Tablet PC for workers on go

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Toshiba has unveiled the Portege M700 tablet PC aimed at educators, health-care workers and anyone who needs to fill in forms outside an office.

The M700 is Toshiba's ninth tablet. The first, the Portege 3500, debuted in 2002.

Kevin Roberts, Toshiba's M700 product manager, said the technology has improved significantly in computing power, weight, price and design.

Compared with their first tablet PC, the M700 has a hard drive up to four times larger, a processor twice as fast, battery life that is an hour longer, a price that's $500 lower and features that protect the tablet from being damaged when dropped or when liquid is spilled on it.

Advanced technology made it possible to add those features while keeping the M700's weight and size about the same as the first Portege.

"This computer is not meant to just be in the office. It's always on the go," Roberts said.

The Portege has changed and so has the market.

"A lot of people thought the tablet PC market would take off, but it didn't really happen," said Brian O'Rourke, a principal analyst with market researcher In-Stat who has followed the tablet PC market since 2002.

Because of their touch-screens and pen-shaped styluses, ancestors of today's tablet PCs were called "pen computers" when they first appeared in the early 1990s. The term "tablet PCs" emerged early the next decade, and those evolved into today's models, with screens that flip to reveal a keyboard, allowing the computer to be used like a laptop.

Tablets were seen as the future in 2002 and were championed by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. But over the years, O'Rourke said, tablets have moved from the mainstream and into niche markets where workers need to use computers in the field for forms, capturing digital signatures or taking notes without a keyboard.

Research company Gartner says the majority of tablet sales are in fields such as health care, insurance, real estate and public safety.

A Gartner analysis said the right operating system, applications and computer design could push tablets into the mainstream computer market in 2008.

While Toshiba's Roberts says those three elements are beginning to align, the M700 is still aimed at mobile workers.

Andre van der Hoek, an associated professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, is testing a tablet system he thinks will help teach software design. Early this year, he received a grant from Hewlett-Packard for tablet computers, and he plans to begin using them in classes next fall.

Van der Hoek said he knows of teachers who use tablets in classrooms for showing notes to the class while walking and drawing. But he wants to expand that idea by giving tablet computers to the students.

"The tablet idea is that I can be at the front of the room and still see what all the students are doing," van der Hoek said.

Van der Hoek's system will rely on software he's developing to let students draw, sketch and scribble work on tablets. He will be able to monitor the work and pull up examples on a classroom screen.

"I want to re-engineer how computer scientists do their work," he said.

Also reinventing traditional work is Deborah Buntin, manager of the Breast Care Center at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, Calif. Since October 2005, her department has been using tablets for patients to fill out medical information and sign digital forms. That data can be stored in the center's digital records without retyping.

"It's wonderful that we're getting away from paper," Buntin said.