[MysticLlama]

I think that it's going to come back, it's a price point thing right now.

It worked before, because the tech was resistive touch. Cheap, reasonably durable, precision input. But it also has lots of drawbacks. Calibrations get funky, scratches easily, distorts the screen a little bit, etc.

The Slate has the tech where we need to be, capacitive touch for nav, slick, cleanable, durable screen, glass is even an option, etc. And then it has the digitizer below.

All of the vertical market apps I see that use tablets, for instance doctors and inspectors, they are still using handwriting input a lot of the time. They have the ability and business necessity to spend $3000+ on their devices though.

I think when Win8 gets popular there will be enough Slate-style tablets available that it'll press the cost down, and might even make it down into phones.

I know I'd be super frustrated trying to do any reasonable amount of input on an iPad that's capacitive touch keyboarding only for the most part.

I'm also of the opinion that dictation will never really catch on in a big way, not due to tech, but because it's not quiet, and that having a stylus on a tablet will continue to be way less frowned upon in a meeting than taking notes by tapping at an iPad, or worse, a full laptop.