Thinking of buying a tablet PC, any thoughts?
After all this writing about direct input and control, I figure I really aught to buy a tablet PC and see what the experience is like. OK I’d still love to get a SmartBoard but lets start small and practical.
Has anybody had experiences using or owning a tablet PC?
There’s some sexy ones by Fujitsu and Toshiba. There’s one HP. Lenovo is now selling them but I have no idea if they are any good and am somewhat concerned since they are new to this area. There’s also some pen based Mac clones out there but of that I am even less knowledgeable.
Many seem oriented primarily towards document creation and are thus thin, light, but underpowered. I’d like something with good horsepower for music creation, good screen real estate (1400×1050 ideal but rare), while mobility is less of a priority. A small number provide touch input in addition to pen, that seems cool, although perhaps the finger prints would drive me crazy!
For OS on the PC, the choices are XP Tablet or Vista. I’ve read that the tablet support for Vista is quite good but that not all flavours have it.
Any thoughts?
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:19 pm
I recently bought a Lenovo X60 tablet with XP installed. It’s a nice device, but it’s extremely expensive for what you get. The handwriting recognition is impressive, but typing remains faster and easier. Microsoft’s OneNote (their tablet office software) looks nice, but tends towards unusable - it doesn’t seem to allow spelling corrections on handwritten text, and seems to require keyboard use for some functionality.
I would recommend getting an ordinary tablet (ie, Wacom input device).
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Hey Erigami, thanks for the comment.
I should mention that I don’t think my primary usage would be for hand writing recognition. That’d be nice for little bits but I am more interesting in it as an integrated direct control device. I thought this article was instructive: (http://www.geardigest.com/2007/03/14/ how_to_get_the_most_out_of_your_tablet_pc/index.html).
As a UI guy, I imagine it could be handy for making visual notes on designs. True you can do the same with a separate Waccom tablet. I have one stuffed away at home somewhere but I never use it for reasons I’m not sure of. I’m thinking that having it always there and on the viewing surface makes a difference (but maybe that’s not true in practice).
And it definitely would be uber-cool for controlling Ableton Live!
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Hm, the thing with a Tablet IMO, is it’s limited use. It’d be great for the music production software you use, and like you mentioned, notes for designs, but other than that.
Do any current tablet PCs have pressure sensitivity? My Wacom tablet has it (like most tablets these days), and it’s great. Some of them even have tilt sensors.
July 31st, 2007 at 7:02 am
Here’s another one to check out…
http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/showthread.php?p=60862
McQ.