Cisco Partners & Year of the Slate

Despite the snow and ice Wytech have been plowing on with all things IT related, and we are very pleased to announce our recent upgrades to Cisco Select Certified Partner and SMB (Small & Medium Sized Business) Specialised Partner.

This new status strengthens our partnership with Cisco, the world leader in networking solutions, and at a time when the company are releasing a new range of VoIP and network solutions aimed at the 0-75 employee market. As you should know by now, Wytech specialise in Small Business solutions and we have immediately begun testing the new Cisco kit.

I'll post the results of our experiments soon, in the meantime this week I'd like to take a look at the new wave of tablet PCs as mentioned in my last post.

Over the past few years touchscreen technology has made a big impact on next-generation smartphones and laptops.In particular it has allowed the iphone and other such 'smartphones' to usher in a new generation of intuitive interfaces designed for the modern electronic consumer. PCs have changed too, with less media hype perhaps. But now the two technologies are being combined in the form of a next-gen PC/smartphone hybrid.

At this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) the technology was pigeon holed into a new category of device called 'slates'. The devices, also known as tablets, have an interface similar to a smartphone and, with no keyboards, are lighter than netbooks.

PC manufacturer Dell announced its first device will launch this summer. The Mini 5 will feature Google's Android operating system, SIM card, wi-fi, and offer multiple windows for social networking. Users can also make phonecalls, but the device is not designed to replace a handset or even a netbook. Large touchscreens are also power-hungry so battery life could also be a limiting factor.

Hewlett Packard's chief technology officer, Phil McKinney believes slates will appeal to consumers as their web habits begin to change. The firm showed off its Windows 7 powered machine during a Microsoft event at CES.

"People are enjoying more and more content from the web. And the real challenge is there aren't any good consumption-designed devices," he said. "All devices today have keyboards which are really designed for input but there's a large population that really just want to consume whether it be video, text or audio."

With the advent of the Amazon Kindle and the Sony E-Book Reader, media is increasingly becoming delivered and demanded in a digital format, and the result is that consumers are moving towards a wider dependency on screen-based content. If 2009 was the year of the netbook, then 2010 will perhaps be the year of the 'slate'...

Written by R. G. L. Birkbeck