Sunday, May 21, 2006

Fujitsu LifeBook P1510D

Certainly one of the coolest, sexiest yet functional super-small notebooks available in the US. The specs and power make this machine good enough for business and school use while Windows XP Tablet Edition puts the touch screen to good use with better support for pen and voice input compared to non-Tablet Edition OS P1500 models. The screen's resolution is high enough to make web browsing and working with MS Office documents pleasant though the 8.9" LCD may cause some eyestrain when run at full resolution. If you need and want one of the lightest notebooks on the market, don't want to compromise on specs and find the Tablet features useful, the P1510D should be on your shortlist despite a few shortcomings (lack of an optical drive, poor viewing angle and not the most colorful and sharp display).

Pro: Size! They don't get much smaller than this while maintaining display readability and keyboard usability. The touch screen is convenient and you need not use a special pen. Windows XP Tablet Edition software makes the most of the pen. Good performance and good battery life. An attractive price for a Tablet at this size.

Friday, May 05, 2006

TabletFactory Announces abletMediTools


a medical reference tool for UMPC Tablet PCs for calculating a number of medical equations. Includes a medical abbreviation and acronym lookup tool.

TabletMediTools is the second of a number of personal Tablet productivity applications from The abletFactory, Lifestyle applications.


TabletKiosk ™ Begins Shipping New UMPC Device

TabletKiosk, a leader in mobile PC computing solutions, today announced it has begun shipping eo ™, the new Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) which is the first UMPC device available in the US market.

Powered by the 1.0GHz VIA C7-M ULV processor , a new ULV processor that provides longer battery life than traditional LV processors, eo ™ was designed for ultimate productivity and convenience.

“TabletKiosk is to be congratulated for leading the way in the US market for this new category of device. eo ™ brings together the best aspects of the Tablet PC with ultra mobility, enhanced multimedia capabilities, and a full connectivity suite,” commented Epan Wu, Deputy Director, CPU Product Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. “Integrating the VIA UMPC platform, eo ™ takes full advantage of the VIA C7-M ULV processor’s ultra low-power operation for longer battery life, while still maintaining robust performance for a full range of mobile applications.”

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Take one tablet to improve mobility
ZDNet

Short story is that I am adding a Lenovo ThinkPad X41 tablet to my mobile office, and I like it

The tablet PC is an ideal walking around device, because you don't need toLenovo Tablet PC open it to use it and with an EV-DO card installed I can keep my connection to my company's Exchange server at all hours of the day.

I've been using the ThinkPad X41 tablet for three weeks. It's a loaner from Lenovo, but I'd happily buy one of these because it is light and well-designed. The way the battery is built into the case, which lets me get a firm hold on the computer when using it, is just one of the simple features that has made this thing a lot of fun to use. No other portable computer I've used has been designed to be held like this one, and at 3.5 pounds it is the lightest PC I've used that didn't make me feel like I was missing important features, such as a full-sized keyboard. I like the way the monitor snaps to the rest of the case when using it as a tablet, while the weight and balance of the whole system is more pleasing than other tablets I've tried

My list of essential tablet software to add to the ThinkPad:

  • ActiveWords, which lets you enter commands to run scripts using the pen. It's one reason I've wanted to use a tablet since I saw Buzz Bruggeman demo the tablet version at PC Forum in 2005.
  • OneNote, from Microsoft, an Office add-on that lets you mark up documents with the pen, as well as take notes. If you have to use Office, OneNote will make people jealous of your cool pen computer.
  • Firefox, because. The tabbed browsing is excellent with the pen. IE 7 isn't bad, either, but I prefer greater ecological diversity on my computer.

Samsung 'Origami' Device Hits the US Market
PC World

What Is Origami?

Origami machines run a tablet version of the Windows XP operating system and are aimed at a market niche between laptop PCs and PDAs. The devices allow users to browse the Internet, listen to music, view movies and other video entertainment, play games, and "write" handwritten notes much as they can on a Microsoft Tablet PC device.

Samsung's Q1 has a 7-inch LCD monitor with touch screen functionality and is about half the size of an average laptop PC. At 1.7 pounds it is also lighter, and is less than an inch thick. Battery life runs about 3 hours.

Samsung Launches First Ultramobile Tablet PC
PC Magazine

Samsung Electronics on May 1 launched its Q1 here—not the company's latest quarterly earnings results, but its first ultramobile PC. The device is the first using the "Origami" mini-Tablet reference design from Microsoft and Intel, introduced in March at the CeBIT expo in Germany.

According to officials, small computers, running the Tablet version of Windows, will be available from Best Buy's online story starting May 7 and in stores in the summer.

The device, which runs Microsoft's Windows XP Tablet Edition operating system, costs $1,099 and comes standard with a 40GB hard drive, 512MB of memory and a USB cable. A variety of accessories are available from Samsung for the Q1, including a keyboard, DVD drive and extra power packs.