Limited numbers of the iTab, a custom tablet PC based on the Mac iBook, are being made available by their manufacture through eBay auctions.
The iTab is built by taking Apple’s 12? iBook laptop, taking the screen off, applying a touchscreen, then flipping the screen around and fastening it on. The whole thing is finished off by putting the leftover screen backing over the top of the iTab, giving it the “rounded white edges.” The image above is a very close approximation of what iTab should look like when constructed. The iTab is not built yet. We will build them as they are sold. And they are going on sell today! We are selling them one at a time, through eBay auctions.
While the concept of using a Mac tablet for music is intriguing, limitations of the iTab make it for first-movers only.
The company notes:
1. The Apple iBook hardware warranty is voided when we modify it to make iTab. Your software warranty is not. They probably won’t even accept the iTab for repairs if the charges are on you. That said, we will do extensive tests on the iBook before modifying to catch any problems with it. Any problems with a computer are usually immediatly visible after these tests. So the chance of your iTab breaking after purchase is lower. If you aren’t afraid of opening a computer up, fixing an iTab is similar to fixing an iBook. All you would need to do is buy a new part to replace the old, remove the screen of iTab, and follow the normal install directions. We will not fix any broken iTabs.
2. No handwriting recognition. The touchscreen technology used in iTab is not compatible with InkWell, Apple’s handwriting recognition technology. There are other input options, though. KeyStrokes is a virtual on-screen keyboard like no other. KeyStrokes provides advanced multilingual word prediction. It can do word completion, next word prediction and even multi-word prediction in any Roman language as well as many other languages. The PolyPredix prediction engine offers many unique, time and effort saving features allowing significantly easier and faster typing. KeyStrokes can reduce typing efforts by 50 to 70%. Try doing that with handwriting recognition! There is also the cheaper TouchStrokes, made by the same company, that is optimized for touchscreens but lacks word prediction. Neither TouchStrokes nor KeyStrokes are included with iTab.
via Axehole
