What are Those Tablet PCs that Stock Traders Use?

Crash McBang asks: "Watching CNBC, I notice that shots of the NYSE trading floor show traders scribbling madly on what appear to be wireless tablet PCs. So what kind of hardware is this, and what are they scribbling?" I've been wait for tablet PCs for a long, LONG time. Hopefully they will be hitting the home market soon because they would be much more ideal for portable tasks where even laptops proove bulky and uncomfortble.

check with google

[nocent]

Hey, how about doing a google search [google.com] instead of positng a Ask Slashdot?

Plenty of answers right there on the first page of results. To save you time, I'll even tell you that most of them are Windows CE (the horror!) handhelds.

+1 Righteous flame

Re:check with google

[DNS-and-BIND]

Yeah, I have one of those - it sucks. You have to turn it upside down and shake it to reset it when it bluescreens.

Re:check with google

[cloudmaster]

Mine's stuck on this plain grey screen. Where'd you get a blue one?

Casios

[nelsonal]

Their made by casio, and really only run a few very specialized apps. The feature on them, from CNBC when they were introduced, only showed a trade ticket program. It was pretty impressive, it connects wirelessly all over the building to the traders computer showing what trades customers wish to make. It won't stop them from being largely replaced by computers though, most of the volume is already done electronically, through SuperDOT, the traders make good TV so there here for a while.

Re:SonicBlue ProGear 1050

[kzanol]

that'd be the sonicblue progear. it's no longer sold so you wont find them being advertized. nevertheless, there's a couple of places you can get these: www.mira2go.com or have a look at the usergroup at yahoo.com: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/progear/. not too fast but still a great device for reading ebooks or surfing from bed :-) - I'm writing this on my progear running win 98. btw, linux support for these things is great, some drivers are currently linux-only

Don't know about NYSE, but Fujitsu makes one

[trentfoley]

Last Thanksgiving, I took the family to visit my Grandma and lots of uncles, aunts, and cousins. One of my cousins is a Doctor in a hospital in Louisville, KY. Knowing that I was going to be at my Grandma's house and that I was a computer enthusiast (geek?) he brought along a prototype system he was evaluating with other doctors in the hospital.

It was a Fujitsu tablet with a pc-card 802.11b card. It was running W2KPro. It didn't have handwriting recognition, but the interface looked polished enough to where you had little typing to do while using it -- mainly selecting from lists. Of course, there was the pop-up (over) keyboard when needed. He said that it was a god-send. They were tying it to the hospital pharmacy for patient medications as well as other aspects. I hope to see him this coming holiday season to see what progress has been made. I'd email him, but he's a Dr. and I can't read his typing.

The NYSE guys are actually using etch-a-sketches.

Re:Don't know about NYSE, but Fujitsu makes one

[MaxQuordlepleen]

My employer has deployed these Fujitsu tablets for customers in the automotive industry (car inspections). They're pretty cool, they run Win2k not WinCE, if I remember correctly they have 500 Mhz processors and 128 MB RAM. These units are almost two years old now, so probably the state of the art has progressed.

The bad news? They cost us about $6500 CDN plus peripherals (docking stations, extra batterys, hand scanners, and fold-out keyboards).

Fujitsu & Viewsonic

[aztektum]

Fujitus makes some of the things I've seen on CNBC, so if you're looking for a specific one it's probably them.

I had a bookmark to a distributer that dealt w/ older Fujitsus, but I seem to have lost it, so yeah. Try eBay under the laptop category and select Fujitsu as manufacturer, they're under there. And try their site [fujitsu.com]

Also Viewsonic makes the "SuperPDA" Viewpad 1000 [viewsonic.com]

These things are out there, you just have to look. New stuff is expensive and older (ie. cheap) stuff isn't gonna be anythin' special.

If that fails you as always, just do a Google search.

Re:Fujitsu & Viewsonic

[leviramsey]

Yeah, my dad does some inspection work for HUD. He uses one of those, running Win98 to do the inspection. All you'd need is a PCMCIA 802.11b card to make it wireless (he currently uploads his inspection results via dialup).

We used these in the Navy

[whoda]

I was on a submarine, and we had these PC-tablets for some testing.
They were made to replace the standard log-books that the Quartermasters used for the ships logs.

I can't remember the manufacturer, but, there was a monochrome LCD, which attached to a small laptop like computer.

There was a pen-like stylus which you could use on the screen to select and highlight items. Finger pressure didn't make it work.

The screen swiveled and latched to make it look like it was a 'tablet' PC, BUT, you could re-orientate it, because there was a keyboard underneath.

We had custom software developed by Johns Hopkins(Pretty sure it was them). It ran Microsoft Windows for Pen computing.

The software we had was basically a break down of ships functions. You selected the items as necessary, and then it produced a 'log-book' entry, dated/timed, and stored it on a removable hard disk-drive that was classified, and I 'think' was also soft-encrypted. By 'soft', I mean we didn't have to load our actual crypto tapes into it daily. It was some sort of hardware encryption.

At the end of patrol, these disk drives would be sent in with the rest of the logs.

It was a very robust system, we had crashes, and goof-ups, but somehow, we never lost a log entry.
If it died, we were told to put in one of the other disks, and that all the data was recoverable. And much to our astonishment, it was.

We were using these back in 1995-6, and I'm not in anymore, so I can't give better details than this.

OH YES, I did forget. The Microsoft Windows for Pen computing had Solitaire included, so you could look like you were standing an alert watch, but really be screwing off!

Re:We used these in the Navy

[LordofChaos]

I used these back in 1993-1994 at the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. They were replacing a paper system used to inspect bridges with an electronic system because 95% of the data never changed and they could save time only typing in the new Data. The system was pretty cool and I got to write most of the code on the laptops and field test it. They were made by Grid systems [grid.com]. They still make Pen based computers some can be dropped and some are waterproof. At one time they were owned by Tandy, who also owned Radio Shack.

trading handhelds

[evocate]

Handhelds have been in use on various open-outcry exchanges for a long time. In Chicago, traders from various firms have been using handhelds with wireless IP since 1996. Applications on these handhelds calculate theoretical option prices, track positions, and record transactions. The biggest problems with them have been network reliability and battery life. Exchange floors tend to be pretty noisy as RF goes. And trading sessions last about 6.5 hours, so most handhelds need a battery change at least once a day. Some traders wear big battery packs on their belts to keep their handheld powered throughout the session.

This [fujitsu.com] line from Fujitsu seems to be a favorite with Chicago trading firms.

Tablets on /.

[Piquan]

Ironically, I saw this article while experimenting with my new tablet that I got from an ad on /. Runs Linux, has handwriting recognition, comes with dev tools, cost $600.

Look up at the ads now and then! www.mira2go.com [mira2go.com]

Tablet PCs do exist

[a1291762]

I live in Australia, but I was in the US last year in January. I saw a Tablet PC that you could buy in a store in LA. I'm not sure where in LA though :)

It ran Windows, had a regular x86 processor (I don't think it was Intel but it was definitely regular Windows (I think it was Win98)). It had a touchscreen with a stylus. You could operate it in landscape or portrait mode. It even had a 'dock' thing it plugged into so you could use it on a desktop.

From memory, it was not that much more than a top-of-the-line laptop. Not bad considering how much more useful it would be compared to a laptop.