Tablet PCs are more popular than I thought

I attended a conference this last week where everyone was required to bring their own laptop and I was sort of suprised by the resulting assortment of laptops that showed up. There were quite a few Dells, one PowerBook and 5-6 tablet laptops. This is out of around 25 laptops. No widescreen laptops that I saw, one micro portable laptop and one HUGE desktop replacement laptop.

There were a few of the slate computers like the one pictured that had no keyboard attached at all, this was the first time I have seen that form factor. They came with matching USB keyboards or I'm sure you could hook up any USB keyboard and mouse you had laying around.

During the conference we stopped at the local coffe shop where virtually every seat was filled by a student doing homework on their laptop. A lot more powerbooks and probably more widescreen notebooks than what the conference members had.

I personally don't like the widescreen laptops, the format just doesn't make any sense to me on a laptop. Sure you get more horizontal space but at the expense of the vertical space. Unless you are watching movies 90% of the time I would rather just have a normal 4:3 screen. If you need more space, get a bigger screen, don't mess with the ratio. I think the manufacturers like them becuase they look bigger but cost the same and they can claim it as an added feature. I think there are few applicatons that you do on a laptop that really benifit from the wider but shorter screen, other than movies.