Gates dreams of $500 student tablet |
Loading ...In a 16:34 minute interview with Channel 9 released today, Bill Gates describes a future for speech recognition, Tablet PC and more. Also, Gates admits he doesn’t yet have the coveted Xbox 360, but will probably get one in “a month or two.” You’d think they would be shipping stuff to his garage first being he is Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, but apparently that’s not reality.
As for speech recognition, Gates acknowledges that it’s still not there yet but he thinks in 2-5 years it will be.
Note: Later in the interview he admits he isn’t very good at predictions, which would fit in line with his prediction about ridding the web of spam in two years. Apparently the rudders that turn the good ship Microsoft take longer to turn than even Gates believes in.
Gates also hints at the possibility that the software might scan one’s email looking for patterns in words and to be used as help for the machine to parse speech. Being people like Google with Gmail have a foothold in this already scanning for Adsense, it made me wonder if they might ready their own speech recognition someday? I haven’t used the speech recognition capabilities of the M1400 tablet very much in the last 270 odd days that I’ve owned one, but great speech recognition that really, really works would help this platform.
Mr. Gates on the Tablet reminds that Windows had its naysayers. He describes his vision for the tablet as a student tablet for $500. Scoble points out that this isn’t there right now and Gates admits that it isn’t there yet, but that there are some pretty decent tablets for $1,200.
Actually I think the current slate tablet sweet spot seems to be $2,000. At two grand where the tablet vendors are duking it out, that’s still far and away not a mainstream price point. They need to get that down to the $1,200 that Gates refers to. And if a student tablet that matches Gates vision of $500 can be available then that would really blow up the market.
“We’re not mainstream yet, but we’re committed to getting there.” Gates admitted.
The excited, boyish geeky way Bill Gates talks about computes is infectious. It’s hard not to believe that he’s doing what he can do to make these visions come true. In responding candidly to the era of the geek being over and the software industry still being a viable career opportunity, Gates compares only the biology field to the excitement of software development. He believes there is much to be done and the pioneers will be the software engineers and developers.
He points out what many of us who run into bizarre errors, crashes and other challenges know well: “software has not solved the tough problems.”
Amen.
tags: Bill+Gates, Microsoft, Interview, Tablet+PC
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[…] - Overweight. Most are heavier than the tablet I bought a year ago! Mobility is very important and if it isn’t lighter and easier to carry around than my existing tablet then it would be a downgrade, not an upgrade. The LE1600 from Motion is one of the new crop of lighter tablets, but it took out a few things I liked in the M1400 and it didn’t improve on standard specs (see next post). Oh, and did I mention that I’m still disappointed that Motion plans to stop making batteries and other accesories in just two short years? They need to extend that to 2010 at least. Some people bought M1400’s new from them this last summer 2005! - Still overpriced. Yes the price has come down somewhat within the last 12 months and finally more retail presence. But let’s be real here, we’re still nowhere close to Bill Gate’s vision of the $500 tablet (admittedly, Gates said this would take “awhile”). With lowend laptops starting to push down beneath $500 and some pretty good laptops in the $750-$1,250 range, the tablet is still overpriced at the common $1,500 price point, with high quality slates still ringing in at $2,000+ with standard features. - Inadequate standard memory and disk space. Come on, manufacturers, stop penny pinching your customers with accessory options and include more standard hard disk space and memory. Yeah, you can upgrade, but that’s wrong for a machine that will set you back over two grand. 100GB hard disk and 1GB RAM should be the standard but that’s not the case with any of the new model tablets, you’ll have to pay more. - Murky Vista specs. Since Vista isn’t actually out yet — only beta — it’s hard to really know what impact this will have on a new tablet purchase outside of taking the manufacturer’s, Microsoft or beta tester’s word. It would really suck shelling out 2-3+ grand only to find out that in 9-12 months that the machine isn’t going to be truly Vista ready. And the next version of the Vista beta that has been shown has already been delayed another couple months which makes things even more of a guessing game. What we do know — or at least have been told — is that Vista will include the Tablet PC OS, thus meaning that in the future every laptop will have tablet capability. The only (vital) missing component would be the digitizer/screen. How this will actually be useful to anybody, I’m curious to learn. […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » Don’t buy a new Tablet PC, buy an older model instead or keep waiting — December 7, 2005 @ 1:17 am PST
It makes me sick every time I see a big shot talking about $500 student PC’s etc. it sickens me because those Tablet PC’s does not have to cost $1200, parts in them are not worth that much, cheaper PC’s start at the part manufacturer.
Make it possible for our kids to have a great future, give them a free Laptop/Tablet when they enroll, maybe make them sign a voucher that if they do not finish College they will owe the price of the PC/Tablet, but for crying out loud with todays tuitions there should be space for this, $500 is still a fortune for a poor student.
And make those Free Laptop/Tablets come with Microsoft Office pre installed, come on Gates we can make this happen right?
Comment by Digital Brian — April 19, 2006 @ 11:22 am PST
Seems like they might be targeting the $500USD pricepoint with the UMPC, Digital Brian.
Comment by TDavid — April 19, 2006 @ 11:36 am PST
[…] Easy answer: availability and pricing! Remember Bill Gates dreaming that we’d see $500 Tablet PCs? He also said that in “2-5 years” we’d see speech recognition that was there. That was 2005, so it could be as early as this year or as late as 2010. I’ve tried to use speech recognition several times, both with my Tablet PC and with Dragon Naturally Speaking. We’re definitely not there yet. Has it improved? Yes, but it’s still not where it makes sense to cast aside the keyboard. […]
Pingback by What will be the next version of PC and QWERTY keyboard? » Make You Go Hmm — May 1, 2007 @ 8:45 am PST
[…] While I’ll admit that email spam has improved a little bit, it is far from gone. In 2004 he also predicted the death of the password. I’m still using passwords, how about you? Then there was Gates prediction that we’d see a $500 Tablet PC for students and speech recognition will be “there” in 2-5 years. Hmm. […]
Pingback by Bill Gates should stick to software, charities and skip predictions » Make You Go Hmm — May 10, 2007 @ 7:58 am PST