Blog:: Craig Pringle

Over at GBM Rob has unpacked the Dell Latitude XT and recorded the experience.  While the video is not yet up on the site he has posted up some of his initial thoughts.  These include:

• I love the crisp look of the tablet: black, silver, and a nice charcoal finish. It is very professional looking and well designed.
• It is thicker and heavier than I imagined. The screen feels thicker than the Lenovo X61, but I put the screens side by side and they are exactly the same thickness. Go figure.
• Even though it feels thicker than I imagined, it fits quite nicely in the Tom Bihn Ristretto Messenger bag. The Lenovo X61 would not fit in there without some major pushing. So, I'm really stoked that the Ristretto and the XT are a good match.
• It rotates back and forth into landscape / portrait much quicker than other tablets I've used.
• The DLV screen is very bright and crisp.
• As I mention in the unboxing video, there is graph paper type grid that is slightly visible when the display is dim and looking at it from an angle. This must be the N-Trig digitizer because I've not seen that type of grid before on any other tablet. It can be seen at various angles when holding the tablet. Seeing that grid will take a little getting used to.
• It is very, very soft to the touch, but I've not experienced any vectoring issues using the active digitizer pen. I barely have to touch the screen at all to activate a button. I've not experienced hardly any fingerprint issues that one normally experiences with a view anywhere / bright screen. The fingerprints are there as one would expect, but nothing like the X61 SXGA or Motion LE1700 VA. I was a little worried about that part and am quite pleased to see that I now have the best of both worlds: bright, outdoor viewable screen and no finger print issues.
• The pen came with 6 tips: 3 blue and 3 black. The blue tip felt like writing on a matte / paper like finish, and was not as fluid as I like. I switched to the black tip, and it felt much more comfortable to write on.

There's more - so head on over to GBM to check it out.