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Review of the 8 Hour Tablet: Electrovaya Scribbler
Lisa Gade, the chief geek over at MobileTechReview.com, reports that they've
just published an in-depth review of the Electrovaya
Scribbler SC2200. "It's a
Windows XP Tablet Edition with lots of the features you'd expect on a high end
slate machine like a 12.1" screen you can write on, a Dothan 1.4GHz processor
and WiFi. But its real claim to fame is the huge capacity 10,200 mAh SuperPolymer
battery which will get you through a work day without a charge."
How long would it last if you tossed linux on it and ran it in text mode?
this thing looks pretty awesome - better than my broken pda :)
does it run Linux?
While this looks like a step in the right direction for tablet PCs, the docking style keyboard looks like a recipe for trouble, it looks like it's dangerously easy to break (snapping off because of the upright screen design) or at least damage the contacts from constant plugging and unplugging.
The burden then relies on XP Tablet edition to get good enough to rarely need a keyboard... something I don't think is likely to happen any time soon. So good in theory, but not quite the magic form needed to bring tablet PCs into the mainstream.
Yawn.
Sales of tablet PCs are sliding downwards, let's stop focussing on a hybrid of PDAs and laptops that nobody wants, and focus on getting 2 120 gig hard drives, and x800s in laptops, and getting microdrives and better-than-VGA screens in PDAs and standardize CIR in PDAs. Hybrids share some of the benefits of both technologies, but are really just watered down versions of both. I guess I just don't see the use, I can understand some situations, an engineer or whatever, but how well would autocad or something similar run on this boy anyways?
Seriously, a battery that big has to have some serious weight to it. Might be unpleasant to carry around. If thats the case, then it might not be so valuable.
I haven't had an 8 hour work day since I was a child laborer. Of course, the only people I see using Tablet PCs typically do about 20 minutes of work per day anyways, so this is overkill for them. Good thing Windows Solitaire isn't a big battery hog.
(Score:-1, Wrong)
I'd rather like one of these the battery life is increadable... or woo shiny - IT MUST BE MINE, either way, i want one.
Programming is an Art. I am an Artist. Does that mean I get to wear a daft hat?
Man, I would have been happy with just not having to charge the battery, but to be able to run with no charge at all, that's impressive!!! :-)
No sig for now.
I can't help but think that, for that pricing and performance, one would be better off getting a more conventional laptop or tablet and keeping an extra battery or two around. It's nice to see a notebook that actually acts like a portable, but sadly the battery life is about the only thing that this tablet has going for it.
Honestly, am I missing something? I don't mean to troll, but what is the huge advantage of being able to write on a pc screen with crappy recognition software? I don't understand where the market for this kind of device is. I would much rather have a skinny VAIO laptop or a new powerbook. Do that many people need to use a computer standing up? Perhaps it's for taking notes? I still can type much faster than my fastest shorthand scrawl...
I understand the need for PDA devices where a full sized keyboard isn't practical, but if the device is going to be laptop sized anyway...
Just wondering.
--
Fairfax Underground: Where Fairfax County comes out to play
Just how many days will it get you through, before its capacity degrades below 8 hours?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Many Dothans died to bring us this processor.
for more than $2000(!), would you really buy a 12" machine, and not, say, a slick Vaio, Powerbook, or ThinkPad?
It's kind of heavy for a tablet. I'm not sure if battery life is more important than having to hand hold an additional kg.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Heck, who carers if it's a tablet too. It'd make a damn fine notebook.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
For work usage, you don't really need more than 1.4Ghz. Also, remember that More Ghz = More Power requirements = less battery life. I can accept waiting 2 milliseconds more for Word to check-up my spelling if it means 2 hours more battery life.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
Many Dothans died to bring us this information.
Do not touch -Willie
I think this could be good for people who aren't as interested in the conventional laptop or desktop.
The question is, which market are they going after?
http://augustwestproducts.i8.com
Exactly how fast must the chipmunk spin the exercise wheel for you to be happy?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Look at the charging time: 5 hours 15 min when the computer is off. It looks like half of the day will go draining the battery while the other half will go charging it. I guess that is normal though. My two hour life compaq takes around one hour to charge.
How does it compare to this?
0 3099MM//ref=pm_dp_ln_e_1/104-3745312-9136713?v=gla nce&s=electronics&me=standard
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00
More likely, she has never gotten 10 minutes from you.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Do you suffer from some shortcoming where you have to have the biggest, err, fastest processor?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Eight hours really is incredible... And I was under the impression that it wasn't possible. Why isn't more effort being made to develop longer lasting batteries? Seems like the 3-5 hour standard hasn't been pushed since the turn of the century, and I'm tired of squinting at dim screens to eek out an extra hour of life on a long plane ride.
and it had a guy in the stairwell writing something on his tablet. The tagline of the ad was something like "For those times when inspiration occurs between floors". The gist of it was that with a tablet PC you are not limited to using a PC at your desk, or some other such stationary place.
What it left me wondering, though, was why not whip out a note pad or sticky note?
The tablet PC has yet to prove itself as a device that is truly useful and practical--moreso than any notebook computer, that is. It may function just fine, and it may be a fine product, but it still seems to have very little actual purpose.
http://www.walkingtaco.com
Not all of us do data entry or network support, sparky.
One of our companies' apps takes a half hour or so to compile on my 2.4ghz P4M laptop, that's an long, awkward, span of time to sit there drumming your fingers in front of a client.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
That's a joke, right?
I highly doubt this tablet was designed with heavy computing in mind. 1.4 GHz Intel chip is more than enough to do word processing, email, watch video, paint, even play many popular games.
I don't know anyone who would get a tablet for heavy processing.
-Derick
Man, my plastic fuck doll is made of the same thing. And I have never gotten 10 hours from her.
Sorry to have to break this to you on SlashDot. She definitely lasts 10 hours, its just someone
else (i.e. the Milkman) is getting a couple of hours of her time every day (if you know what I mean).
http://jesus.everdense.com/
Your username seems fitting.
Because of the way the Dothan (a.k.a. Pentium M) is designed and wired with the rest of the Centrino chipset, it can do more per cycle. In fact, a good rule of thumb for Pentium-M (and Dothans, likewise) is to add one GHz or so and thats the equivalently-rated Pentium 4 speed. There's a good article on Wikipedia with more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_M#Dothan
Keep using your laptop with a three hour battery. It may take me five more seconds to open up MS Excel each time, but that five seconds will be meaningless when your machine has run out of battery power.
From the summary: "It's a Windows XP Tablet Edition with lots of the features you'd expect on a high end slate machine." I can't get to the article so I have no idea of the specs of this and whether or not putting GNU/Linux on it would be possible or plausible.
An 8-hour tablet sounds good, but I'll stick with my all-day sucker for now.
Maybe if they can get the tablet into caplet form and make it last 12 hours, then I'll reconsider.
We just had the annual book fair where all the publishers set up booths and try to get the profs to use their over-priced textbooks. This kind of device was the hot item among the book mongers. They could stand there and talk to you while they poked away at their tablets. Mostly I couldn't see the screens off angle so if they wanted to show me something they had to turn it so it was hard for them to see. Otherwise, it looked like it was convenient for them and easier than using a regular laptop.
- I have cycled through about 6 laptops in the past 4 years and
- I still travel once in a while.
However, I did hear that the charge runs out pretty quickly (i wonder if I'd get as much as 3 hours from that pad these days), and the external batteries can be annoying (warm, and extra gadget to pack).... but some of my coworkers swear by their 2nd or 3rd spare battery for the long haul trip.I wonder if buying the external battery might be a better investment than this new tablet?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Given that a tablet is probably meant to be written on while held in one arm... are there hotspots on these things that slowly cook your arm?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
You look at your needs and you takes your choices. I have a 1.1Ghz Compaq/HP TC 1100 and for most tasks (even including, surprisingly enough, Photoshop), it works quite well.
You can't just compare the P4 (Or P4M) architecture with the P-M architecture MHz-wise. The P-M gets a lot more done per clock than the P4.
Yeah, but there's no bluetooth. Isn't the point of these things to give me more freedom? Well, I hate wires.
Since most corporate desktops are rarely 3.2GHz gaming machines with 1 Gig of RAM (in fact, most of the corporate desktops I use are barely more powerful than your laptop), I would first guess that you are running on a wireless network or cable modem. A cable modem is not a T1 line, after all. And, since it is not a T1 line, it takes much longer to compile.
I totally agree with you... after all this is clearly targetted at real-time 3D modelling (what else would you use a portable battery-operated device for?), so we do need something with quad 3.7GHz Xeons.
yeah.. ok. I'll dish out a whole $200 for that.
You effectively decouple controlling the pen from your perception of what you write. Even with a tablet PC the pen will be in the way. And the wacom tablets track the pen even when it's lifted about a half inch.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Lithium ion is far superior to Li-polymer, Electrovaya's polymer is well known for only getting 200-300 cycles, only a year of use for business... Li-ion typically gets 500 to 1000 cycles with a nicer fade over the life cycle.
Did they mean state machine? I have one of those.
I vote for the Toshiba Portege M200 though. Much higher resolution (12.1" XVGA+ 1400x1050 pixels), faster Centrino (1.5GHz on mine, 1.6GHz on newer versions), SD card reader, PC Card slot, USB 2.0. And a very cool built-in accelerometer that is underused, but there's a demo application available called WinGimcana.
The battery life we got with Scribblers was closer to about 6 hours than eight, but it's still pretty good.
The irritating thing about them is that you have to manually turn the wireless connection on every time you boot the tablet. You can't make it automatic. Very irritating.
In addition, we did a review on one model scribbler, which met our needs (2050, I believe). By the time we got around to ordering them, they had discontinued that model and gave us newer ones (2150, I believe) Every single one of the newer ones has had major issues remaining connected to the wireless network. They are constantly dropping packets. It's possible they fixed this in the 2250, but I'd be careful before buying one.
I do reviews for globetechnology.com, and I wrote a review of an earlier model of the Scribbler, which is here: http://tinyurl.com/4q4do In a nutshell, my verdict was great battery life but a few too many other flaws for my liking.
Judgeing by your comment I wonder if you realize that Tablet PCs are fundamentally pen-based computers. And the pen functionality is VERY slick indeed. I have a Toshiba M200 and its I never get tired of whipping it out in class and using it to take notes. Its really helped my to improve my note taking.
Be sure to use linux tools like apm to configure power consumption on your laptop -- often if you're running a standard distribution these tools are not configured properly for laptop use. More information here.
If you're going to have a 5lb machine, get a refurbished Thinkpad and spent the $1600 you save on something more interesting:
- a Valence external battery (5 hrs more - I have one and it's great for use in a park or on a long train ride)
- an iPod to listen to and a bunch of legal music to go on it
- a weekend at at nice hotel with the wife, four-star meals
- jewelry to distract her from your purchases
- a porn DVD to play on your Thinkpad in your hotel room
- a packet of condoms
Believe me, that's better than having the coolest Tablet PC among your geeky pals.
I would first guess that you are running on a wireless network or cable modem. A cable modem is not a T1 line, after all. And, since it is not a T1 line, it takes much longer to compile.
I do not think that word "compile" means what you think it means.
put on a more efficient OS and it will magically run longer.
Maybe. Maybe not. I think it means option 3 on this link. The Poster was complaining about the amount of time it took to "compile". I was pointing out that there are multiple reasons why it takes apps a long time to compile, not just chip speed.
The eight hour battery life sounds impressive. But what I want to know is, why can't we get that kind of long lasting power out of boring old regular laptops? I don't need exotic features, but it seems that every time I go shopping for a working laptop power is at the bottom of the list, but there are tons of impressive power hogging features that are bundled with the product that I usually don't want or need.
When I'm on the road, typically the only thing I need a laptop for is MS office (writing documents, working with spreadsheets), and occasionally working with some other third party apps like Primavera's Suretrak (which, incidentally, I hate).
I can think of a number power hungry features that I don't want or need, that takes away my battery life:
High-power graphics: I don't play 3d games on the laptop. I have a desktop at home for playing games, and if I'm bored on the road, my phone has enough entertainment titles installed on it to placate me. I don't do professional quality graphic arts work on the laptop. In reality, a 800x600 screen with 16 bit color would be aptly handle my work. So a power hungry graphics accelerator isn't needed, or any advanced graphics features. Also, I often find myself in well lit areas, and it would be nice to be able to easily turn off the backlight on the LCD display to save on juice, but I've yet to see that implemented.
CPU hogging apps: Why is it every time I unpack a laptop, there seem to be dozens of background applications pre-installed? I don't need them, and I don't want them, and I always end up having to spend lots of time uninstalling them. I get this with desktops, too. Windows appears to love including all sorts of unnecessary bloat which gobbles up CPU cycles. If there was some way to get rid of all this crud, I could easily get by with slower (and less power hungry) CPU. I don't follow mobile technology closely, but if I remember the whole hub-bub surrounding Transmeta's Crusoe chip (other then Torvald's name being attached) was that it could husband the cpu's power requirements based on needs of the OS. Something like that would work great for me, since most of the time I'm just typing into a MS Word document which shouldn't require that much in terms of CPU cycles.
Sound: Does anyone really need stereo sound on a laptop? I hardly need sound to begin with, and I certainly don't need to be driving two speakers on my laptop. I'm somewhat of an audiophile, and I like good sound from my home stereo and portable music devices. But from my laptop computer it's more or less wasted. Granted, I can always (and usually do) mute the sound on my laptop to save energy, but it seems that a lot of power is being driven towards something that really only serves the purpose of giving warning bells and beeps. Sure, some people like to use their laptops as portable DVD players while on flights, but for me that's really not a necessity.
Peripherals: I've never used or needed the CD-Rom burner on my laptops. Lately when I need to quickly transfer data from one machine to another, I'll use a USB thumb drive (a technology which I've learned to love!) In fact, I've never used any removable storage drives on my computer while mobile. Yet when I turn the laptop on, I can hear the drives spinning up, sucking power away. On my old laptop I had a secondary battery I could put in the slot where the CD-Rom goes, but I still had to carry around the drive in my laptop bag. That's not to say that I'd never need a CD-Rom drive, but it would be nice if I could easily just turn it off (as opposed to yanking it out of the laptop).
Networking: Wifi is great. There are times when I can and do use wired or wireless networking when the laptop isn't plugged in. But I don't see why the integrated 802.11x device in my laptop needs to be on and taking up power while I'm in flight, or when I'm on the side of the road just trying to finish up a report. From what I understand, the wifi device is always running in the back
The Internet is generally stupid
Just FYI: got the Powerpad 160 first time for a trip to Europe, from the US, five years ago, with a Toshiba 8000 (running MDK, for the Linux fanatics here), and was able to handle movies and my own tweaking stuff throughout a flight from Chicago to Amsterdam (9 hrs), and another leg of 1.5 hrs to London (including change of airplanes) with the original battery on the Toshiba still reporting 100% juice. The best $350 investment in that trip ... of course, before reaching the Red Light District ;)
Last year I had to fly to Eastern Europe, in another two leg trip, and I was "fully covered" with a Powerpad 120, this time for my iBook ...
Both the Powerpad 160 and 120 are still re-charghing fine, and being in one of my briefcases, "just in case", when I travel with either the iBook or a Toshiba 8200 (the devices are not intechangeable :( )
== With enough Will Power, one could move mountains. With enough Brains, one would just leave them where they are ==
Wacom sells the cintiq as well. But I like the ones that do not display.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
I have a laptop for college and it's great taking notes in Word... except for one thing, suppose the prof decides to draw a diagram on the board...
Now, I can open paint and replicate it, but that takes time. It would take a lot LESS time if I could draw on the screen. That is something (most) laptops can't do.
Unless your just planning on using spreadsheet and word I would see most sales in the near future going toward those who want the entire multimedia deal, I would use it as my computer of choice given the oppertunity to trick it out, and of course, run Suse 9.1. New battery technology will help make more then just this lameass product run for long periods, it will help fuel the convergence so I can make a call, organize my stocks and play Doom 3 while riding the A train at the same time. Good deal on the battery but the product its self just issint impressive enough to buy.
Lack of Bluetooth means dongles for wireless kybd/mouse :((((
Also, what is the current status of opensource HWR? Real English (at least) and not any artifical gesture junk like Palm has.. I'm talking at least Symbian, and at best Newton 2.0 level.
someone installed WinXP on a "Etch a Sketch"
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Just a question, have you used a TPC lately?
I rarely use my keyboard anymore. The input with the pen is so good that I only attach my keyboard if I'm going to write something longer than a few paragraphs.
What people have a hard time understanding about the TPC until they use one is that it's not about text input. The killer app is the point-n-click interface. It's so much more natural than with a track pad or mouse stick. Just point and click. It's even better than attaching a mouse.
BTW. This post was composed on my TC1100 TPC.
i have no use for x, so x has no uses.
;)]
sum.xero [damn pen input
Why would you compile code on a lowly single proc tablet PC when the real tool to do the job is a multi proc desktop monster? Its called using the right tool for the job.
A 1.4ghz tablet would be perfect for checking e-mail away from the desk, taking notes in a meeting and marking up a document sent to you for review. I just wish I could convince my manager that I reviewed enough documents and spent time in enough meetings to warrent getting one of these.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
I want the battery.
i have a radio control car which i run lithium polymer batteries in, and a 2200mAh 2 cell pack lasts me just about an hour until the saftey cut off comes in to stop the battery exploding after it loses X amount of volts.
10200mAh would have me running for days on end, or powering one motor or more extra.
whats the exact specs of the battery?
but certainly not network speed. Compilation has nothing to do with network connections. Perhaps you mean if the files reside on an extremely slow network device? Still, even the slowest network imaginable is going to serve files faster than compilers can get through them...
I have to admit, I've been looking at the convertible form factor for TPC's lately and have grown increasingly interested in them for upcoming dental school. I went down to compusa the other day and fiddled around with the averitech 3500 something or rather model. It was pretty sweet and I can forsee how useful it would be to take notes on.
I am also considering the Fujitso 4000 series convertible TPC.
When looking at these I have also asked myself how I would use it in a classroom environment. My research on electronic textbooks has lead to many dead ends. It seems that when electronic versions are available, they're usually wrapped in some proprietary software which renders them mostly useless to products such as onenote and the like. Beyond this, there are options to get electronic textbooks via scanner (opticbook 3600 is nice) or digital camera with OCR step inbetween scan and end product.
I could be easily inticed to pay an extra percentage for textbooks that included fulltext in pdf format, however I see this as a DRM issue that will not be solved in my lifetime.
Does anyone else have any experience with aquiring full text of textbooks? I know there are alot of IT textbooks available in oreilly's safari but it seems that other domains are lagging behind.
"10,200 mAh SuperPolymer battery"
"But its real claim to fame is the huge capacity 10,200 mAh SuperPolymer battery"
I'm looking at some 2300 mAh AA NiMH batteries right now. They cost me about a buck a piece. Put enough of those babies together, and you've got the equivalent of a "SuperPolymer" battery. I think the real innovation here, if any, is the computer's low power consumption. Or am I missing something?
When are we going to see some diversity in tablets? It's easy to find a big, heavy tablet with a 12-15" screen, attached keyboard, all the wizbangs you could ask for ... But when am I going to see a replacement for my Newton, at least hardware-wise? While the Newton wasn't pocketable in the same way Palm Pro was, it was still small enough to have with me all the time, stuck in my pocket or in a small bag/case. For me, it's the perfect form factor- a large paperback book. I want a PDA or a tablet with a 6" 800x600+ screen. I want it thinish, but I'm not asking much- an 1" or under is thin enough for me.
I mean, we have the ability to do it. But no one is. These companies wonder why tablets aren't selling... But when you slap a touchscreen on a laptop with a swivel screen and add $500 to the price you're not going to get many suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hconsumers interested. Not everyone is wanting a 6" tablet/PDA- but obviously not everyone watns the 12" or 14" tablets they *are* offering.
The Sony U50/U70 would be close- but it is so damned expensive. There's no way I'm going to buy a $2500 "PDA," and stick it in my pocket, carrying it with me through the day. But I would be willing to do that to something that cost maybe $600, perhaps with a 624 MHz CPU, 256 MB RAM and only couple GB of flash. CE, Linux or XP, whatever. I'd prefer CE or Linux, but anything would be an upgrade hardware-wise to the PDAs we have today that have a 4" screen on the outset. Nice VGA 3.7"-4" screens, yes, but tiny nonetheless.
So, Apple, Sony, Toshiba, HP/Compaq, Dell, Gateway- if you're listening, PLEASE! Hook me up!
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Etch-A-Sketch! Nothing like shaking the shit out of a $1900 tablet PC until the screen goes blank.
A multiproc desktop monster doesn't fit in the carry on compartment of an airplane.
.exe once in awhile.
I would use a tablet for all those things, but in a pinch, if I needed to fix something on site, I'd expect it to be able to churn out a working
Don't be so friggin defensive.. Sheesh. You'd think this stupid little computer was your kid or something.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
...every new version of laptops they also seek to decrease over all weight. If they wanted to, they would build ten lb laptops with very long battery life, because they could fit in much bigger batteries of newer design, etc, but then people would complain they were too heavy. Marketing catch 22, which will sell you the most laptops with the least number of complaints? People will always want more features, more powerful cpu, more wireless do dads, etc and expect it to be lighter as well. There has to be a tradeoff someplace. Personally, I'm with you on the longer battery life, I wouldn't care if the laptop was a couple lbs heavier if that couple lbs went to a whopper robust battery (or batteries), and also if they would standardize (within the industry I mean) on some generic battery design config. But most people buy new laptops by small weight and slim design as a major consumer point of interest, so there ya go.
"a Edition", eh?
Agreed. I'm not a power-user, and I have a decent-enough PC when I have a lot of video to work with, but my 866 Mhz tablet does fine with DV over Firewire when I've used it. It plays fast-twitch 3D games OK (Q3, Cube), but my most demanding use is usually multitasking a Word doc, PowerPoint (we use it for our students to prepare promos for our in-school TV channels), and editing an audio or video clip. Once a year, I have large Publisher files (yearbook). So far this year, the yearbook is actually easier on the tablet than on our VAIO. Having a vertical page mode is handy for that, too.
Even though I don't need it, the people who work on the yearbook with me find it easier to visualize the finished product.
I agree that tablets are a niche market, but having longer battery life may help expand that niche. Having a tablet in hand for an 8 hour day could be very useful for the teachers (and others) who may not find time in their day to stop using their PC, so it can charge for a few hours.
8 Hours is good, but a 1.4Ghz processor? Not worth my money, I would wait a couple of months to let the better companies one-up them,
You insensitive clod, I only have 2 weeks to live.
Can it run linux?
I'd love something the size of a tablet PC, with the option to write with a pen like it was a stylus. I'd even take something a little smaller. But they're just too expensive... and look at the specs! 40 gig hard drive? 60 gig hard drive? 1.6 ghz processor? Why? All I want to do it take notes, surf the web, IM, and email! Just give me a SD/MMC slot and I can put a gig or two storage in there and that's plenty for me.
And though the hand-helds are better price-wisse, and even acceptible size-wise, they are just lacking in the input department. Writing with the stylus, each letter on top of the other inside a little box? No thanks. Too unnatural.
Is there some happy medium I'm just not aware of?
One of the many things I hate. thingsihate.org
You won't even have time to download all the patches.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
As for this system, the way the keyboard/cover thingy attaches just looks awkward. It has decent specs except for having integrated graphics, but - just like PDAs without flip covers - I just don't understand the thinking that went into this design. It looks like something that would be easy to lose, and much harder to close quickly and put away than a normal laptop or a tablet with a twist lid.
I've had one for almost a year. I got it before Dothan shipped so it's a 1.7ghz Banias. I put in 2GB of Kingmax PC2700, a 60GB Hitachi 7200rpm, and bought a Lacie 4x DVD+/-RW.
_ ID=18021&SearchTerms=M200,MMI,screen
I use it for lots of things. I decided to go to South Africa to find a mate and didn't bring my desktop, so it's been my primary computer for awhile now. I tried drawing with it but I'm still not very good. However my mate is quite good and he likes to draw in sketchbook all the time. Sometimes I don't see the laptop all night. You can see some of it here: http://furaffinity.net/user.php?name=miktar
I agree on the screen being hard to see in daylight, but there's ways to improve that. Have a look at http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC
It's not cheap, but I'm told it does make a good difference and they're a Toshiba authorized servicer so it won't void your warranty having the LCD modified by them. Also they can get rid of that dust that gets inside the screen via the badly sealed microphone ports.
In hindsight the Lacie drive is crap. It was cheaper than Toshiba's CDRW but it can't run on the USB power, it needs to be plugged in. I've seen other laptops like Thinkpads that can power it fine, but Toshiba won't talk to me about any kind of BIOS update or something to increase the USB power. If I was buying one now I'd just get an external 5.25" bay and put an NEC 3520A in it since it needs to be plugged in anyway.
However, putting the stock HD into a 2.5" USB case was one of the best things I ever did. I can't count the number of times I've used it to exchange files with people. It works fine on one USB's power.
The bluetooth is nice, I use it to send things to cellphones and PDAs alot. The Intel 802.11b/g wireless also has excellent range I found. The built in SD reader is also convenient though I wish it wasn't such a hassle to boot off it.
I do play some games on it and the FX 5200 is just barely enough to run things decently. You can go to a lanparty and play Quake 3 or UT 2004 without crying.
Overall it's a nice machine, it's like buying a small Wacom Cintiq and getting a free laptop out of the deal.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Is there any software that can convert
a trackpad into a medium for handwriting recognition?
a key selling feature of these tablet PCs is that handwriting complex equations (eg when sitting in a classroom taking notes for CS/Math/Econ) is much easier when you can just jot it down.
If my ibook came with a stylus and a means for writing these eqns down on my trackpad (and then saving them as an image//handwriting recognition for symbols etc) -- I think the usability would go through the roof...
Any observations/Recommendations?
shooting is not too good for my enemies
I would much rather have a Panasonic R3 than any tablet PC... 8.5 hours battery life, 0.7kg and wifi.
It's useless to talk about a battery pack's ampere-hour (AH) rating without also specifying its voltage. In this case, the Electrovaya battery is rated at 7.2V, 10.2AH, for a total energy capacity of about 75 watt-hours (WH) according to the company's specifications. (The math doesn't work out exactly, but rounding errors are common on laptop battery spec sheets.) Internally, it is arranged as five parallel sets of two 3.6V batteries in series-- five "wide" by two "tall."
This ten-cell battery has almost exactly the same rated capacity as any other ten-cell lithium pack. I happen to have an eight-cell ThinkPad X40 battery for comparison, and it is rated at 14.4V and 4.3AH, which works out to about 62WH. With two more cells, it would hold about 77WH, MORE than the rated capacity of the ten-cell Electrovaya battery.
The X40 runs for about seven hours despite the lower capacity, so it's pretty obvious to me that the Electrovaya machine is not as efficient. It wastes a little more power, but has disproportionately more battery capacity, so it gets a little more battery life.
The lesson to learn here is that mAH ratings are USELESS for comparing battery capacity. They tell you NOTHING about how much energy is contained in battery packs, or how long a laptop's battery life will be. Only watt-hour figures are useful for comparing battery capacity.
I think it's reasonable to suspect that Electrovaya engineered this battery pack to produce a high mAH figure at the expense of efficiency, just like Intel designed the Pentium 4 to emphasize GHz at the expense of performance.
There is nothing to see here. Please move along.
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The /. crowd have learned that MHz isn't the sole measure of a CPU... and chastises others for not knowing that. They're long overdue for this basic electricity lesson.
The comparison I make is:
Bob: I've got 2048 files.
Alice: Wow, that must take up a lot of space!
My first thought when I saw the 10 AH spec was, "I just bought a 4 pack of 2500 mAh AA batteries, are they advertizing that they're no better?"