[Coco] What if the next CoCo is made into a Tablet?

[Mark McDougall]

On 12/07/2011 9:08 AM, Bill Loguidice wrote:

> Seriously, it's a lovely thought, just in no way practical. It would take
> years for enthusiasts to engineer something like that and it would already
> be out-of-date and severely overpriced. Take a look at the drama with the
> Pandora handheld or any other hobbyist/enthusiast/semi-pro endeavor of
> reasonable complexity and you see all kinds of issues. Heck, most companies
> outside of Apple can't design a decent tablet, and they have huge R&D
> budgets...

Gotta side with Bill on this one. It's probably the absolute *last* form 
factor in which you'd consider producing a 'Coco4'.

A tablet is nothing more than PC hardware in fancy plastics and a snazzy 
touch screen. All the engineering effort is in the ergonomics and the power 
supply. They've been around for years and years, and Apple have merely bided 
their time waiting for battery and touch screen technology to reach the 
right price-point before making it sexy to own one. I'm still amazed that 
Apple fanboyz don't seem to have a problem being told what they can, and 
can't, run on their own PC, but I won't get into that here...

As Bill alluded to, this type of design problem is something that requires 
massive capital resources to develop, well outside the realms of hobbyists 
like us. The Pandora didn't get off the ground until it had 4,000 
pre-orders, and is over 2 *years* late, and still having production 
problems, mainly with the mechanicals. [I'm waiting for the 2nd batch to 
start production myself before I decided whether or not the hardware design 
is simply too long in the tooth. On the plus side, it's probably powerful 
enough to emulate nearly everything I want anyway, and the 'Pandora 2' would 
likely be 4 years away at least!]

I simply don't see any reason why I'd want to carry around a Coco tablet 
with primitive word processing and no internet connectivity. Much more 
sensible is a powerful Windows/Linux-based tablet with all the modern 
connectivity, that can run a Coco emulator if I really want to play Zaxxon - 
though even then I'd question the practicality of touch-screen controls. And 
writing an 'OS' for the Coco tablet would be a considerable undertaking, and 
also a serious drain on cpu resources.

The Coco4 is, I'm afraid, consigned to lab/study benches with PS/2 and VGA 
connectors poking out of generic enclosures, or perhaps residing inside 
gutted Coco cases. It'll only ever appeal to anyone that owned one, and 
furthermore, is still passionate about them. And I suspect that numbers in 
the dozens at best. It's a pity that Richard Branson isn't a CocoNut...

Regards,

-- 
|              Mark McDougall                | "Electrical Engineers do it
|  <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug>   |   with less resistance!"