CeBIT 2007: Sharp Displaying the World's Largest Tablet PC? (pics, video)

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At CeBIT 2007 in Germany Sharp had a large booth dedicated to showing off their business machines (think copiers) and Aquos flat panel LCD displays. But coolest of all was their larger than life touchscreen display that could pass as a gigantic, and very unportable, Tablet PC.

The two Sharp reps demoing this display had been there all day but were still quite obviously getting a huge kick out of using it. Google maps proved especially fun to play with as you can see in this video:

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While the wow factor is pretty cool with this thing, once you get over that the question becomes, okay so what's this good for if it's not portable? Sharp believes that it'd be a killer presentation tool for business meetings. Instead of brainstoming and having people write their ideas on paper the team could write on the display and make it more collaborative and visual. Doctors could present images of X-rays and CAT scans to collaborate and circle stuff they see in the images.

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Strangely, Sharp didn't even talk about using the Tablet PC OS with this display. They focused on using their SharpDesk software to capture an image of what's on the display and then storing it to a file server or printing it out using a Sharp printer of course. Quite obviously they're a bit narrow sighted with seeing how it would work with their own software and hardware solutions. Though a Tablet PC has of course been focused on a form factor you can take along with you as a personal PC (hence the term Personal Computer) there may be some situation where directly using tablet input technology on a very large display is beneficial. And a lot of fun.

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Very cool!

It'd help quite a bit in education, and as mentioned, meetings, brain storming, etc.

 

Education? Pah! I would pay mo-nay for a giant DS Not sure how practical that'd be but it'd be really big you see so....

 

It's a VERY portable model...

 

Just curious is this an active digitizer or passive?

Actually though, I don't see why a touchscreen needs to be restricted to a portable Tablet PC. I just bought the $1800 HP IQ770 TouchSmart PC for a family member (it's sold by all my major local stores and has many reviews on the web).

It's an all-in-one desktop PC with integrated 19" widescreen (1440 x 900) touchscreen LCD. It doesn't use an active RF digitizer so you can just use your finger. But instead of the traditional PDA-style pressure-based touchscreen technology, HP says it uses some kind of optical sensor system in the corners of the screen bezel that detects the "touch" right before actual contact with the screen (like a milimeter away).

Anyways, I only wish that it has a 1920 x 1200 screen at 24" or larger size, since the 19" screen is a downgrade from what my family member had before. But having the touch interface (with full support from Vista) is addictive, and it works for certain uses.

P.S. But honestly, this HP PC is way overpriced for what you get (mobile AMD CPU and NVIDIA GPU). Hopefully it'll get cheaper and faster for the next gen.

Speaking of touch though, right now I'm more anxious about seeing a new ThinkPad Tablet PC with the arrival of the Intel Centrino Pro platform. I'm skipping the X60 Tablet for now and continuing to use my aging X41 Tablet...

 

well sound like a great tool for productiviyu i bet the price would be quite steep guess we gotta just wait and see