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Best Tablet PC For Classroom Instruction?
dostert writes "With all of the recent hype of multitouch notebooks, the Apple Tablet, the Microsoft Courier, and the CrunchPad, I've been a bit curious about what happened to the good old pen and slate tablet PCs. I'm a mathematics professor at a small college and have been searching for a good cheap tablet (under $1000) which I can use to lecture, record the lecture notes along with my voice, and post up video lectures for the class. I have seen some suggestions, but many are large scale implementations at state universities, something my small private college clearly cannot afford. All I have been able to find is either tiny netbooks (like the new Asus T91), expensive full featured tablets (like the Dell XT), or multitouch tablets, that really wouldn't allow for the type of precision mathematics needs. I know a Sympodium device would work great, but we really can't afford to put one of those in each room, so something portable would be ideal. All I've been left with is considering an HP tx series. It seems nobody has created a new tablet like this in quite sometime, and HP, Fujitsu, and Dell are just doing incremental updates to their old designs. Does anyone have experience with this?"
I also had one (two actually, but I'll get back to that).
I fell into the "I'm in love with the idea of a tablet, but I don't really need one" crowd. Sure, it was novel at first. Sure, it was fun reading comic books (I was just getting through Marvel's Civil War, boy was the tablet format great for Comic Books).
Battery life, viewing angle in light, thickness, and a few other issues really ended up making the whole experience painful. One thing that the TC1100 got right was it's swiveling, detaching keyboard. It stowed away behind the tablet while not in use.
The pen, while better than other touchscreen models, lacked a lot for me. But, to each his own.
But if you really want a touchscreen device on the cheap there are touch screen kits for most popular notebooks, just search on ebay. There are also touchscreen monitors bellow the 200 bucks, these can be hooked up to the existing desktop in the classroom and serve just right.
I would advice you not to set high hopes for resistive touchscreens, they tend to reduce the lcd brightness and contrast while incresing reflections and diffusing the image, if your really really want this implemented try before you buy.
Seems to me all college classrooms these days come standard with dedicated pc, projector, document cam, and other goodies. If math apps would benefit from a stylus, why not attach a Wacom tablet? Good bang for the buck until tablet pc's come down in price.
Most of my reading now is done on the web, and I'm anxious for a touch screen tablet to make that activity seem more like reading a book. But I can wait for the price to come down to within my price range. I am a math teacher, and I have two kids to feed.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
Not a chance, we've got a lab worth of each of several different HP models and we have had huge problems with the TC1100. The biggest issue we've had is completely unrepairable (outside of replacement). You see, the power connector is connected directly to the motherboard (it's not floating) and is right next to the keyboard and video card controllers. If you bump that power cord at all while it's plugged into the TC1100 then you'll have huge issues. The problems start out small, but once you've damaged it then just normal operation of the tablet will quickly lead to a completely useless computer.
I have been using my ASUS R1F-K049E since August 2007 which works like a charm. I got tired of doing "Insert >> Symbol" for all of the greek letters, which for any engineering equation there's bound to be about 5 per line. The operating system that came with the tablet PC was Windows Vista Business, which doesn't have the bloatware and Windows Media Center, so it wasn't as resource intensive. When Windows 7 came out I've been using it since beta, and even with 2GB of RAM it works great.
When you're looking for tablets, be sure to study how the tablet is designed and how it vents. My ASUS has one large vent that vents outward when you're writing (turned 90 degrees) so it doesn't burn your hand when you're writing for hours. Also beware of what's on the side of the tablet as well. If you hold the tablet against your chest while walking around in the halls while writing (or rushing between classes like I do), then you want to be aware of what buttons you're pressing. My ASUS had a problem because I kept hitting the DVD drive's eject button. But I solved the problem by taking that drive out altogether and getting a second battery to put in. It extended my battery life from 2.5 hours to about 8 hours - which is pretty cool if you're on a long plane ride across the US.
Also, I've tried a few tablets out after I bought my ASUS. The old HP ones didn't have very good response when writing and I kept on having to stab the monitor with my stylus to get any response at all. The ASUS one is pretty awesome, but since it's not multitouch, you can't use your fingers. Also the Fujitsu one's pretty good too.
Lastly, only get a tablet PC if and only if you don't require video acceleration. Most tablet PCs only come with 'integrated video", which is only great for business graphics, but anything that has to do with gaming or modeling/CAD work will make your computer lag. Hope this helps.
As a side note, there are a bunch of posts like this about the TX series in this thread alone, yet they've all been modded down. I wonder why.
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Ugghhh...by all means stay away from HP tablets in general. Their hinges are complete crap, and their mainboards go out continually. HP & Compaq (same company so that's a shocker!) some serious quality control issues. The Lenovo tablet PCs are vastly superior in comparison.
I've been using the Livescribe since June of this year in my meetings, and it'd be perfect for this use, particularly if you're the lecturer (vs. listening to the lecturer in a large hall).
Livescribe records your handwriting and your audio, synchronizes them, allow you to play back your audio from any point in the recording by touching the spot in the notes later (on the notebook, or on your computer), and allows you to upload the notes and audio to a community site. It does a really good job at recording your voice, and there's room for many hours of it on the pen. It's a good writing instrument (much better than the cheap-ballpoint tip in the "Fly Pentop" which uses the same handwriting technology, but doesn't record audio, isn't as polished an experience).
You'll want the pen, and a few of the hardback journals (so they provide something solid to write on as you pace or stroll).
the 2GB pen (vs. the 1GB) is $199, can find it at any Target, and comes with one Livescribe notebook (you'll need to use Livescribe's special paper, but they offer a number of good, flexible and classy options).
Much lighter than a pentop, and arguably less fragile, less of a theft target.
Only downsides:
These things don't stop the pen from being quite useful. More info at Livescribe site.
The pens fail because they have a aaaa battery in them that doesn't last forever (yes that's 4 a's). It's soldered at both ends rather than on a spring or something.
I tried to modify a pen to have a replaceable battery on a spring and all that - I should have just soldered a new one in because with all the fiddling I did I managed to break the tip.
Also, the pens may not be designed to come apart, the one I took apart was one that had been altered by someone else, badly, once already and it came apart easily. But they had melted the plastic and it wasn't really straight anymore and didn't fit in the pen holder. Also the melted bits didn't look good.
The pens on those don't have tilt compensation, the calibration program sucks, and the standard driver doesn't support pressure sensitivity, though the hardware does.
There used to be a driver for photoshop that supported the sensitivity for that pen, but since the company was sued out of business by a patent troll, I haven't been able to find the driver. Also following the directions to get the pen working in Ubuntu have failed me numerous times.
The digitizer is slow (lags behind your drawing) and as I said the calibration sucks so you can expect the mouse to be a few centimeters off all the time.
Still, it's a great computer apart from being obsolete and having an inferior digitizer, so it's kinda a deal if you can find one used.
We tried a few times, if you don't catch and secure them fast enough then the traces inside the board get cracked. Catching them fast enough is impossible if you hand them out to students (the entire purpose of having a whole lab of them).
I got a TX series exactly two years ago and I thought it was awesome until the NVIDIA GPU took a shit this week. Supposedly it heats up enough that after a while the BGA solder joints go bad. Others reported the same symptoms I had (first the wireless went out, followed by total system failure), so I believe this to be the issue. Conveniently for HP, it's out of warranty and they don't have to do jack shit about it.
The ENGLISH speakers even called me back today and said they'd get me a case manager so please hold for a few minutes.
I turned down the TV and waited, hoping it meant they'd actually do something for me, only for the case manager to tell me that since there wasn't a recall on the TX in particular for this problem and since the warranty is expired, I would have to pay to fix it.. you know, the exact same thing the Indian call center told me earlier in the week.
Waste of time.
I didn't raise a shitstorm with them (maybe I should have) but I won't give them another dime of my money unless I hear that they really get their act together.
So what are the advantages of a true tablet PC over a laptop with the screen turned over? I imagine the latter still has a touch screen, and has the advantage of optional keyboard input.
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Or you could bypass the issue all together and go with a "digital paper" solution. I think the questioner is mistaken asking "what is the best tablet PC", and instead should be asking "what is the best method of achieving what I want". Solutions like Oxford Papershow use a form of patterned paper (very faint) that you draw on with a bluetooth-enabled pen, and it then transforms pretty much any computer into a tablet. You have to use it to get a real feel for it, but it's incredibly easy to set up (at least the Oxford Papershow tool) and you can use it on as many or any computers you want. Arrive in lecture theatre, plug in USB dongle, spend three minutes setting it up and you're good to go. You buy the initial device (pen and USB dongle combo) for around UK£100, I think. Then pads of the special paper are around UK£10 for a pad of a 100 sheets, I think. It's an expense, but it's upfront and works out okay actually. Certainly better than a lot of ongoing licences depending on how much you use. You can even print out copies of your slides onto the special paper in advance so that you're drawing on your powerpoint slide or whatever. The whole thing can be recorded, you can use it as a normal interface like a mouse, it's really surprisingly good.
The above sounds like a sales pitch. I have no connection to the company though our university is now trialling the product. I would rate it as better than spending the money on a tablet for a lot of people's needs. Windows only so far as I know, but I could be wrong.
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I've one and boy it is really HOT. and slow. the Athlon x2 is a slow hot beast, and I'm hating it with full force. Comes with a decent video card, but the multi touch price premium don't justify the purchase.
also the touchscreen is not compatible with anything adobe, as they don't have a licence for the wintab api used by photoshop and gimp. this is a SERIOUS drawback.
Can handwriting recognition be used only as an indexing tool? There is no point in changing what you actually see in the handouts.
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This is really good advice here. I've used a rebranded (Smart) Wacom tablet in my classrooms for several years now. It takes about a week to get used to, and you sometimes need to push/encourage newbies to keep using it. Once they get used to writing on it, it's fantastic. Beyond that, you aren't tethered to one spot in the room.
The only downside is, because of the surface, drawing accurate curves (ie. graphing anything that's not linear) is pretty hard. I have a whiteboard that is pretty low glare, so I project directly to the white board, and use a marker to draw over the projection when I have to graph.
I just bought a tablet this year, and there are some nice things about it, but a wireless tablet is a great low cost (around $300/each) solution.
I'd highly recommend you check out Classroom presenter from the University of Washington. It's what I and some friends have used previously with our tablets (currently a tc4200 but previously a tc1100) to give in-class presentations.
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