Forget the PDA, Here Comes the TDA

Roland Piquepaille writes "A French company has just started to sell the Jackito, the first 'Tactile Digital Assistant' (TDA). This new kind of PDA has no stylus, doesn't offer handwriting recognition and has no keyboard. Instead, it is based on touchscreen technology and relies entirely on your thumbs for input -- which are harder to lose than a stylus. And as Jackito has two simultaneous touch points, you can operate it with your two thumbs at the same time, at least according to the company. For an entry price of $600, you'll get parallel-processing capabilities with 7 processors and plenty of brand new technology, including 3ActilOS, a multitasking OS, which is not even referenced by Google. So be warned before purchasing one! However, the approach is pretty unique and I wish them good luck. Before opening your wallet, you'll find some selected pictures in this summary."

bad pricing idea

[tedtimmons]

So it costs $600 right now. After 1/2 million units, they'll lower to price to some unspecified amount. After 1 million units, they'll lower the price to $100.

How would you like to pay $600 for the 499,999th unit? Or (unspecified amount) for the 999,999th unit? D'oh!

They just gave it all away.

[CrackHappy]

They will never get any first-adopters now! They told everyone that after 1 million units it will drop to $100! So everyone will wait, no one will buy it, and it will die.

Bye bye, Mr. Tactile Digital Assistant!

PDA/TDA?

[eeg3]

It's 'not a PDA', but... it's website is jackito-pda.com. Interesting. On another note, using your thumb on the screen is messy, it gets the screen all greasy and dirty. You can use your thumbs on a regular PDA, if you are so inclined. Also, it's powered by AA batteries. Ugh, i'll stick with my lithium rechargable battery.

High Sound quality via Screen!
Apparently the speaker is beneath the screen, that's kind of neat.

This seems to me to probably be the equivalent of a "PDA" you can buy at walmart for $15.

Sony Gummi

[datawar]

Sony has a device called the Gummi Bendable Computer [sony.net] that they've been developing. Input is based on bending the credit-card sized device (made of flexable material) towards and away from you. The design is well thought out, and as an HCI person, I'm actually pretty impressed with it.

If you have access to ACM's digital library there's a good paper on it that was published at the CHI 2004 conference.

Story Submitter is a Blog spammer as well

[Anonymous Coward]

And the slashdot editors keep falling for the same old reciepe [slashdot.org]

Piquepaille is still spamming here it seems, did you also notice the pictures he has lifted from other peoples webpages (you dont think he takes them do you) , do you think he has explicit permission to display them on his site and by do so profiting from them (by advert revenue) ?
there is a reason photographers and graphic designers exist and its not to support some leecher/pirate /plaigarist like Piquepaille [slashdot.org]

Hmm, let's see....

[Spyro VII]

including 3ActilOS, a multitasking OS, which is not even referenced by Google

Which can be taken to mean that this OS doesn't exist.

1. Your $100 or 100 deposit will be paid into an escrow account until your order is delivered. 2. Your deposit is refundable on request. In this case, we will deduct 8% to cover bank charges.

I'm sorry but something about this escrow account and deposit reeks of a scam. And if that wasn't interesting enough, I should note that the domain was just registered on May 28th of this year, which doesn't seem to be a long enough time for something to be created. I wouldn't give them my 600 bucks.

Not even internally consistent...

[SamBaughman]

"7 processors" = 1 microcontroller (M30803) ("Logical processor") @ 20MHz and 1 DSP (MSP 430) ("Analog processor"), both released in the 2001 timeframe + 5 "Automata" inside an FPGA (write protection/addressing windows, main timing control, access control, button control, and LCD processor ... or touchscreen process control, graphic control/LCD clipping, memory optimation/bank switching, main timing control, and main bus interfaces, depending on which [jackito-pda.com] page [jackito-pda.com] you check.

Pretty bad when you're not even self-consistent.

I agree - it's a scam

[shamino0]

Offering a bait-and-switch price of $600, only to find that this price is without any display whatsoever. After adding a display and memory, you're now up to almost $800.

And then they only accept payment via PayPal. So you have no legal recourse when they take your money and disappear.

And their product description looks like a whole pile of feel-good platitudes with absolutely no technical content whatsoever. Their FAQ goes on at great length about how styli are evil, but the site says absolutely nothing about how you enter text into the thing. My guess is that you can't. Assuming the device exists at all, you probably can only enter text while it's docked to a real computer - making it completely useless for everything I rely on my Palm PDA for.

Seven processors and a custom OS? <SARCASM>And if the program is not stopped, the computer's processor will be placed in an nth-complexity infinite binary loop - which can severely damage the processor if left running that way too long. Unfortunately, most novice computer users will not realize what is happening until it is far too late.</SARCASM>

Click here [trendmicro.com] before replying that you don't get the joke.

Even if it's not a scam it's way overpriced.

[argent]

I wouldn't pay $200 for that.

Look up the M30803. It's a 20 MHz CPU!
The MSP430 is a digital-watch class device.

20 MHz processor. 2.5M RAM, 320x240 display, serial interface, you can ignore the FPGA and "internal bus"... if the CPU is so anemic they can't be any good. I've got a faster PDA with a better screen and more memory that cost under $150. AND you can actually get software for it.

Re:Don't think it's a hoax

[chris_mahan]

Did research too.
www.novinit.com redirects to www.jackito-pda.com

check out

http://www.novinit.com/produit_uk.html

Just to keep you guys reminded that france telecommunication and computing are relatively independent of what's going on in the US, so it's highly possible.

Re:HOAX / SCAM - $100 needed for "Escrow Account"

[Anonymous Coward]

In any case the company is real, and is really funded with 1.439.867,88 EURO. for those who speak french see:
http://www.societe.com/cgi-bin/recherche?rnc s=4228 99021&vu=1

can i write text on it?

[kyknos.org]

how do i write larger texts on it? with my fingers? no matter how advanced the computer is and no matter what else it can do, plain writing of text is still one of the most important tasks. at least for me.

Re:I smell a hoax

[itwerx]

Most commonly used Office apps (e.g. PhotoShop :)) will write a header in the file by which you can identify what created the file originally (or at least touched it last).
In this particular case there is another way you can tell they are faked, and that's simply the quality of the images. If you open one up in an image editor and zoom in you can see that the plain surfaces aren't textured realistically (they're too perfect) and that there are some slight alignment errors where the "author" was cutting and pasting bits of the image.
I.e. a clever troll...

Re:taking notes

[System.out.println()]

If you use a cellphone's automatic word detection (i.e. if you type 75274 it looks up a dictionary and guesses that you want "slash") you can get pretty decent WPM, actually. (Assuming the words you're looking for are in the dictionary, of course.) Well, I can, at least - more than enough to hold up an end of an AIM conversation at any rate. Any sufficiently clever input scheme can make any number of buttons usable. (For example, the Fitaly keyboard for PDA's is an excellent stylus-based input scheme.)

Re:HOAX / SCAM - $100 needed for "Escrow Account"

[ctxspy]

If you look at the website they have a whole range of pictures, all rendered. Very well in fact. I'm pretty certain this is not case of "photoshopping a newton 2100"...

These guys went so far as to design some of hte interior pieces in some sort of cad program (think http://www.rhino3d.com) to make it look realistic.