Tablet computing is here to stay.  The market adoption realized by Apple and it's IPAD launch earlier this year has sent manufacturers scurrying for positioning in this market.  But how do things shake out and where does document and drawing distribution fit on these devices.  This series of articles and you tube videos will take a look at these devices and how they fit into handling our everyday documents and engineering drawings as delivery and information retrieval devices.  Is Print Media Dead?  Certainly not but history is showing a dramatic shift towards digitized delivery of content.

Comparing eInk, IPAD, Touch PC devices for document distribution

This video introduces our series of videos investigating eInk, IPAD, Touch PC and other devices as replacement devices to paper documents and drawings.

The Players...

The major players evolving this year and beyond, fall into a few categories.  

• eInk book readers
• Apples proprietary IPAD
• Google based Android and Chrome tablets

The eInk based book readers, made popular by Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Sony and some others have been around for some time and have gained strong adoption in replacing traditional print media.  Amazon now reports that shipments of ePub books outpace hardcover sales. While these devices are positioned more to sell content from the providing companies site, their is movement in providing hooks to open these devices up for your traditional content.

These devices have tremendous battery life, employing a battery measurement known as page flips.  Each page flip or change draws power, but the display remains on the device without drawing power.  Hence, ideal for reading non-dynamic content like documents and drawings requiring visually finding some specific content.  Viewing of documents and drawings is very pleasant on the eye and can be viewed both indoors and out in direct sunlight.  Great for the construction worker needing his full library of records readily available for reviewing construction details.  

They are inexpensive and backed by some very mainstream market players.  Most support some ereader format and traditional PDF and TIF formats.  

Document Navigation, a requirement with large format documents is slow compared to the interaction one realizes with the pinch zoom devices like the apple IPAD.  Performance and navigation should improve to the point where these devices, now sub $200 will be very well suited for document and information retrieval once publishing components are aligned.  

Apples IPAD, Launched earlier in 2010, satisfies the early adopters with a highly interactive device and a rich third party software environment, that makes it a fitting solution at launch.  A 9.7" LED display and Apples renowed touch interface design makes this a higher performing device for document or drawing navigation in either PDF or TIF formats, search, annotation, and downstream distribution.  With a slew of third party tools providing syncing and PDF display, solutions can be built around these devices, however at a much greater cost than the Google or eInk options.  IPAD devices start at $495 and based on memory and 3G options, can approach $800 per device.

Syncing your PDF Documents onto an IPAD 

This video shows how to sync your PDF documents onto the Apple IPAD. Our continuing series of wireless document devices for Digital Paper environments.

 Securing your Documents with an Apple IPAD and cloud hosted Redaction services 

This short video shows how to remove sensitive credit card information from your documents using an Apple IPAD and cloud hosted services

Google Android (or Chrome) based Devices, will make a significant impact as they work their way into worldwide markets. The openness of the Google platform and popularity being realized in it's phone based Droid markets will make Google based devices a viable option.  Already, we are seeing units in the 7" range below the $100 price point for color based devices.  Although designed for PDA devices, Android offers an interactive and viable platform for document and wide format drawing distribution and review.  Look for a slew of major manufacturers to introduce units in the $80-$200 price range, color and well positioned to give Apple a series threat outside it's proprietary customer base.