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Take a tablet

It’s scary, but like a lot of our revolutionary technologies – computer voice recognition, light-based processors, and hands-free communication devices to name just a few – the tablet PC was born in the Star Trek universe.

It’s scary, but like a lot of our revolutionary technologies – computer voice recognition, light-based processors, and hands-free communication devices to name just a few – the tablet PC was born in the Star Trek universe.

There aren’t that many tablet PCs out there just yet, but sales are slowly picking up as Microsoft is releasing more tablet software to back their release of Windows Tablet XP and companies and individuals are becoming more aware of their capabilities and appeal.

A tablet PC is kind of like a big PDA, only with a larger screen to write on, and a lot more hardware. The vary in size from about two credit cards – micro tablets – to full 14 inch monitors, and can hold pretty much any kind of hard drive and processor that a laptop can handle.

Factories are already using them to replace clipboards, as workers tick off boxes and fill out e-forms that travel through wireless networks into the company mainframe.

Executives are being given tablets these days to take to meetings, as they can be used to take notes, store presentations, and do just about everything you can do with a laptop or desktop these days.

The consumer market has been a little slower to emerge, but individuals with vision are using tablets to take notes and write down ideas, as well as to download and read tablet-friendly versions of daily newspapers, magazines, books and other media. You can also watch television shows and movies, play games, and do almost anything else you could on a laptop or a PDA. You can lay them flat and write on them like a pad of paper, or stand them up using a built-in base and use them like a notebook.

The hard drive, processors, and Internet connection devices are built-in, and some models come with some kind of keyboard as well. Your tablet can also dock with your desktop or laptop to keep your information in one place and backed up.

Microsoft CEO Bill Gates is a big fan of the tablet concept, and recently announced that Office 11 for the XP operating system will be launched with a compatible version for tablet PCs.

As a result of this support from a leading software manufacturer, and the fact that a lot of businesses and consumers are looking seriously at tablets these days, most companies in the PC game are putting some kind of tablet on the market – despite the fact that only about 675,000 tablets will be sold this year, which is about five per cent of the current laptop market. With tablets only in their second real year of sales, they are ahead of expectations, but still well behind the rest of the PC market.

To keep up to date on what’s going on in the world of tablet PCs, visit www.tabletpctalk.com, www.tabletpcdeveloper.com, and tabletpcbuzz.com.

Internet fraud triples?

According to the FBI, reports of online fraud reported in 2002 were triple the previous year, with over 48,500 complaints. The majority of those complaints relate to auction fraud, and were reported to the FBI’s Auction Fraud Complaint Centre.

The total dollar loss was estimated to be about $54 million US, compared to $17 million in 2001. Online auction fraud accounted for almost 46 per cent of all complaints.

The agency also received almost 37,000 complaints relating to things like unsolicited e-mails or spam, illegal child pornography, and computer hacking.

As more people do business online, the number of fraud reports is expected to continue to increase in the future.

What makes it so difficult to curtail fraud is the fact that the perpetrators often create fictional online identities and use public computers. In addition, they can use and throw out older and less expensive computers to avoid being tracked. The more advanced scammers use various techniques to keep their identities a secret.

One way to prevent Internet fraud is to check with the FBI and RCMP (www.fbi.gov and www.rcmp.ca) to find out what scams have been reported recently. Another way to avoid scams is to only buy auction items from established sellers who have a large number of high ratings. Another is to use an online escrow service – a middle man that will hold on to your money until you receive the item you bought and confirm that you are satisfied.

Most reputable auctioneers and vendors won’t mind, and many of them would prefer it because they are protected as well if the customer refuses to pay or return an item.

Some examples include Escrow.com, ePreview.net, and VirtualSurety.com.

Apple’s biggest blunder?

It’s unofficially official. Steve Jobs, the man behind Apple computers, is reported to be considering the purchase of Universal Music Group, one of the largest labels in the business with a huge catalogue of recordings.

Some industry watchers question the sanity of such a move when record companies are experiencing a huge downturn as a result of illegal music swapping services.

Jobs believes that the music file swapping is in the decline as a result of some high profile court cases and lawsuits against the people who swap the files, and the companies that produce peer-to-peer file sharing services who make that swapping possible.

And Jobs is obviously a music fan – how else would you explain the capabilities of the iTunes media player, and the release of the iPod more than a year and a half ago?

Universal Music Group is also in the best shape of any of the big five in the music industry, and was still immensely profitable in 2002.

Owning one the largest music catalogues in the industry could appeal to Mac computer and iPod buyers, as there is bound to be some benefits for customers.

Mac isn’t the only computer company interested in getting into the recording industry. Another rumoured deal has AOL Time Warner selling off its Warner/Chappell division – the second largest music publishing and recording company in the world with 2.4 million songs – to Intel.

Universal’s owners at Vivendi and Warner-Chappell’s owners at AOL Time Warner are selling off their music catalogues to recoup record debts of $20 billion and $45 billion respectively.