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Typhoon Touch is working its way down the tablet PC food chain.

After suing Dell and Motion Computing for allegedly infringing on two of its patents for portable computers with touch-screen technology, Typhoon, and licensing partner and co-plaintiff Nova Mobility Systems, said Tuesday they are targeting three more potential infringers: Xplore Technologies, Electrovaya, and Sand Dune Ventures, which makes tablet PCs under the brand TabletKiosk.

Typhoon Touch says the Sahara TufTab i310XT tablet PC is one of several PCs that violates two of its portable touch-screen patents.

(Credit: TabletKiosk)

Typhoon specifically cites Xplore's iX104C series of tablet PCs, Electrovaya's Scribbler SC4000 tablet, and four of TabletKiosk's ruggedized tablets. Typhoon, a Seattle-based firm that creates and acquires patents, has only licensed its patents on portable touch-screen computers to Nova Mobility. The two companies have asked the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas for unspecified damages and an injunction on the sales of the computers Typhoon says are in violation of its patents.

A TabletKiosk representative said the company couldn't talk about the lawsuit, and neither Electrovaya nor Xplore could be reached for immediate comment.

The suit against Dell and its Latitude XT tablet PC is still ongoing, but Typhoon settled out of court with Motion Computing last month.

Much has been made of Dell's retail makeover, but it's actually part of a larger trend toward experimentalism.

The company that has largely avoided unproven product categories is jumping all over them suddenly. Case in point: several years ago, when Microsoft was pushing tablet computing, Dell was fairly adamant that, no thanks, tablet PCs weren't something the company was interested in making.

"I think it is really unknown at this point how big the market is," CEO Michael Dell said in a 2002 interview about tablet PCs. "Dell, of course, likes to participate in high-volume markets, and until we can determine the size of the market we are not ready to decide at what level we will participate."

The Latitude XT is Dell's first foray into tablet computing.

(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)

Fast-forward to late 2007, when Dell introduced its first tablet PC, the Latitude XT. Tick forward some more to this week when the second version, the Latitude XT2, was leaked onto the Web. Tablet computing, to Microsoft's chagrin, still has never really taken off--tablets comprised 3.25 percent of the worldwide notebook market in 2007, according to market research firm IDC. Yet, Dell's staking out its claim in that category.

So what's changed? Well, almost everything.

"The old Dell was about how everything had to improve with scale. In other words, any fixed cost investment had to get more profitable with volume," said Roger Kay, analyst and president of Endpoint Technologies. But after the leadership change a year ago, "Michael (Dell) said there were no sacred cows when he took back over."

Now Dell can't seem to stay out of niche markets. Besides the Latitude XT, in the last year Dell has launched a ruggedized laptop, a consumer-friendly all-in-one desktop, and began offering Linux pre-installed on some PCs. Plus, there's constant chatter about the company re-entering the handheld market.

The PC industry is moving toward increased mobility, so tablets and rugged notebooks are part of a larger trend. But they also represent opportunities that Dell can't afford to miss anymore.

In Dell's heyday, its mammoth commercial computing clients would choose a variety of machines they wanted Dell to supply; if one of them was too much of a niche product, Dell would simply partner with a manufacturer that did make it.

"But now they're saying, we don't want to keep giving away those opportunities because that's decent margin (being left) on the table," said Richard Shim, PC analyst for IDC. Now, "they go out and create their own versions of these products."

Within the overall trend toward mobility, commercial clients, and even consumers, are demanding more and more specific usage models, and Dell, it seems, is trying to adapt.

"The market is evolving beyond generic solutions. There are new opportunities in more specialized products," said Shim.

Evolution seems to be the name of the game down in Round Rock, Texas, these days. The company has undergone a major transformation of its business plan since Michael Dell stepped back into the executive suite as CEO.

Along with that has come this marked shift toward experimentalism at the 20-year-old company. Though Dell's hallmark for its first two decades in business was its sharp, efficient supply chain and direct-to-customers sales model, now you can find a Dell almost anywhere you look: Best Buy, Staples, Wal-Mart Stores, and more.

Its product choices are different, too. "In the past, Dell would adopt new technologies faster than most, but new products more slowly," noted Kay. While it was happy to move from one processor generation to the next fairly rapidly, Dell was far more circumspect about getting into a niche market like PDAs or music players. Of course, Dell's expertise has always been in the enterprise market, which isn't particularly fast-moving. But targeting consumers is a different animal--they expect more product innovation and faster product cycle times.

Dell's ruggedized laptop, a first for the PC maker.

(Credit: Dell)

In trying to garner more consumer attention, Dell also has been more adventurous, with firsts for it like colored laptops last summer, the stylish design of the XPS laptop line, and the XPS One, an iMac-esque all-in-one PC. Dell even went as far as co-branding the XPS gaming line with World of Warcraft.

"It's more like they're dropping a lot of bait in the water to see what works," Kay noted.

Sure, Dell is trying a lot of new things, but it's got to do something different. No longer the largest seller of PCs overall, it's also recently fallen behind the Acer-Gateway-Packard Bell behemoth in notebook sales.

"They have to be risky to reverse their misfortunes here," Shim said. "That takes time when you're trying to change your personality. I'm sure they'll make missteps along the way because everyone does. But the positive is that they are making these changes. The writing is not just on the wall, it's in neon."

Minor update: Boost uses the Nextel/Sprint network, not Alltel.

Apple's iPhones seem to have a monopoly when it comes to usable mobile Web browsing. Until now, freedom-loving users not wishing to get into bed with Steve Jobs were, for the most part, out of luck. This article explains how to get an even better mobile Internet experience, without having to do business with either AT&T or Apple--with no contracts and no $60 per month bill just to surf the Net.

Apple's iPhone: No user apps for you!

The iPhone is clearly the must-have device of the digerati. All of my colleagues seem to have one, and frankly, I'm rather jealous. However, I have several deep moral problems with the iPhone that have prevented me from giving Apple my money.

Steve Jobs treats his customers with contempt. On a "stock" iPhone, you have no control over the applications you can install, cannot use MP3 ringtones, and can't even download songs to iTunes over the 802.11 connection. Yes, you can join the customer vs. company arms race, and try to hack your phone. However, the next time a software update is released, you may find yourself the owner of a $400 brick.

In addition to my problems with Apple, I really dislike the wireless carrier it's gotten into bed with--AT&T. My complaints about AT&T's profit-motivated collaboration with the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program have been frequently aired on this blog. Furthermore, the company only really offers practical data services to customers who sign up for a two-year contract--something I am unwilling to do. Finally, I see no reason to hand over $15 of my monthly wireless bill to Steve Jobs.

I want a device that gives me freedom, that does not lock me into a specific platform, and that is sold by a company that treats its customers with respect. I want to be able to leverage the significant base of existing Linux/open-source applications. I want to be able to run Firefox and the hundreds of community-made extensions for the browser. I want to download MP3s and podcasts directly to the device, and I'd prefer a real GPS chip, not some triangulation hack.

Furthermore, I am extremely nomadic. I can rarely plan more than six months into the future, and can't predict the country I'll call home a year from now. Thus, a two-year contract with AT&T is simply not an option.

Help from Helsinki

Luckily, help has arrived. The solution to my problems does not come from Cupertino, Calif., but Finland.

N810 Internet Tablet

(Credit: Nokia)

Nokia has gotten quite a bit of press over the last year for its N800 and N810 Internet Tablets. The devices run Linux, and are built on an open-source core. They include 802.11 Wi-Fi support, Bluetooth (including A2DP stereo audio) and a built-in Webcam that can be used for videoconferencing.

On the software side, the devices ship with a Mozilla/Firefox-derived browser and support the hugely popular Web-advertisement blocking extension Adblock Plus. Internet telephony is made possible through Skype and Gizmo, both of which come preinstalled. Prefer to use someone else (or your own Asterisk server)? No problem--SIP-based voice over IP software is also included.

What else?....

A BitTorrent client? Yep. Encrypted instant messaging for AIM and Google talk users? Yep.

Want to sniff a wireless network, break a WEP encryption key, or hack into a server? No problem. Metasploit, Kismit, and nmap are all supported.

Would you like to hook up an external hard disk, an Ethernet adapter, or a thumb drive? No problem. The tablets all include a USB port that supports "host mode."

The N800 ($200) and N810 ($400) have practically the same hardware powering them, the only real difference is the GPS chip and slide-out hardware keyboard that is included with the N810.

In terms of technology and software, the N810 does everything and more that the iPhone does. The only real problem thus far has been the issue of Internet connectivity. That is, when there is no open Wi-Fi access point nearby, my N810 has been pretty useless.

The data problem

The data offerings from U.S. mobile providers are, sadly, pretty awful. While users on some expensive plans can surf the Web from their phones, tethering (the act of sharing your phone's data connection with another device) is often forbidden. Verizon went so far as to totally cripple the Bluetooth functionality in several of its Motorola phones.

Worse, to get data, users are often required to sign lengthy contracts with the wireless carriers. A few do offer data services to prepaid users, but at rates that'll make you cry. For example, AT&T prepaid customers can purchase monthly allotments of bandwidth--1MB for $5 and 5MB for $10. Data hungry users who go over their 5MB per month are charged 1 cent per kilobyte. Want to use AT&T's prepaid plan to look at a few Flickr photos? That'll be $24.07 please.

The Boost connection

Thanks to YoDude from the Internet Tablet Talk forums, I now have a solution that works, with no contract, and at a price that I can afford.

Boost is a prepaid wireless company that resells access to the Sprint/Nextel nationwide wireless networks. Their voice services aren't particularly attractive (at 20 cents per minute). However, the Sprint/Nextel network uses Motorola's iDEN technology and provides a free, always-on data connection to phone customers. The data service isn't speedy, at 19.2 kbps, it harks back to the days of dial-up. For a free service, however, it simply can't be beat.

Following YoDude's advice, I went onto eBay and purchased a used Nextel/Motorola i605 phone. There are plenty of these listed for sale online, and can be found for about $40 including shipping. I also purchased a new Boost phone SIM (subscriber identity module) card for $2 including shipping.

A week later, with the phone and SIM in hand, I called up Boost to activate. The process took about 20 minutes, required no hacking of devices, flashing of firmware, or anything similar. I gave Boost my credit card number, and the company loaded $20 onto my account.

I then followed YoDude's simple instructions for setting up the Nokia Tablet with a Boost iDEN phone, and within minutes, I was using my N810 to check my e-mail via the Bluetooth-provided cellular data link.

Boost requires that you load up your phone with a minimum of $20 in credit at least once every 90 days. Voice service costs 10 to 20 cents a minute, depending on the time of day. Interesting enough, incoming text messages are free--which is not something I've seen any other prepaid carrier offer. Thus, for a little bit more than $6 per month, mobile users can get access to an always-on data connection that is perfect for e-mail, IM, and Google searches.

I won't lie. It's not speedy. But for airports, waiting rooms, and the bank lobby--it's perfect. By switching to IMAP based e-mail and an offline RSS reader, it's actually surprisingly usable.

For those of you with a thirst for faster data, and a willingness to pay for it, there may be other options. The uber-phone hackers at HowardForums report that Verizon offers prepaid users access to its 115KB/s EVDO data service for 99 cents per day. Setting this up seems to require a fair bit of hackery, including re-flashing special firmware onto your phone. Furthermore, at $30 per month, this is quite a bit more than I want to pay just to be able to google in line at the grocery store.

Got a better solution? Found a way to get a high-speed Bluetooth tethered connection at a low price? Leave a note in the comments, and I'll be sure to update this post.

Disclaimer: While I paid retail for a Nokia N800, the company did give me a heavily discounted N810 as part of a developer program. I interviewed with Nokia for a summer internship last week. I interned with Apple (along with several other companies) in the past.

Axiotron's Modbook is an Apple MacBook rebuilt to become a tablet computer.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

SAN FRANCISCO--On first glance, Axiotron's Modbook is unsettling. It takes a moment before you realize it's because you've been programmed by countless Apple advertisements to expect a keyboard down there below the screen.

But Axiotron thinks its Modbook machines look just fine, thank you. The start-up, founded in 2005, just began selling its "Tablet Mac" machines the last day of 2007 and is showing them off at the Macworld trade show here.

The company hopes to appeal to artists, designers, and photographers who want to be able to draw or otherwise directly interact with the screen. That can be done with products such as some Wacom graphics tablets, but the Modbook is a more portable option.

Axiotron makes the Apple-authorized machines by rebuilding MacBooks it buys from Apple with Wacom pen-computing technology that lets people draw, click, or write directly on the screen. It has a virtual keyboard, but if you want a real one, you'll have to purchase it separately and plug it into a USB port.

The Modbooks run Mac OS X and employ either a 2.0GHz or 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 processor. They also come with a 13.3-inch, 1280x800 screen, Inkwell handwriting recognition software, a built-in iSight camera, a DVD Combo drive or SuperDrive, and GPS (Global Positioning System) abilities for location.

For a model with 1GB of memory, the price tag begins at $2,290, the company said.

Update 10 p.m. PST: Cosmetic similarities--for example the white bars on the top edge of the machine--suggest that the Axiotron system might have been the origin of a rumor last year of an Apple tablet computer.

The Tenori-On's hand-brushed magnesium body is light and durable. The illuminated 16x16 matrix of buttons combines the satisfaction of popping bubble wrap, with the pride of programming a drum machine.

(Credit: CNET Networks/Donald Bell)

All my ranting and whining must have finally paid off because this week I finally got some time with Yamaha's mystery-enshrouded Tenori-On music sequencer.

Prototypes of the Tenori-On have traveled the globe, popping up in the U.K. and Germany, but rarely in the United States. I couldn't believe my luck when San Francisco electronic musician retailer Robotspeak (my former employer) gave me the heads-up that Yamaha would be dropping by the shop for a rare demonstration. ... Read more

Tablet computing is a very small pond, and it's now home to a very big fish: Dell.

The Round Rock, Texas-based PC maker on Tuesday is introducing the Latitude XT Tablet PC, its first product in the category.

Though it's just one notebook, Dell's entry is sure to cause a stir. It's a modest niche of computing that hasn't really gotten off the ground yet. And the interest of the second-largest PC maker in the world can't help but have an impact on the market.

"It puts the product in limelight," said Richard Shim, PC industry analyst with IDC. "It has potential to bring down pricing on key components that are being priced at a premium."

The Latitude XT at work.

(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)

Currently tablet PCs comprise just 2.4 percent of the worldwide notebook market, according to IDC. That's about 2.5 million units shipped total. But as Dell joins other high-profile tablet makers like Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Gateway, and others, the category is expected to grow to 12.3 million units and 6.3 percent of the notebook market by 2011, IDC said. And as volumes go up, prices are sure to go down.

That Dell would delve into tablets was one of the worst-kept secrets in the PC industry over the last year. The company confirmed the rumors in May and then briefly showed the product during Michael Dell's keynote speech at Oracle Open World in November.

The Latitude XT is aimed chiefly at commercial markets, and Dell says it initially tried to address several of the key complaints expressed by typical tablet users: that they're too bulky, the screen isn't viewable in direct sun, poor handwriting recognition, and inadequate battery life.

Although tablets in general are not marketed toward consumers right now, Dell's entrance could bring component prices down enough to make building and buying tablets affordable for, say, students one day, noted Shim. "Lately we've been seeing manufacturers start to look at the consumer market as an audience for this type of tablet," he said. Particularly because the profit margins are much higher for consumer devices.

For now, the price is not what you would call friendly to the mainstream notebook buyer. At the starting price of $2,499, the Latitude XT has a 12.1-inch LED-backlit screen, a 1.06-gigahertz Intel Core 2 Solo processor, 1GB of memory, and a 40GB hard drive. It comes with Windows Vista Business edition or XP Tablet Edition. The whole device weighs 3.57 pounds, and has about 5 hours of battery life. It uses capacitive touch input, which recognizes both fingers and an included pen for inputting data. The pen also comes with a right-click button.

The Latitude XT at rest.

(Credit: Dell)

To target outdoor, all-day commercial users, the Latitude XT comes with upgrade options of an extra bright outdoor-viewable LCD display (which adds to the thickness of the notebook), an extended battery, which clips on the bottom of the device, as well as the option of an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and a 32 or 64 GB solid-state drive.

Dell calls its capacitive touch technology, which picks up on the electrical current in a person's hand, the "breakthrough" in the device. It also recognizes the difference between the touch of an errant palm or a purposeful press of a fingertip on the screen.

Touchscreen interfaces are a technology area with huge potential, and mainstream interest in multitouch technology skyrocketed this year with Apple's iPhone and Microsoft's demonstrations of its Surface PC technology. Dell has its cooking up its own multitouch technology, which it showed at Oracle Open World, in which all five fingers can be picked up by screen sensors. That won't be available until at least next year, said Glenn Keels, director of Dell's commercial product group.

The biggest delay is the availability of software applications that take advantage of touchscreen technologies. And it's not just Dell, but all makers of tablets. "The (manufacturers) making progress are the ones getting closer to customers, like Motion Computing," Shim said. Dell, HP, Toshiba, and Gateway "have to come up with applications that are a little more mainstream or mass market. The hard part is they're not used to thinking that way, in terms of applications, as (tablet computing) is less and less about speeds and feeds, and more about the experience."

Dell says it will begin to take orders and ship the Latitude XT by the end of the year.

(Credit: Toshiba)

Convertible tablet PCs always get a lot of attention, even if we don't know anyone who actually uses one. It's not surprising--in a world of commodity products, where one gray laptop looks much like the next, having a swiveling touch screen is at least something a bit different, even if you're not one of the handful of media professionals, note-taking students, or graphic artists who actually need the dual tablet and laptop modes of one of these systems.

Toshiba unveiled a new tablet this Monday, the company's first Tablet PC to incorporate a touch-screen LED-backlit display. The Portege M700 offers a 12.1-inch screen, both fingertip and active stylus control, and an LED backlit display (which are generally thinner and lighter than traditional laptop screens) with an anti-glare coating, suitable for outdoor use.

We were very fond of Toshiba's R400 tablet, released in January of 2007, and unlike that model, this new tablet offers a swappable drive bay, which can be used for an optical drive, extra hard drive, or nothing at all, to cut down on weight.

Toshiba's default configuration includes an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7500 CPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive for $1,799 (or $1,699 for a 1GB version with Windows XP). If you're itching to buy a new convertible tablet, online rumors say Dell's new tablet will also debut this week, so stay tuned.

A screenshot from the video in which Dell announced it would build a tablet PC.

(Credit: Laptoping)

More Dell news today: the release date for Dell's foray into tablet PCs is making its way around the Internet.

The Latitude XT will be available Tuesday, Engadget reported today. Dell first announced that it would build the convertible notebook PC in May, and last month teased audiences with it at the Oracle OpenWorld conference.

More details will be available about the product specifications next week.

Though beaten to the punch by the FCC, Dell introduced the world to its forthcoming all-in-one PC at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco Wednesday.

Well, it wasn't a formal introduction as much as an all-too-brief glimpse of the XPS One A2010, which resembles a wide-screen TV with separate keyboard. Chief Executive Michael Dell drew the crowd's attention to the all-in-one during his keynote when he asked Chief Technology Officer Kevin Kettler, who joined him on stage, what "that" device was. Playing along, Kettler "guessed" that it looked like a TV, since it had a remote and was playing a Blu-ray disc.

The Dell XPS One leaked on the FCC site last month.

(Credit: Dell)

"It looks like an all-in-one machine. But I probably shouldn't say anymore about that," Kettler concluded, tongue firmly in cheek. He did mention that it will be announced "next week."

Though an enterprise software conference might seem an odd place to introduce a firmly consumer-oriented product, Dell certainly wasn't the only one to deviate from standard OOW content. And it didn't stop with the XPS One. While on stage, Dell took the opportunity to demonstrate its forthcoming convertible tablet PC, the Latitude XT (click here for video), which Kettler said is on track to ship in the next few months. And for good measure, Kettler briefly noted how the XPS M1330 laptop he was holding would be a great holiday gift for the whole family.

It wasn't all a consumer hardware commercial, however. Dell also talked up on-demand desktop streaming as an alternative to thin-client computing. On-demand streaming features a desktop client with its own CPU and graphics processor. Saying it had comparable security and costs to thin clients, and the performance of traditional clients, Dell said desktop streaming would allow IT departments to push software updates instantly to all stations and allow for better video playback.

And it wouldn't be a Dell keynote for the company's green initiative. Dell again challenged the industry to join his efforts in the greening of the IT industry. Citing a Gartner report predicting widespread data center brownouts several years from now, Dell called it "absolutely unacceptable."

Without revealing many details, he said that Dell will soon roll out a program called Greenprint, which allows companies to check their power efficiency and then enable them to find ways to make themselves even more "green."

He ended on the note challenging other companies to "consider the impact green technologies can have on (return on investment) and on our planet."