August 2004 - Posts

• Don't leave just yet - I'm just lost, not gone

  Sigh. So many great tablet topics to discuss, yet so little time. It's the middle of August, and the last month has been a run up to our academic year starting at work. So apart from tons of other system upgrades, I'm preparing about 130 desktops for our labs. It hasn't been easy. In fact, just about anything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong. Our hardware restore solution (you know, one of those "reboot and you're back to a working image" deals) doesn't work with the SATA drives on the latest batch of desktops. The new software equivalent has a somewhat buggy console that has already messed up a remote deployment to about 36 workstations. A clean Windows XP install didn't properly set up the system partition on two of the three master images we're using, so we had to spend quite a bit of time troubleshooting and repairing. One of our two spare workgroup laser printers died. What appears to be recent (SP2) changes in the way Windows XP behaves after copying a Sysprep configured image have led to some annoying glitches. My work desktop is slowly disintegrating. Outlook had to be reinstalled several times, IE is shaky, and the whole thing is super slow. No, it's not spyware - it's just approaching that one year mark of entropy. We have new laser printers for two of the labs, and we're still a little unsure about their stability and reliability. We've had a bunch of equipment stolen from a storage room, so now we're physically short a few PCs for the labs. Sadly enough, it was an inside job by somebody outside our department that had a legitimate key. My CD duplicator - which I use for large amounts of those handout guide book discs - is being moody, and at a time when I have to press hundreds of CDs for the season. My annual review is coming up, and I still have to send in my own bit for that. However, that particular task has been pushed back to "next week" about a month ago, along with many other things, just so that all the imminent problems - the ones with deadlines this week - can be dealt with. Of course, when it rains, it pours, and you just hold out your pitcher and make lemonade out of the mess. However, at this point, the best I can do is to drag myself home at the end of each mind-blown day, stare at the Olympics on the telly, and poke at my newest (and first) tablet-enabled application (* hint, hint, I'm not a developer by trade, now learning a new language, a new platform, the app is cute, so please please at least feign interest *). Even my gaming is suffering! Anyway, once this week is over, hopefully things will become a tad (you know, just a little tiny bit) less hectic, and I'll be able to dive into my stash of earmarked topics and stories. Stay tuned! Posted Aug 17 2004, 10:04 PM by peter with 5 comment(s) Filed under: Tablet PC

• Doom 3 does run on a Tablet PC

  Alright, the title says it all, so here you go: Here's a really good one, too: the latest, high tech, long lasting, super fast, fully loaded, rugged yet light tablet device. Available as soon as 2145. Free trip to Mars not included. See, this was really the big question about Tablet PCs all along. Not if you can compile on it fast enough (you hardcore developers should just go get a nice 64-bit desktop). Not if Longhorn would run on it (by the time decent beta code hits, we'll all have much better machines anyway). The real question was whether Doom 3 would run on it. This is my 1.5 GHz Banias M200, 1 GB of memory, a few small system performance tweaks (but nothing major like turning off themes, for instance), all the Toshiba utilities running, OneNote and some messaging apps in the background, the latest SP2 build available to testers, and stock Toshiba video drivers. The in-game settings were left to the "detect my hardware and suggest" defaults, so I'm sure more performance could still be gained. Of course, it doesn't look quite as smooth as on my older desktop (which has a crappy GeForce FX 5200 video card, and still runs the game at the same resolution as the tablet, just with slightly higher detail). Oh yes, and gaming with a touchpad is pretty scary, and the singleton Toshiba speaker sounds as bad as ever. Before you ask, no I didn't try any crazy tablet feats like trying to run the game in portrait mode or with the pen. That's just foolish. The M200 is pretty much more of a notebook anyway, so it was non-tablet mode all the way. Next up, will Half Life 2 run on the tablet? Stay tuned! Update: so yes, after playing for a while, I do have to admit that the game bogs down during firefights. Further performance tweaking is probably necessary. That or a processor upgrade, since nothing much can be done about the video card. Posted Aug 03 2004, 08:45 PM by peter with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Tablet PC

• The C3500 does have S-video out, not RCA

  This was already talked about, but the original pictures of the C3500 that showed the yellow RCA video out seemed to depict engineering models. Joshua from Averatec posted newer pictures, which correspond to the units you can now see at Costco, so here's a visual recap: Posted Aug 01 2004, 09:41 PM by peter with no comments Filed under: Tablet PC

• Averatec C3500 sightings, now in Delaware too

  First of all, let me say a huge Thank you! to all the invaluable field operatives reporting sightings of Averatec's hotter than hot C3500 from places like Sacramento, CA, Winter Park, FL, and Newport News, VA. Keep those reports coming! Looks like us tablet fans out on the east coast are getting the model in local stores as quickly as promised, and quicker than I had expected. Now I can add the local Costco store in Delaware: It's all squished in with the rest of the notebooks in the endcap area, but it's the only silver one, so it already stands out that way. The neat new tablet demo was running, but the tethered pen didn't work at all - the screen just didn't react to it, even after a suspend/resume cycle. Does the Averatec officially use a Wacom digitizer? It seemed the same as the abused TC1000 at my local Staples, which also had the generic tethered pen next to it, but couldn't be used with it due to the different digitizer. And just like most stores (apart from the new Best Buy fixtures), the tablet was under a restraining bar, so you couldn't lift it, hold it, or convert it. Definitely a shame. And the left Shift key was already missing. Charles even submitted a quick first impression review of the C3500. "the latch to open is in the center and like the Acer, uses the same locking mechanism to lock the screen down as well as lock the screen when in the tablet mode." It's funny how that's relative. I was going to say the latch on the lid is like on the Toshiba M200, but stiffer. I did like the hardware Wi-Fi on/off switch, and Charles explains that the "Menu" button actually brings up a software utility menu - neat. I couldn't try anything like that because of the locked down demo that was running. "The touch pad is marked to show you can drag/scroll top to bottom and side to side (a feature that the Toshiba had and did not clearly state and nearly drove me crazy as to why my cursor was shifting so much 'on its own'." Yes! I love that too! Please - and this goes out to all OEMs - mark the touchpad if it has scrolling enabled by default. It drove me crazy on the M200 too, for days! Read the rest of the review for further details. So far it still seems that the C3500 is pretty solid given its low price point. At $1,279.99, it definitely seems like a great bargain, and it's out just in time for back to school buying, so I really hope this new model finds many good homes this fall. If you have a Costco nearby, definitely go and check it out. Posted Aug 01 2004, 09:31 PM by peter with 4 comment(s) Filed under: Tablet PC

• The state of Tablet PCs at Staples

  Here's one more place that some of you might be able to go and check out a Tablet PC in real life. Well, a few of you anyway. Make that probably very few. Staples has this new "Business Expo" thing (essentially a section of the store geared toward business customers) going on at a handful of locations around here (in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania). Supposedly, this business section is supposed to expand over time to more locations, but apparently not as fast as Staples had hoped. Also supposedly, all of these locations should have one interesting display (although at least one near me does not). Yes, you guessed it - a Tablet PC display. And one that's a lot better than any other common public tablet display. Well, for the most part. Here are some pictures from the store near my house. (Click on the thumbnails for larger, yet still fuzzy cameraphone pictures.) As you can see, it's a really nice kiosk, with three different tablets: the Toshiba M205, oddly enough the rugged HP tr3000 (for the field worker types?), and...Compaq's now obsoleted TC1000. No, that's not a typo. It was also the only tablet with many keys missing, the original pen gone, and the tethered generic Wacom pen next to it of course didn't work, because the TC1000 has a FinePoint digitizer. All in all, it looked very dismal. Worst of all, the price tag said $2,299.98! For a TC1000! Come on, the newer and much better TC1100 bought directly from HP starts at $1,849 these days. Talk about sticker shock! HP definitely got shafted here, because anybody looking at the device will quickly turn away and never go back. There doesn't seem to be any clear indication as to how widely this kiosk will eventually expand, however, many Staples stores are supposed to have at least the Averatec C3500 by the end of the month. Posted Aug 01 2004, 08:28 PM by peter with no comments Filed under: Tablet PC