Digital Shiv

Stantum Slate PC beats everyone else to the punch: a proof-of-concept tablet made from a Dell Inspiron Mini 10

By runagate

Liliputing has the scoop on this new project by Stantum, which I am under the impression is the R&D arm of Jazzmutant, makers of the brilliant but horrendously overprices Lemur, and though I’m still poking about for more info I just had to pass it along here:

“The Stantum Slate PC is described as a “proof of concept” device, and while there’s a page for ordering an evaluation unit, no price is listed and it’s not clear that the Slate PC is meant for mass production. Rather, it’s a demo product that shows what a Stantum Slate could be… I’m  guessing that Stantum would be able to order its own netbook guts from Taiwanese PC makers if there was enough demand for this thing. But that doesn’t make the demo units any less cool.

The Slate PC features a multitouch screen that can handle 10 simultaneous touch points. it features finger-pressure detection and can handle both finger and stylus input. It supports Windows 7 out of the box with no special drivers required.

The tablet measures 10.3″ x 7.1″ x 1.2″ and weighs 2.3 pounds. It has a 10.1 inch 1024 x 600 or 1024 x 576 pixel display and 2 USB ports. There’s no WiFi, Bluetooth, or webcam, which makes the demo unit suddenly seem a little less exciting.”

What makes this especially exciting news is that it’s a Windows 7 multi-touch control surface ready for gestural control out of the box.  Hear that, fellow Sensomusic Usine users?  What’s even better is that Stantum’s screens are pressure sensitive, allowing for 3 dimensions of control at minimum:  horizontal, vertical and pressure.  This is the Holy Grail of control surface interfaces for digital music.  I wish they’d mentioned this when I was emailing them about buying their developer kit:  this is almost exactly what I’ve been looking for.  The lack of wireless options is an annoyance, as you don’t want to try the kinds of 100+ automated parameter, three-dozen VST plug-in real-time DAW projects that I do on a little Mini 10 so it’s obviously better suited as the controller of my 4Ghz quadcore PC tower, but I think I can cobble something together via OSC, which Usine supports natively.

The only thing that I can easily imagine being better is the prototype I’m working on with my partner, Armz, or somehow mounting this thing on a flexible stand and adding a 3-axis accelerometer so one can move the tablet itself around to add another 3 dimensions of easily-expressible automation data.

Kudos, Stantum!  You finally met my expectations and beat everyone else to the punch!

Now let’s see if the price is in the Jazzmutant tradition of over-the-top expensive or actually in line with the hardware under the hood.