Just ordered a new Tablet PC!
I'm really excited. I just ordered a new Gateway s7200 Tablet PC. I've visited the local Best Buy a couple of times this past week to put a similar model slightly less powerful and integrated graphics) through its paces including some OneNote work, web surfing and Gmail, and some media playing.
Context & Ripple Effects
This purchase note sits inside a busy week of Tablet PC community coverage in late October 2005: the same day, Eric Mack declared himself ready for his next Tablet PC Challenge, and two days later jkOnTheRun published a practical guide for anyone weighing the same purchase decision (So you want to get a Tablet PC). The buyer's method is telling — repeated hands-on sessions at Best Buy on a lesser model before ordering the stronger s7200 online — and the payoff arrived within days in a follow-up of first impressions posted November 6.
First-order effects
- The buyer commits to the Gateway s7200 based on real-world validation at retail — OneNote inking, Gmail and web browsing on the showroom model de-risked the higher-spec online order; the immediate consequence is a detailed first-impressions review feeding the enthusiast blog ecosystem days later.
Second-order effects
- Retail showrooms become de facto demo labs for niche form factors: trying ink and media playback in-store, then buying online, pressures manufacturers like Gateway (and Lenovo, whose X41 Tablet gets a one-month retrospective that week) to differentiate on specs like discrete graphics versus integrated.
Third-order effects
- The pen-and-ink workflow this purchase bets on — OneNote plus web apps like Gmail — prefigures where the category eventually landed: thirteen years on, Google shipped the Acer Chromebook Tab 10 with a bundled Wacom EMR stylus, evidence that stylus-first computing moved from enthusiast niche to standard hardware design, even if via different operating systems than 2005's Windows Tablet PCs anticipated.
The trend: This order is one data point in the long arc from 2005's enthusiast-bought Windows Tablet PCs to today's mainstream assumption that every serious portable includes a precision stylus.