Mobile Music Computers: Tablets Good, Origami Bad
Did you opt for a laptop over a tablet when you bought your latest mobile PC? You can’t really be blamed. Tablets tend to offer less performance for the money, and hit the middle or worse overall on key audio benchmarks like processor speed, hard disk, and I/O. But you’ve also missed out: unlike a laptop, a tablet can fit comfortably on a music stand. It’s easier to tote from one part of your studio to another. It’s the perfect way of entering music notation or tweaking soft synths, with instant access to the interface.
So, great news: Microsoft, Intel, and hardware vendors have unveiled the Ultra-Mobile PC. What is it? Exactly the same tablet as before, only smaller, much slower, much less flexible, and only slightly cheaper. Uh — yay? Search on Technorati for all the buzz if you want, but I can sum it up:
It’s a smaller, slower tablet that delivers less value with more tradeoffs. And for music, it’s totally disastrous. Meanwhile, there are fantastic tablet computers that do so much more, at about the same price. Ironically, the UMPC comes just as those tablets have finally matured.
Updated: Two potential items could change my (and maybe your) mind on the new mini-tablets. One is, the price could in fact get closer to $500, which makes my comparison to bigger, more powerful tablets totally moot, and makes them much more appealing as a satellite to your main computer(s). Two, it would be interesting to run Windows Remote Desktop or VNC to remotely control a more powerful computer, or do simple sequencing and soft synths via this tablet, the USB port, and your favorite hardware controller. -PK
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Imagine touching a screen to directly control Live, Reason, Reaktor, and Max/MSP while you’re playing, with a full view of the interface. That’s been possible with tablet PCs for some time, but not with a touch-centric interface. While the Mac faithful have been drooling over a vague Apple patent for touchscreen interfaces, no one seems to have noticed that Microsoft is planning to build this interface into Windows Vista. Microsoft’s Jim Allchin, head Vista honcho, told Paul Thurrott:











