The Endless 8x10 Digital Photo Album

While filling out and signing forms may be te killer app for the Tablet PC in the workplace (or the jobsite), I just discovered what I believe to be the killer app for the Tablet PC during the holidays: The Endless 8x10 Digital Photo Album!

Being the gadget guy and proud new father I am, I have a few hundred digital photos of the twins. Our extended family will be in town this weekend for Christmas, and knowing they'll all want to see pictures, I'm faced with the question of how best to share them all. I could have 4x6 prints made (samsclub.com does them for $0.18, and offers one-hour, in-store pickup). I could burn a DVD. I could downsample them and put them on my iPaq. In fact, because I am a geek, I did all these things. But I also loaded all of my photos onto my tablet and installed Picasa, the excellent, free iPhoto-alike available from Google.

Now when the family wants to see photos, I can set Picasa to slideshow mode and pass around the tablet. People immediately understand how to navigate to the next picture using the directional keys, and the slate form factor is much more living room friendly than a laptop. The images are beautiful and roughly the size of an 8x10 print.