Blog:: Craig Pringle

The good folks at SlateGlove.com were kind enough to send me one of their SlateGlove to review.  I have a Motion Computing M1400 so I requested the M1400 model SlateGlove.  

This post will record my initial impressions and the installation process.  I will also post a review once I have been using it for a few days.

Initial impressions

Opening the packaging and examining the contents I was immediately struck by simplicity of the product.  Don't get me wrong - it also looks quite clever but it is by no means complex.  I also quickly decided that much thought had gone into the contents of the package and the design of the SlateGlove.  They had thought of every detail.  The instructions are very thorough.  In addition I like the way the instructions are not just a list of steps - they also explain why they have done things they way they have and provide lots of helpful hints.

What's in the package?

A - The Glove, with the hinges and screws to attach it to the tablet held in place with a rubber band.  There are also some bits of Velcro tape attached to the Glove.

B - Two stick on square rubber lumps called "Launch Pads" - I'll explain these later.

C - Degreasing Towlette

D - #1 Screwdriver - just the right size so you don't damage the heads of the screws.  Very thoughtful that they include this.

E - Stick on rubber feet

F - Little bits of Velcro tape

G - Instructions

Installation

First up turn the tablet off an place it face down on a towel or other soft surface.

Using the included screwdriver remove two of the factory screws from the back of the tablet.  Put these aside for proper storage later.

Remove the rubber band from the SlateGlove screw the glove to the back of your tablet.

Each hinge has a threaded hole machined into it - these are for storing the original factory screws that were removed to attach the Glove to the back of the tablet - nice touch.  I screw the original screws in here for storage - as instructed.

Use the degreasing Towelette to clean the area on the back of the tablet where the velcro will be attached.  The placement of the velcro is critical and the instructions go into quite a bit of detail.  Get it wrong and you may have trouble docking your tablet.

The next step is to attach the “LaunchPads” to the back of your docking station (if you have one).  The purpose of these it to allow you to undock your tablet with much less force than you previously needed.  Without the LauncPads you can push up on the hinge to undock your tablet, however the upward force will lift the docking station off the desk.  After attaching the LaunchPads in the correct location on the docking station, you can apply downward force on these with your little fingers while at the same time applying upward force with your index fingers on the hinge.  The result is an almost effortless undocking procedure.  Very nice.  The image below shows a LaunchPad on the docking station.  The inset shows how you can insert your hand.  Simply insert one hand on each side and spread your fingers and the tablet slides out of the dock.

Now you need to attach the two high friction dots to the bottom edge of the tablet so that if you prop it up in landscape mode on a  hard surface it will not slip.

It turns out the two little strips are velcro are included to fix a common problem where the pen will slide out of its holder a little too easily.  I don’t have this problem so I have not used them, but this is another example of the attention to detail that I have to commend SlateGlove for.

I'll post more once I have used the glove for a while.

I still think that Every book should be an eBook but just a day after that post Amazon finally got its act together and shipped Seize the Work Day.

Thanks Fred for the offer to mail me a copy

The other day I read through a really great post on Ultranauts that outlines 10 predictions for the future of the UMPC.  As interesting as the whole post was number 10 raised my ire – but of course I suspect it was suppose to J

That’s fine – I’m always up for a good debate.  Allow me to present my rebuttal… Homer style.

In case you missed it the heading for prediction number 10 was:

“In one mighty blow, the UMPC will displace the high-end PDA, the PMP and everyone’s favorite underdog, the TabletPC.”

Here are some of the points from the text of the prediction and my responses.

“I’d hate to be a TabletPC manufacturer right now (or worse, a TabletPC blog). It must feel a bit like being in a guillotine, watching your own head drop into the basket.”

Er – no.  I don’t see the UMPC as a threat because they are tablets.  I often say that tablets are a superset of laptops.  UMPCs are a bit different – on the software side of it they are a superset of the Tablet PC OS because they have things like dial keys that Tablets lack.  On the hardware side of it, however, the UMPC is a subset of the Tablet PC.  They have smaller screens, lack an active digitiser and because of the constraints of the platform specification will always lag behind other mobile devices on points like battery life (because they need to weigh 2 pounds or less) screen resolution and integrated peripherals  (such as optical drives).  By no means am I saying that everyone needs these – just that not everyone can live without them.

“TabletPCs will go completely niche and only serve very specific vertical applications. Most mainstream Tablet SKUs will disappear from the catalogs by 2007.”

I disagree.  Tablets will hold a place in the mobile device continuum, as will Laptops and UMPCs.  However the term Tablet PC may well fade.  Rob Bushway uses the term “Tablet as a Feature” and James Kendrick talks about devices that are “Ink Enabled”.   Whichever term wins out in the end as the lines between laptop, tablet and UMPC blur I believe the term Tablet PC may be used less frequently.  That is not the same thing as tablets disappearing.

Further Thoughts

·         What market are we talking about here?  UMPCs will not dominate the business market any time soon.  Typically the business day lasts 8 hours or so.  Right now initial reports put UMPC battery life about 6 hours short of that.  The consumer market may well be a different story.

·         Tablets may lose some people to UMPCs, but they are gaining users from the laptop market at a faster rate and as such will continue to gain market share.

·         In working with business users I frequently see resistance to tablets from laptop users because they perceive tablets to underpowered, lacking an integrated optical drive and constrained to screen sizes smaller than 15”.  I can put forward a tablet to shatter any and all of those perceptions.  Show me one UMPC that can shatter one.

·         The world is full of a vastly diverse range of users with a vastly diverse needs.  No one platform can meet all of those needs.  The world is big enough for laptops, tablets, UMPCs, PMPs, PDAs and more.

I think I’ll start a series of posts that compare the relative merits of different types of devices and outlines possible use cases for each.  Stay tuned.

I was just perusing the list of exhibitors for CeBit Australia 2006 - to be held in Sydney from the 9th-11th of May.

Check this out:

To my knowledge this is Motion Computing's first pubilc outing in the region since they established a presence in Australia and New Zealand.  Great to see.

Also notible - by their absence - are the other major tablet vendors.  Where is HP, Lenovo or Toshiba?  (to be fair Toshiba had their Mobile Exchange event in Sydney at the beginning of March)

Others exhibitors that look interesting to me include:

• Flybook
• Gadget Empire (just love the name)
• Home Touch Systems - sounds interesting...
• Kalooma - great wireless products.
• PSION Teklogix Pty Ltd - they still exist?!?!  Wow - I use to love my Psion Series 5mx...
• and many many more...

Tonight I attended the Wellington Office User Group (WOUG) - well actually I spoke at it.  I had a great time and I hope the attendees did as well.

I was tasked with talking about using Office on a tablet PC.  Points I covered included:

• Tablet Features in Office 2003.  Included Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint and Infopath.  For InfoPath I included the ink show I posted a while ago.
• Tablet Friendly features in Office 2007.  Included OneNote 2007 (not officially part of Office in the current version), the ribbon interface, the window dragging tool.
• Third Party apps that enhance Office on a Tablet.  Included InkGestures (argh - the demo didn't work.  I blame beta Office apps!), Tablet Enhancements for Outlook, ActiveWords and MindManager.

I promised to post the slides I used so here they are.  Be warned though that they will probably not be much use to people who were not there as I am making a concerted effort to avoid producing slideuments.

20060419-WOUG-Part1.pdf (721.79 KB)

20060419-WOUG-Part2.pdf (87.85 KB)

Last night I went and saw the Rolling Stones who were performing here in Wellington on their current A Bigger Bang world tour.  Oh my what a show!

If I am half as spritely as Mick Jagger when I am 62 years old I'll be a very happy man.  Mick Jagger and Keith Richard's may be old codgers now but that has done nothing to dampen their showmanship!  I tried to snap a photo with my phone but it is just a colourful blurr so I won't post it :)

I'm happy - they played Paint it Black which is one of my favourite songs ever.

Hugo Ortega points to a very interesting review of a Sahara Pen Tablet.  The thing that makes the review more interesting than most is the unique perspective of the author.  David Wallace is a C4 quadriplegic and as such he prods and probes areas of the tablet PC that many of us may not find.

Check out David's review for a really interesting read - he finishes musing that he is keen to check out a UMPC.  I hope he gets the chance and I look forward to another interesting review if he does.  Subscribed.

I've said it before in an open letter - everyone who writes or publishes a book should ensure that it is available for purchase in a digital format.  Ironically the very purchase that inspired that post has been delayed again.  I placed the order on Feb 2 and it I just received my THIRD email from Amazon telling me that it had been delayed.

Needless to say I am less than impressed.

**Rant On**

It bugs the heck out of me that organisations are constantly running contests for cool things that I want, promoting it on blogs and specifying in the Ts & Cs that you have to live in the US to win.

The latest example is the TabletGear contenst giving away a UMPC.  Great contest, great prize and if you are eligible then by all means enter.  I also accept that you may not always be able to include the rest of the world for very practical reasons.  However make this clear up front!  For the TabletGear contest, for example, you can't get the the terms and conditions until after you register on the site.  If you can't include me at least put a link to the terms and conditions below the ad for the contest so I can review them before I invest any time or effort into it. 

** Rant Off**

Hey TabletKiosk - why not give Hugo Ortega a UMPC to give away in Australia / New Zealand

SlateGlove have released a glove for the Motion Computing LE1600.  The new model is designed specifically for the LE1600 and allows you to easily hold the slate (it holds you).  In addition there is an integreated stand so you can stand the unit up in landscape or portrait mode and you can dock the unit and access all the ports without removing the glove.  Looks pretty cool - I'll try to get a unit to evaluate.

Well my post about the cosmic forces aligning for the Tablet PC has generated some really interesting discussion.

Layne Heiny and Rob Bushway have chimed in that 2005 was the year for Tablet hardware and that 2007 – 2008 will see the rise of the Mobile PC.  Rob’s post in particular offers some interesting insight into Microsoft’s view of mobile computing.  He also introduces a great term that I will be borrowing from now on – “Tablet as a feature”. 

Rob states:

“What we are really interested in is transparency in inking functionality throughout the mobile experience from ultra-mobile device to 17” laptop, from Windows Mail to Outlook, to Search boxes to the Inking on the desktop. Whether that device is a slate, a convertible notebook, touch computer, or an ultra-mobile pc, it doesn’t matter.”

And he also points out:

“We are closer, but if Vista and Office 2007 are any indications, we still have a ways to go . If Adobe still has not supported Ink as a datatype, then we have a ways to go. Personalization of ink in Vista is getting us much closer, but when we have to rely on a third party app (www.tabletoutlook.com ) to provide ink transparency in Office, and it is not getting much better in Office 2007, then we still have a ways to go to declare  “the year for ink”. Transparencey in the experience should be the barometer for success.”

Warner Crocker has also added some interesting thoughts in his post on the subject.  Battery life still has a ways to go.

“Battery life is improving. Good thing. It still has a ways to go. What is Electrovaya doing that is so different (you hardly ever hear of them unless you follow Sumocat’s Scribbles these days.) And while we’ve got slices and extended batteries, the technology still needs to advance further. The fact that Origami/UMPC has been introduced with such a low battery life expectation is troubling to me.”

Warner also calls for more native support for the pen in the OS and applications in general.

“While the range of software being written is increasing, there still needs to be a push to make inking more native to the OS and therefore apps in general. Loren Heiny, Josh Einstein, and other developers are showing the way. Craig also mentions Mindjet’s MindManager and that is another key pioneer. So we have a few key pioneers pushing the envelope and that is great. More need to be on the bandwagon but I fear that is still a ways off.”

I also agree with Warner (and others) that the ribbon interface is much easier to use with a pen.  Great thoughts all.