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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."
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.
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 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.
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.
Many Dothans died to bring us this information.
Do not touch -Willie
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
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
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.
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
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.
As a college student, I'll tell you that the Tablet PC coupled with Microsoft's OneNote software is a killer app for the Tablet PC. I was able to type notes, draw pictures, record a lecture as an audio clip (annotated with written notes), and grab a couple of web screenshots into a note file for my class, then catalogue and index the notes and make it all searchable. That is incredibly powerful.
That said, the recognition software is NOT crappy, it's remarkably accurate considering my terrible handwriting, and any mistakes are also easy to fix. This is assuming you have Windows XP SP2, which has updated TIP/Recognition software in it. The initial software wasn't nearly as robust.
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.
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.
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.
I wish i had mod points to mod you up.
This is especially useful because all my notes come in PDF format so it works incredibly well by opening the pdf in acrobat and editing it straight.
Also, being a CS/Math major, writting complex equations is alot easier then on a keyboard.
There is quite a high demand for these kinds of things in the medical field where physicians do indeed need to use a computer standing up. They need to be able to roam from one exam room to the next without having to drag a cart full of paper medical records. They also tend to work long hours and have low tolerances for having to do un-godlike things like swapping out batteries or returning to a docking station to get a new tablet.
All of which typically would mean that this might be a welcome advance in the medical field except the software is still all crap...
No battles to the death are recalled. Mumpsman can hit to attack and cause brainsmashing.