Comfort Zones: More Road Warrior's 'Truth About Tablet PC'

At $1650 MSRP this thing had best be a winner. I'm glad to hear that HP's quality has not taken a dive since the Compuke merge. I have an HP laptop that is so extremely useful that it's very nearly my desktop replacement at home.

Paul, you obviously are a 'home' end-user. HP made crap for the corporate world until they bought up Compaq. Now HP servers and laptops/tablets can compete with the 'big-boys'.

Great post, Marc. Very insightful in regards to comfort zones.

Rob Bushway
Tablet PC MVP

Steven,

I have been both a home and institutional user of compaq and hp.

In 1994-1996 I worked at a computer lab at my university. We had a roomful of noname clone machines from pc vendor du-jour, a roomful of acers, a roomful of macs, a roomful of SGI Indys, and a roomful of HPs. The clones, while aging, never broke. The Acers were always down, and acer tech support was awful. The SGIs were as bad as the acers, including the tech support. The Macs were about 50% better than the Acers/SGIs and had good tech support. The HPs were rarely down, and when they went down the support was perfect, frequently realizing that those calling in on the institutional line don't need to be run through the normal battery of "is your power cable plugged in" questions, and dispatching a support technician. That experience is what colored my view of HP quality.

I admit that I've been out of the HP loop since then, as I've done little direct tech support since -- preferring to build my own pcs. However, in my limited experience using compaqs from 1992 thru 2003, I've noted that compaq machines are difficult to work on, and the tech support is generally clueless (Q: "On what versions of Red Hat do you support CPQxxxx raid controller for box xxx?" A (paraphrased): "D'wuh?"). Their bios software is bloated, and serves mostly to ensure you have to purchase tech support.

Perhaps HP hasn't been much better, but it'd be hard for them to be worse.

Imagine if you didn't need to switch batteries. Wouldn't that be great!

Shalexim

Paul -- You're shocked at a $1650 MSRP? I just paid $2299 for a Toshiba M205 and it was worth every penny :P

Enjoyed the blog. I too, recently flew from ATL to HNL (A 9+ hour flight) in which the people in front of me had their seats reclined. My laptop didn't have a prayer of opening up for that whole trip, I had to use my Palm Pilot and a Stowaway keyboard to get some work done.

Looking forward to the next flight now that I've got a tablet to work with :)

I, too, am quite satisfied with my TC1000. It's small and light, which lead me to forgo the corporate-standard Dell brick for this "renegade" notebook. At home and the office it's plugged into an external monitor, and I use both screens simultaneously. The keyboard is fine, and the CompactFlash slot is used often.

Quibbles: The first-generation processor and video card are anemic (both addressed in the TC1100), no infrared or Bluetooth, the internal 802.11b setup doesn't support Cisco's LEAP authentication, so I have to use a PC Card at the office, and swapping the battery requires -- get this -- a tiny screwdriver. I've had many such screwdrivers confiscated by airport security types; fortunately vendors keep supplying me with new tiny screwdrivers. Also, the headphone jack is located at the bottom of the screen when in portrait mode, so listening to music while reading/working on a flight is difficult, but, as mentioned by Marc, to conserve the battery it's best to use a separate music player.

Now to find another couple grand in the budget for a newer/faster model...

Thanks for the good feedback, everyone...

One comment for RAY: re

> the battery requires ... a tiny screwdriver

Au contraire!!! Do what I did on Day 1: take that screw OUT and THROW IT AWAY!! Since the battery is held in solidly by the little slide-switch latch aboove it, the screw is absolutely unnecessary!! Speaking as a very heavy user in all sorts of conditions, and as a frequent battery-swapper, I assure you I have never regretted getting rid of that screw. [CAVEAT: this at least applies to the TC 1100, UK model that I have!! I would hate for my advice to mess up someone with, say, a TC 1000, US model, so test out this advice first!]

First I want to talk about Acer. I bought an old acer desktop four years ago. It is still alive and kicking. Last year I upgraded it to 256MB RAM and it can run Windows XP smoothly. Now my parents use it and they are really satisfied.

Secondly, I am a Toshiba M200 owner. The battery life is 4 hours, not bad. I don't have an extra battery so I bring the plug thingy with me. I take the machine with me in the class, taking notes and do the organization stuff. I prefer using portrait mode when writing. The keyboard is a bit small but all right for me.

One thing I don't really like is the glare of the screen. It hurts my eye. Lack of CDROM can be a problem but it doesn't occur to me. About the music player thing, I never use Toshiba as a music player when in battery mode. I would rather use my SONY MD player.

Last thought: it will be great if the tablet OS can have speech recognition in Chinese.

Small space, no room to work?

Toshiba Libretto. Mmmm-mmmm good. It's the size of a hardcover book, the battery lasts 5 hours full blast, and you can't buy them any more because everyone wants desktop replacements instead of small long-lasting laptops that are actually useful.

Having recently looked at vitually every Tablet on the market I believe that Electrovaya.com out of Winipeg, Canada has the longest lasting battery in the industry. Their Scribbler SC 2100 has a run time of up to 9 hours and their computers have all the upgrade option to the outdoor screen which is amazing for anyone wanting to relax by the pool while on a business trip.

I have also looked at most tablets on the market back in July. However, working for a University in Canada I have been privy to have seen more than just a few system types. I have actually handled the SC2100, as has a co-worker of mine. We noticed the tabs that hold the scrbbler to the keyboard were not sufficiently strong enough, as they broke off while moving them.

In my work, I find having the built-in bluetooth was very handy - as of six months ago, only the Compaq TC1100 had bluetooth built-in. Futher, I use the rubber case for the TC1100, and can wear the tablet when I inventory systems using a bluetooth barcode scanner.

I have no plans to become Borg yet though. ;)