I can't say that i am ready to jump on the tablet bandwagon, but if I did it wouldn't be an iPad. I know I risk being left behind by not being an adopter, but tablets just haven't proven themselves primarily because developers don't write important mission critical programs for touch screens, they write them for keyboards and mice.

We recently went live with an EMR (Electronic medical record) at our hospital. As slick as the EMR is, it is written for a keyboard and a mouse. Guess what the docs want, you guessed it; Can we get it work on an IPAD? Oh yes, while technically possible via Citrix it is about as about as practical as mounting a steering wheel on a horse. Can't you teach the horse to respect the steering wheel? Um, no.

We have tried tablets in the past for the EMR. The users get excited about them and once they have them, they collect dust. $2,000.00 state of the art spill proof made especially for hospital settings tablet PC's which never leave their docking bays. What a waste.

All tablets are currently toys, iPad included. If I want toy to play with and have an extra couple hundred bucks burning a whole in my pocket then maybe I will buy one, but why would I want a toy with limitations, like the iPad?

Tablets may some day be a respectable tool for some apps who's developers are willing to write to them, but that will be 10 years out. Then, they will be about as sexy as a Palm is today.

"No longer does an HTPC need to be shoehorned into the confines of the entertainment center."

Yeah but then you have still have IR remotes an IR blasters still keeping the HTPC pretty sticky to the entertainment center. The new tech is slick yes, but expensive for now and there are other limiting factors. It is a nice step in the evolution though.

Domain keys? SPF?

Um, what are those?

Again, what efforts have we made to educate our representatives? If we leave it up to them they can only act on what knowledge they have. So isn't this partially our fault too?

It is easy to criticize officials who make blind decisions from the comfort of our keyboards, but we might as well yell at the TV during Monday night football. The problem is that we are not in the game. You could argue that we cannot get in the game, but have we tried?

...that is just insane. It is no wonder they have issues.

I currently work on and EMR for a health system and I can tell you that they are incredibly complex animals. The workflows in healthcare are complex. Successfully writing interfaces to and from these systems is near impossible (namely pharmacy systems). The best you can do is try to get a central homogenous vendor with good modules which use the same database. You need low turnover to establish and maintain EMR's and while consultants can be handy, that ratio should be flipped.

At any rate I am not dogging the McMaster's work, but there is a huge disparity between products out there. It is a little presumptous to say theirs would have been an alternative to save millions. It really has to do with the mission and the product features.

This seems to me to be just one botched project, or more likely doomed from the start.

I am afraid Hollywood would never allow a movie to be made painting NYCL as a hero. And if that is to much for you to take then... YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!