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Viewing angle: a breakthrough in Tablet technology for the WLAN Event

A new Tablet will appear at the WLAN Event next week (Olympia, London, Tuesday and Wednesday) and most of the details are secret. But here's a teaser which actually impressed me more than the secret stuff ... a screen which can be viewed from different vertical angles.

Our photo shows exactly how different the two displays are. Here you can see the old model, with the narrow angle of view, lying furthest from the camera on the table; and the new one lying nearer.

The trouble with the typical Tablet is that the display is designed for use on a notebook. That means, horizontal, or Landscape format. So they design the LCD in a way that gives you good colour if you look at it square on.

Then, of course, you pick it up and want to write on it: and the Tablet becomes vertical, or Portrait format.

Suddenly, your left eye is getting the dark image you get if you tilt the normal display too far away from you, and your right is getting the bright image that you get if you tilt it too far towards you. It's not nice. It's actually very disconcerting, and what makes it bad is, it's really hard to work out what's wrong. You just have a vague impression that your eyes are tired.

There's a very, very tiny angle where the difference between the two is acceptable, but if you've got the thing on your arm, it keeps moving. And of course, you do have it on your arm.

Worse still, if you have it in Portrait mode, and you try to show it to someone else, you'll find that only one of you can see what's on the screen.

That's the problem that Motion Computing will show you the fix for if you go to Olympia next week - Wednesday being the day that they'll show it. As to what else they'll be talking about, I'm sworn to secrecy.

And don't forget, at the end of Wednesday, you can meet the Hunky Mouse after the show ...