expanding and highly-competitive market.

Reports about Sony’s upcoming tablet(s) are quite literally all over the place. Some techies are reporting that as many as six different variants of the Sony S1 tablet have been passed through FCC channels in the final steps before launch, suggesting that, on the day they are finally released, buyers will have a host of configuration choices for the device. It has also been released that along with the FCC check came certification of the device to run on AT&Ts mobile network, although both parties are being extremely tight-lipped about anything like that.

Of course, the story does not stop with the S1. Paired to launch at the same time is Sony’s sister tabled the S2, which features a fairly radical design that is unlike any tablet on the market thus far. The S2 will feature a two 5.5 inch screen format, with both appearing on the same face of the tablet with a small break between them. This break is hinged, allowing the device to be closed against the screens for safe transport. The size of the tablet makes it small enough to slip in a coat pocket when closed, making it almost more like some mobile phones than tablets currently on the market. This design is in stark contrast to the S1, which features a traditional single, 9.4 inch screen with a body that bends back straight against the device in the back, propping it up slightly. Both devices will run on the Google Android system, and Amazon may be setting aside special room in their tablet store for them both.

These new reports on the upcoming launch of the Sony tablets come at the same time Verizon fumbles its way into leaking news about its own new tablet, which may in fact be the Motorola Xoom 4G. The leak was made through a new video advertisement for the company’s expanding 4G services, and while it was taken down shortly after the mistake was notice, it has reappeared on YouTube here. Verizon is not saying anything about the tablet in spite of the leak, but the Xoom 4G is rumored to be in the final testing phases to work out minor tweaks. Still, the company will offer no schedule for release, and it is unclear what role the original Xoom might play after it walks into the market.

While the full field of tablets that will eventually flood into the market this fall is yet to be known, the Sony tablets are certainly poised to be strong contenders. Time will tell exactly what role the mysterious Xoom 4G will play in the mix, but Verizon’s lasting support for Motorola will surely help the tablet out. Those planning to buy a new device ought best to wait a few months – the rank are about to fill out.

Now people are beginning a wholesale move across to mobile devices, smartphones and tablets. Yet for some reason I’m still completely unable to phathom these devices still don’t seem to come with native printer support.

To make matters even more confusing, many modern printers have supported wireless connectivity now for several years, more than long enough to allow the mobile and tablet operating system manufacturers to pull their collective fingers out.

This constantly boggles and amazes me as there are all manner of things we want to do with our phones and tablets, from booking journeys to online shopping and email, where printing support would come in extremely handy. Yet, still nothing but stony silence from the major operating system manufacturers.

It doesn’t even strike me as technically difficult either. If you are connecting to a remote printer you will be doing so via wi-fi. The printer manufacturers would probably fall over backwards to add smartphone and tablet support to their driver-ranges, and it still doesn’t happen.

It’s not as if modern devices don’t have the storage and the processing power for these drivers. Many smartphones regularly come with at least 8Gb or 16Gb of storage and they’re now apperaring with dual-core processors.

So the great mystery continues. Why, unless we spend money on expensive third-party addons which may not even exist for your platform, are we being denied the one thing that was a cornerstone of the modern computing revolution? How is it that Microsoft, RIM, Apple and Google don’t see printing as being either important or relevant to our daily lives?

It’s not often I write a rhetorical article such as this. There is, sadly, no answer to this question at all and no hope that we’ll get some any time soon. It’s not a subject that any of the major operating system companies ever mention, despite printer manufacturers no doubt chomping at the bit to get into new markets and modern phones such as Nokia’s N8 coming with USB ports.

So we’re left in a strange place where the whole computing market is moving slowly and inexorably towards new forms of mobile computing and, at ever-increasing speed, away from the home office, while at the same time needing to keep the home office around for the next time we want to print a booking confirmation or an email.

Personally I find this situation immensely frustrating;after all, how hard can it be for printer manufacturers to come together to develop a single universal driver that will do the basics of text and photos (which is all we really need) that can then be bundled by default with modern smartphone and tablet operating systems. Such a driver would connect to compatible printers via wi-fi and, before you can say paper jam, there would be your hard copy… well, you know what I mean.

I’m really hoping that this situation resolves itself before too long so please, please show this article to every influential person you can find. I’d imaging you’ll probably have to hand them a device where they can read it on the screen though :/

The features in question are firstly multi-touch control and gesture control, but also the iOS-style application launcher, the addition of full screen apps and their Mission Control centre for finger-friendly multitasking.

With very few exceptions in the last few years laptop manufacturers have left muti-touch out of the equation because either when using it the keyboard gets in the way, putting the screen at an uncomfortable distance, or more commonly the whole laptop topples over backwards when the screen is prodded.  Both of these are very good reasons why multi-touch has been the sole preserve of all-in-one PCs.  Even here though it has failed to take off in any meaningful way.

Now let’s for a moment set aside Apple’s magic wand of being able to take existing technologies and adapt them for the mainstream, I don’t think this is what’s happening this time around.

With Windows 8 the inclusion of proper tablet functionality is there to serve a real purpose.  That operating system will be available on tablet computers, either embedded or installable.  There are good reasons for running Windows on a tablet as well.  Where the iPad or Android tablets exist for ‘consumers’ of information, Windows is most suitable for ‘content creators’.

Thus Windows running on tablets makes a lot of sense for a lot of people.  You would assume then by the same reasoning that Mac OS X on a tablet would also make a lot of sense.  People who use Macs are also content creators, often working in the creative industries where a tablet would be of great benefit to them.

But we’ve got the iPad which isn’t a full desktop operating system and which, despite being based on the core OS X kernel, won’t run Mac desktop apps.

So what about the next generation of Apple hardware?  Certainly the next generation of iMacs will feature multi-touch, that makes sense.  It doesn’t make as much sense though to include the technology in Apple’s secondary Mac monitors or in their laptop ranges.  That is unless something new is being planned.

I say this because it stands to reason that Apple, unless they really are just trying to keep up with the Jones’ wouldn’t include so many headline features that can only be used, or used well, by a proportion of their overall customer base.  Why would they shout about these features in the way they are, making them the most prominent features of the new OS X update on their website.

This leads me to believe that new hardware could be coming from Apple with the next hardware refresh.  This could include either a tablet with a core i5 processor running the full version of OS X with the new iOS-like additions, or more probably, a laptop / tablet convertible much akin to the early Windows convertible tablets (though I would imagine coming from Apple, done properly this time).

It’s curious that this OS release seems to ask more questions than it answers, and I’m very curious what, if anything, Apple have planned for us in new hardware form factors.

Both iOS and Android are polished tablet operating systems, though there is still demand for Windows on tablets.  This might be because people want the power of WIndows, they want to use their existing Windows software or perhaps because they’re getting ready to move to the next version of Windows next year.  I’ve been using the W500 for a week now and I’ve written a full review of the device on our sister site Windows7News.

The thing is though I’ve been doing both of these pretty much since 1986 and the concept really isn’t a new one at all.

Back then I was a huge fan of UK company Psion’s mobile computers, indeed I had a whole range of them. It started with the Organiser II, their second generation mobile device (though the first one that was genuinely useful) and moved on to the Series 3a, Series 3c and finally a Series 5.

Psion is the company that had already brought the world the first integrated office suite of Quill, Abacus, Archive and Easel for the ill-fated Sinclair QL business computer, just beating Apple’s Mac (though barely) and beating the equivalent on PC’s by a good year.

I thought I’d give you a quick tour of these devices (a trip down memory lane for some) and talk about why Psion’s handhelds were important and how they’re still influencing modern laptops and smartphones today.

Despite what some people might have you believe, the Palm Pilot was far from the first mobile computing device. By the time it launched in 1996, Psion had already been mass producing mobile computers for twelve years. The 1984 Organiser and the 1986 Organiser II, which many people still think of as the original model for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in the BBC Television adaptation of the classic Douglas Adams novels, was a fantastic little machine.

It had two removable storage ports you could plug additional memory into, these were later wiped by removing a label over the chip and exposing them to ultra violet light for 30 minutes (I’ll bet you’ve never formatted a disk quite that way before!)

All of the software you would expect for a mobile computer was already there including a diary, contacts app, clock, alarms, calculator and the device was fully programmable. In fact there was quite an extensive user base who wrote custom apps, not just for the Organisers, but also for the Series 3 and Series 5 computers that followed them.

Three years still before the Palm Pilot was launched, Psion had moved to a clamshell design with full qwerty keyboard and larger screen. Their Series 3 handheld was an instant success and they could be seen being used by yuppies everywhere (I wasn’t a yuppie). Their programing language had evolved and was now even more powerful and flexible.  A variant of Basic, it focused on database creation and query and the Series 3 soon became home to a wide range of third-party professional apps from medical and industrial information to education, science and more.

At this point Psion began to diverge into industrial handhelds, and they still operate in this market today. Before they finally abandoned the home handheld market though they launched the Series 5. This computer had an ingenuous folding clamshell design where the keyboard slipped outwards from the case to maximise the available space. This keyboard was completely revolutionary and, although Palm was clearly winning the handheld wars by this point, laptops for years to come would owe some of their design and ingenuity to the Series 5.

The Series 5 also sported a touch screen, the first Psion handheld to do so and, as it featured more power and yet more additions to it’s native programming language, saw just as many practical applications as its predecessor.

The operating system for the Series 5, EPOC, which was written from the ground up for this device, was later renamed Symbian and still exists to this day in Nokia smartphones. Psion entered a strategic alliance in 1998 with Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson to bring the mobile OS to a wider market. The project was inevitably doomed and eventually Nokia bought the OS outright for use on its mobile phones.

As if the company’s innovations weren’t good enough by this point, in 1999 they released a sub-notebook device called, you guessed it, the Netbook.  This pre-dated modern netbooks by almost a decade and while it wasn’t a huge success, was still popular in business sporting several additional models including the company’s first full-colour device and one running Windows CE.

I don’t own any Psion devices any more but I do remember them fondly. With my Organiser II was able to keep a diary and planner, organise all my contacts and carry them with me and more. The Series 3 and Series 5 allowed me more control over my life with mobile spreadsheets and word processing documents. I was able to do financial planning and more on the move. So when you use your smartphone or tablet today, think back to how it all began with one small British innovator.

The device, which is rumoured to be called the Padfone, looks to be the second iteration we’ve seen of the PC in your pocket concept that Motorola recently pioneered with their Atrix mobile phone.

We can expect the device to be based on Android, though which version of the company’s OS is unclear.  Android is currently available in very different versions for phones and tablets, though its open-source nature makes it much easier for companies such as ASUS to modify it to suit their particular needs.

The next question is whether the tablet will be dumb without the phone docked.  This will be fairly likely but will keep the cost of the tablet down considerably as it will just require a screen and a dock, not a computer itself.  This could be a way for people to get a tablet for very little money.  That said the Motorola Atrix with its netbook dock as received unfavourable reviews so far.  The Atrix, in Motorola’s defence though, is a version 1 product and the first iteration of this type of device that we’ve yet seen.

The rise of mobile devices poses a new challenge for webmasters, who now have ensure that users who visit their sites from mobile devices have the best possible experience doing so.

Opera Mobile Emulator is one tool to aid webmasters in this task. The program emulates Opera Mobile running on various devices on a Windows desktop system.

You need to install Opera Mobile Emulator on Windows before it can be used. It opens up with a configuration screen that you can use to select a pre-configured profile or a custom profile for the emulator.

Available devices are Samsung Galaxy S, HTC Wilfdire, Motorola Droid X, LG Optimus One, Nokia N900 and about a dozen or so others. The resolution is automatically selected for those devices and all that is left for you to do is to click launch to start the emulator.

You can alternatively select custom from the profile drop down to configure a custom resolution, pixel density and input method (touch, keypad, tablet).

The emulator itself behaves like Opera Mobile would on the device, with the benefit that you can use the Windows keyboard and mouse to use it.

The idea behind the emulator is to give webmasters a tool at hand to verify that their websites display as good as possible on mobile devices. It can furthermore be used as a tool during web development to make sure that the website displays fine for a specific device or resolution.

Opera Mobile Emulator is an 11 Megabyte download for Windows, Linux and Mac. Webmasters who want to test how their websites display on various mobile devices should give it a try.