Both Carl and I have had ultra portable machines in the past, so we were waiting with baited breath for the Jobsnote announcement. Even though the design compromises make the MacBook Air a not likely candidate for either of us, we still wanted to see it. Yesterday, we popped into our local Apple Store to grope one. They had one front and center (well actually left as you were facing the store from the mall) on a pedestal in the front window, and two on the very front table (with a black MacBook in between.) The first one was being examined by someone with a concierge next to him, so he was either serious about buying, or doesn't have "we're just looking" down yet. The other one was free, so we zoomed in to play with it. The hardware is very nice. Solid like the rest of the MacBook lines. Good surface to the case. Very subtle rubber feet (which don't like like they will come off, unlike the crappy ones on my D600.) We didn't quite get the knack of the multi-touch touch pad. We could make it zoom in the image previewer, but not much else. I can see how it would be useful. The machine didn't have anything except Leopard on it, so we couldn't really get a good feel for the speed of the machine. We did play around with Finder, and some of the built-in apps, and it didn't feel that slow. We then moved to a Mini which had Office 2008 and iWork on it, to try to decide if OSX is something we could reasonably live with in a personal machine. Unequivocally, their hardware is brilliant, and a bunch of the services/features of the Mac ecosystem seem like they would make the machines a joy to use. However, I have a Windows ecosystem, and have to decide not only if the Mac itself can do what I use my personal machine for, but also if it will work in my home network environment. One of the things we looked at pretty thoroughly was the pdf support. The Mac previewer app has the ability to reorder pdf pages, which is something Carl was quite interested in for his work with HOPE. We also found that the previewer, Office, and iWork all had export to PDF options. That's not as universal as PDF Creator or Acrobat, but should cover most of what I would need to create a PDF from, and included is always nice. I still have to think long and hard about what I want from a new machine, but a Mac is definitely an option. However, I think with the limitations the Air isn't an option. I'd probably be singing a different tune if it had been a Tablet.
GottaBeMobile has the official press release for Dell's new Latitude XT tablet. The specs look nice: - active plus capacitive multi-touch screen in either led-lit or dual CCFL
- 12.1 in screen
- less than four pounds
- Core 2 Solo or Dual ULV (ok this may be a bit weak)
But the price is out to lunch. Starting at $2499? The Latitude D630 starts at $1199 (with today's sale), but I quickly got it to $1,952. Assuming I choose similar options, and they cost a similar amount, that ends up with a $3,252 tablet. Recent forays into specing Lenovo, Toshiba, etc. have generally been less than $3k (unless I went crazy.) Maybe we'll see huge discounts on the Dell Tablet, but I can't imagine too many people will be buying it for $3k. [Update] Direct2Dell has posted as well. Most of their commenters are outraged at the price, too.
Gizmodo has a video of the Dell Latitude XT Tablet at Oracle OpenWorld. The hardware is starting to look really nice, and they showed that it will be multi-touch enabled. I just hope there's an active digitizer under all that multi-touch goodness. Ink on a touch screen just sucks.
Dell's Idea Storm has a post about having a Dell Tablet. Go add your vote.
JK (and other's I'm sure) have been talking about this new special edition Tablet PC that Microsoft/Asus have cooked up. Apparently this is a limited run, and won't make it into production. It does make you wonder if there will be any new Tablets coming out in the next few weeks? I'm guessing that if there were any, they would have been announced at CES, but what do I know.
I'm currently sitting in the front seat of my car waiting to pick up Trey, with my laptop in my lap wishing for a mobile PC. My current work machine is a Dell Latitude D600, and while its reasonably good for being able to do real work on it (even Visual Studio) it is not really mobile. The battery life is less then 2 hours, and its pretty damn big. I've tried a few times using it on the plane (when I stuck in coach) and its impossible. Right now in the car, I can't have it directly on my lap, because there's not enough space between me and the steering wheel. I'm currently on the search for a replacement for my tablet. The Fujitsu Lifebook P1610 looks fantastic for most of what I need a mobile PC for. Small (2.2 pounds, 8.9" WXGA screen.) Great battery life. Convertible. The reviews of its touch screen sound like it is actually usable for inking (although I'd want to try this out for myself.) I have three huge questions: is it too small? does the touch screen really work (compared to an active digitizer)? is it fast enough? The other really interesting option at this point is the Lenovo ThinkPad X60. Core Duo. 12" SXGA+ screen (although these have been backordered for months due to problems getting the screens). 3.7 pounds. Up to 7 hour battery life with the extended battery. Oh well, its not like I have $2500 to spend on one today. I do find it interesting that the 10.4" screen size (like my dearly departed Acer) is no longer present in the Tablet space. There's clearly a deisre for small Tablets (see the UMPC and Fujitsu) but there's nothing between there and 12". Oh well.
Craig Pringle shows us how you can use one of the higher SKUs of Windows Vista and a Wacom digitizer to have a true ink experience, including TIP, flicks, and ink in One Note. Maybe I should put Vista on my desktop, just for this...
Since I killed my Tablet, I've been thinking about what I need in a personal machine. This is the start of an idea for my ideal machine. Now this is basically to replace the primary usage of my tablet (One Note, email, web surfing, blog reading/posting, light document editing.) I've come to recognize that if One Note had a full featured Pocket PC version (i.e. with complete ink support), then I would almost be happy with a Pocket PC, although I think I would like a big one that doesn't exist. I'm thinking something like a 6" or 7" screen, at least 800 x 600. I still want it to be thin (see my post on how thick the UMPC felt), maybe 1 cm? 8 - 12 hours battery life. Built-in WiFi. A fair amount of storage built in (1 GB.) 2 SD card slots, with at least one of them being SD/IO. USB host support, at least drivers for keyboard, mouse, and storage. Well, its a start at least.
My tablet, that is. Dumped a glass of tea on it. I'm pretty danged sure that the motherboard is toast (even after drying there's that tell-tale smell or burnt electronics.) Luckily, the drive is still good. I stuck it in a USB case, and it seems just fine. While I was at Fry's picking up the USB case I took a look at the Samsung Q1 UMPC. I found it to be quite thick and heavy. I also couldn't figure out how to get it into portrait mode. As much as I think that this kind of thing might be an ideal device for me, I really think this one has a long way to go.
I just saw a Best Buy "Back to School" ad on TV, and it featured a Tablet PC. Of course they called it a Convertible Notebook, not a Tablet PC, but they did say you could jot notes directly on the screen. They featured the Gateway Dual-Core model, which I see isn't billed as a Tablet PC on their site either. Color me excited.
Roy Osherove is running a geek desktop contest. The grand prize is a Premium MSDN subscription (that's a seriously cool prize.) Here's my entry:  Click to view a larger size.
Dave the Lifekludger was loaned a Tablet PC, and has set about experimenting with using it with a mouthstick. One of the complaints Dave has is that the tablet pen attached to the mouthstick is a bit heavy, much more noticable than the PDA stylus he has attached. Dave definitely needs one of the pens that comes with my Acer, the one that slides into the silo on the screen. Its about the same size as a typical PDA stylus. I couldn't find a picture, but Acer still sells is for about $15. Of course Acer's accessory site sucks (just choose TravelMAte C110 series and the select the TM100 - STYLUS SLIM PEN-111.) Good luck with your Tablet PC, Dave.
I opened my Tablet this morning (at the office) to find that most of My Documents are missing. A quick check via Remote Desktop shows me that the files are still on our server back home, but for some reason are no longer on my tablet. One Note has all of its info, because of the new cache in ON12. Luckily I don't have to do any real work on my tablet today, or I'd be hooped.
Cool. I got invited to the Vista Tech Beta. Now I can really destroy my tablet by running a beta OS and a beta office suite. I'm pretty sure I've seen on someone's blog that they installed Vista on a TMC111 like I have and it went ok. I'll probably blow away my dead desktop first anyway.
One of my questions about the Oragami devices has been somewhat (ok, not so satisfactorily) answered by Chris Pratley. He doesn't really adress the ink question very well. We'll see if he responds to the comment I posted. It seems that the Oragami secret has been so closely held that not even the Office Program Managers knew that it was coming until a few weeks ago. Which is pretty crappy, because Scoble had apparently seen a wood mock-up of one a year ago.
I haven't yet chimed in on the whole Oragami thing. I just finished watching the Otto Berkes video on Channel 9 (am I the only one who thinks he looks like John Stamos?) The device is compelling. The price is fantastic. The battery life is disappointing. A gen 2 version running Vista is definitely in my future. My biggest question is how well does ink (specifically One Note) work with the touch screen. Do you lose anything compared to the Active digitizer that a normal Tablet PC has? Maybe some of the high end Oragami devices would have both a touch screen and an active digitizer. Star Trek PADD, here we come.
I'm trying desktop search again, this time the enterprise version of Windows Desktop Search. My hope is that this version will be less intrusive than the MSN version. Visually they appear very similar, so we'll see. I do like the functionality. I searched on a term this morning, and it returned notes from One Note, email messages, and source code that had that term in the comments. Cool.
Lifehacker has been posting a series of PC desktops, trying to find the most useful. One of the desktops from user Rooze had a screenshot of their monthly calendar on it. I've been thinking how useful this would be, but why does it have to be a screenshot? I've got web access to my calendar through Outlook Web Access (OWA.) If your organization uses Exchange, or you have a hosted Exchange account, you probably do too. Heck, you can probably do something similar with a Yahoo calendar. Thanks to KC Lemson's blog entry on OWA URL parameters, I was well on my way to figuring it out. Calendar monthly view: https://server.company.com/exchange/useralias/Calendar/?Cmd=contents&view=monthly
Calendar weekly view: https://server.company.com/exchange/useralias/Calendar/?Cmd=contents&view=weekly
Calendar daily view: https://server.company.com/exchange/useralias/Calendar/?Cmd=contents
For the tasks, I found the Next Seven Days view to be the most useful. Active Tasks seems like it would make more sense, but it includes Tasks which don't have a due date, which to me means someday/maybe: https://server.company.com/exchange/useralias/Tasks/?Cmd=contents&veiw=Next%20Seven%20Days
I will probably not keep this much information on my desktop. For one, I usually have Outlook open, but this might be useful once in a while. For another, the 1024x768 resolution of my Tablet doesn't lend itself to this much information. Maybe I should just have the Monthly view? Here's a screenshot with the monthly calendar view, daily calendar view, and tasks (yes that's right and actual productive day today with no meetings scheduled!!)
 Click for a larger viewBy the way, here's the wallpaper behind the calendars.
Lora asks what it would take to make someone give up their Tablet PC for a regular notebook. That's a toughie - job change, and your new employer won't allow you to purchase a tablet
- you need a high res screen, and that 12" Toshiba doesn't work for you
- you realize that you only swivel to tablet mode once in a blue moon
Honestly, I can't imagine giving up my Tablet. I just love being able to hold it in slate mode for: web surfing, watching movies, taking notes, reading email/blogs, etc. Of course my tablet doesn't replace a development machine. I need that high res, high performance machine.
Is this the killer productivity app for Windows like QuickSilver is for the Mac? Yesterday I listened to the JKOnTheRun podcast where they interviewed Buzz Bruggeman from ActiveWords. I just installed the demo, and I have to say this is pretty sweet. Basically, it monitors everything you type, and is able to act on special keywords. It sounds really simple, but in the quick amount of time I've been playing with it, I can definitely see how it can improve productivity. I may be buying this one for all my machines.
I do have some initial nits to pick. The biggest one is that its not LUA friendly. Bad, bad, Active words. All of the .aws files it installs are really just MS Access databases, and the user needs write access to them. It also creates a USERS directory under the program directory, and then for each user under that it stores their settings. This really needs to be in the Application Data (or Local Settings\Application Data) portion of the users profile.
As I've mentioned, I'm going to participate in the Office 12
Beta program. Its been quite a while since I've rebuild my
Tablet, so I've decided to rebuild it before installing the Beta.
Here's the list of apps I'm going to install (at least so far.)
There's a new Firefox extension out for OneNote users. This allows you to select some text in Firefox, and shoot it over to OneNote. IE users have had a similar powertoy for quite a while. This one works great.
Note the hosting is done on a really cheap free site, where you have to click through an ad page to get to the content.
I've been using w.Bloggar for quite a while, but its times like this when I want a truely offline blogging client ( that supports dasBlog, preferably.)
I pulled several
articles out of the aggregator
worthy of comment but don't have anything better than OneNote to store offline posts in. Maybe I should find an open source C# client, and hack in some offline support.
p.s. My handwriting either sucks, or MS's handwriting recognition still leaves a lot to be desires. Of the four posts I wrote, none converted to text without a lot of help. Of course the several glasses of beer and wine didn't help.
Don’t you love First/Business class?
Chris gives out a lot of information on the new OneNote Mobile. He keeps saying SmartPhone. I hope its not limited to phones, and will also work on Pocket PCs.
I posted a couple of new wallpapers to the Tablet PC wallpaper
page. These aren't my normal matched set of 1024x768 and 768x1024
pages. These are both 1280x1024, but are made in such a way that
they are usable on a 1280x1024, 1024x768, and 768x1024 screen.
 A bunch of girls wallpaper
Jessica Alba, Jennifer Garner, Natalie Portman,Sandra Bullock, Princess
Leia, Drew Barrymore, Faith Hill, Shania Twain, etc.
 Jennifer Garner wallpaper
The logic behind these is that I rarely have everything minimized, but
I will often have lots of overlapping windows, with bits of desktop
poking through. Now you can probably see something nice.
Chris Pratley
has blogged about a hot new feature in One Note 12: optical character
recognition. Images that are printed to One Note (now included),
scanned into One Note, or pasted into One Note are searched for text
which is added to the search index. Even images that are already
in your notebook when you upgrade will be OCR'd. This is really
cool.
Microsoft has posted a new Knowledge Base
article 905515,
telling you how to fix the problem where your TIP button on the taskbar gets too
big. This is a great one, but has been around for ages.
| 1. |
Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then
click OK. |
| 2. |
At the command prompt, type regsvr32
-u %programfiles%\common files\microsoft shared\ink\tipband.dll,
and then press ENTER. |
| 3. |
Restart the Tablet PC. |
| 4. |
Click Start, click < | | |