Fidler has been waiting a long time for the day when portable electronic tablets become a viable news publishing medium. In the early to mid 1990s, he ran a research lab for Knight Ridder that tried to push forward the concept, but the newspaper company shut it down. But perhaps the coming year will be a big one for tablet publishing. There's still a long way to go before the technology is more acceptable to the public. Fidler says the screen technology for the tablets still is far from ideal.
Additional power is pulled only when a change to the image is called.
Fidler is sticking to his predictions that portable electronic tablets will be widely available for consumer use, at affordable prices, by early in the next decade. The column will return on Monday, November 30. To receive these regular reminders, sign up here . If you prefer to receive the entire column, you can have it delivered to you as an HTML e-mail message whenever a new column is published. Sign up here .