Still Waiting For The Apple Tablet

I have been in a waiting mode for couple of years now. Waiting for a Internet tablet I would use... My last one was Compaq TC1000, I liked it a lot... May be it was a bit slow with video content, may be its battery did not last long enough to forget the charger... May be its pen input system was not too precise and reliable... May be full Windows XP installed there was an overkill... But all in all it worked. When I sold it in 2005, I did not imagine at that time it would take two years (and counting) for the world to come up with a solution.

So in the meantime we have had:

• HTC Universal with VGA display and 3G/UMTS/WiFi - too slow
• Iliad e-reader and now the Kindle from Amazon - both just not designed for generic web access
• The iPhone - good design, but it is a phone, not a web browser
• Nokia N800 - not bad, but it crashes everytime I try to access my GMail on it
• Microsoft Origami - bad idea by design, trying to put the entire big OS on a tablet
• OQO - a good concept, but it has been painfully slow...
  

And what we need is a thin and light device, with a screen of at least 1024x768, visible outdoors. The device should have finger operated touch screen and an optional keyboard, mainly for entering the http:// web addresses and user names / passwords and for typing short messages. Battery life should be 6-10 hours minimum (that is enough for daily web activities, when you have an option to recharge overnight). Switching on and off should be instant. And the primary function should be Web access, without compromises - this means for example all the major AJAX web sites should run fast and wthout a glitch. Secondary functions could be music playback, GPS navigation and video conferencing.

Interestingly almost all of the above specs are met by the Nokias: the N800 and the upcoming N810 (with a slideout keyboard). Buth the Nokias are not speed demons, and - as I mentioned above - the stability of the OS still has not reached the satisfactory level, I do not use the N800 often, but I keep on rebooting it frquently, even afte the upgrade to the latest 4.0 OS.

For all that time my bet has been on Apple. They seem to be one of very few companies really focusing on user experience. All the others as focused on their business and that is why they consistently fail to deliver what users expect. I really hope the wait is near the end. BTW if Apple fails to deliver a killer web tablet soon, I seriously consider going back to the Compaq TC1000. They can be picked up for around $300 now on eBay plus $100 for a new battery...