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An affordable ‘pretend’ Tablet PC for e-reading in your EZ chair?
July 10, 2006 | 5:55 am
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By David Rothman
I’ve always hated reading e-books hour after hour on a desktop monitor. As a book reader, I’m a laze-back kind of guy, and a friend is the same. He jokes about getting his MBA on a couch, through the use of a laptop, and I suspect that a Tablet PC would have been still better. Tablets, however, usually cost a bundle. As for PDAs, well, they have their pluses–in fact I myself just bought a Palm Handheld TX. But in many areas, such as screen size, PDAs just can’t compete with desktops.
Enter the EZ-Canvas, from Navisis, which can transform an LCD into a Tablet PC-style screen, which responds to a stylus, so you needn’t mess with a mouse. The Korean company had artists in mind when it designed the product. I, on the other hand, am thinking “e-book.” You could buy a cheapie 17-inch LCD, use it without a stand, and relax in a recliner away from your desk–just so the video cable was long enough but not too long. A small wireless keyboard could be handy for the text search and Web browsing. Or, given the extra processing power of a desktop, a decent handwriting rec program would suffide.
No, this isn’t for everyone–the literature mentions screens 17 inches and up, and you might not like the size and weight–but it’s something for the intrepid to consider. You’d use software such as uBook or yBook to split up the screen into two pages. Imagine the amount of text you could read in one swoop. Meanwhile, if you wanted to read PDFs, you’d probably be better off than with a smaller screen.
Price: I haven’t found a U.S. dealer so far–I’d be surprised if there wasn’t one–but the E-Z canvas is on sale in the United Kingdom for £118.99.
Major caveats: Remember, I haven’t tried the above. Read the EZ-Canvas literature and consider your own situation verey carefully. I’m also wondering about the health angle. The risks from an electric field associated with a 17-inch LCD might be much greater than from a Tablet PC (presumably low or nonexistent) or a PDA (probably nonexistent). Not sure. Maybe some TeleBloggers can enlighten us in the comment area below.
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Comments:
“The risks from an electric field associated with a 17-inch LCD might be much greater than from a Tablet PC (presumably low or nonexistent)”
…not sure about your reasoning here. A TabletPC uses an LCD with Wacom (usually) digitizer built in. The screen is smaller — 12.1″ is common, some have 14″ — and so the electric field should be less. However, the TabletPC also has the CPU, hard drive, and other chips emitting EFR.
Therefore I would imagine that the simple LCD would have lower emissions than the TabletPC of any size.
PDA probably less than the LCD as you suggest.
But I’m no electrician…
May you be right, Pond. I was thinking of the AC power and perhaps a step down transformer. Ideally we’ll get an authoritative reply from someone in a position to now. Thanks. – David
It’s a cool product, but I imagine the cables leading to the computer could be a problem and I’m also quite sure that the weight and heat an LCD monitor creates after a while wouldn’t be too nice.
Also, staring at an LCD screen at close range isn’t going to improve your eyes very much.
But to some it might nevertheless be an interesting solution.
“I’ve always hated reading e-books hour after hour on a desktop monitor. As a book reader, I’m a laze-back kind of guy…”
I read The Hacker Crackdown, Neuromancer, and Suelette Dreyfus’ Underground on the ‘puter screen – almost 1000 pages – all in the lazed-back position.
On the other hand, mobile phone can be a better alternative to the hard copy than Tablet PC, as it’s handier. Just my 2 cents.