Pepper Pad
July 26, 2005 | 12 Comments
On friday Casey and I went to see the Pepper Pad in Massachusetts. To me this is a hugely interesting product. It sits in the vacant space between PDAs and laptops, ignoring the existence of Tablet PCs. To tell the truth, I think tablets are entirely useless. Unless you have money to waste or a budget to spend, there is no justifiable reason to invest in these devices. They come up short on the power of a laptop, and are not actually portable. However, the Pepper Pad has found the sweet spot between laptops and PDAs, amazingly they do not pretend to be either and this is where they shine.
Do you ever find yourself watching TV and want to look something up quickly on the Internet? Do you want to be able to see recipes while cooking in the kitchen? Do you want an Internet enabled device you can walk around your house with? If you answered yes to any of these questions or similar ones, the Pepper Pad is for you. From their site:
Portable and lightweight? Definitely.
Able to instantly connect you to all your favorite activities-e-mailing, IM, Web browsing, listening to music, watching videos, sharing photos and more? Absolutely.
How about easy to use, totally low maintenance and ready to travel with you-whether to the couch, the backyard or even the local coffee shop? Check.
That device is here. Say hello to the Pepper Pad. The Pad represents an entirely new category of wireless device-bigger and more powerful than a PDA or mobile phone, but smaller, lighter and far less complex (and a lot more fun) than a laptop.
This is an existing gadget I’d like in my home. However, the Pepper Pad is not perfect. I have to point out the areas they fall slightly short in hopes they, or another generation, will resolve them. Problems:
- Spongy feeling keypad - limited tactical feedback
- Unlabeled “function” key
- Oddly placed backspace button
- Laggy response to stylus input - scrolling with the wheel is great, the stylus is troublesome
- I question the lack of a word processor, even if limited in features/functionality
Not to knock the Pepper Pad, because it is hands down the coolest thing of its kind available, but I want competitors in this space. Would we have ever gotten an MP3 player as sweet as the iPod if there Creative and others hadn’t pioneered that space first, I think not.
In a perfect world someone like Apple would step in and build something If they took the components in the Mini, added a small LCD touch screen, gave it appropriate usability testing, OSX, and a <$800 price tag, they’d make billions. I know I’d find the money somewhere…
Tags: computing platform, hardware, innovation, laptop, mobile, mobile computing, pepper, pepper pad, tablet, technology, ultra portable