Blog:: Craig Pringle

If you are testing Vista Beta 2 then you may be interested in this:
"CA, Inc. (NYSE: CA) today announced an offer to provide Microsoft Windows Vista Beta customers a no-charge, one-year trial subscription to CAs eTrust EZ Antivirus. The distribution has the potential to reach millions of projected Windows Vista Beta 2 customers and can be downloaded starting today at: http://ca.com/windowsvistabeta."
The free subscription is valid for a year, including updates and web based support. Good stuff CA.

I'm home - in body anyway!
Had a great time in Singapore and I have much to blog about.
More Soon...

I've just arrived in Singapore.  I'm here for a few days - and I have some really cool activities planned.

Tomorrow I am going to visit Heulab to see their "Classroom of the Future" showcase.  I'm getting a guided tour and I'm really looking forward to it.  I have seen the Heulab products in action before, including the flagship product Fun with Virtual Classroom.  It is an amazing tool that allows teachers to empower students to colaborate without relequishing control.  Best of all it has been written from the ground up to take advantage of the Tablet PC.

Friday and Saturday I am attending Vista readiness labs being run by Microsoft for selected influencers.  I'll be blogging more about that later.

Sunday I don't fly out until 8PM at night so I intend to have a good poke around Singapore before I go.

On Saturday I blogged Telecom NZ to show tablets with EVDO
Now Vodafone and Lenovo New Zealand Partner to Deliver Embedded 3G Connectivity
One thing for sure, NZ is a great place to be a Mobile Computer user!
Via Geekzone

John Tokash has installed Vista on a Tablet kiosk EO.
the has two great posts. The first details how he installed Vista on an eo
In a follow up post he gives More about Vista on the TabletKiosk eo.
"It is very responsive! I dont have Aero running, of course.
I dont recall if I had to install the audio driver or if it found it without help, but its working.
When installing the digitizer, make sure to choose the b_stage driver from your D drive. A_stage doesnt work at all. Even b_stage, though, doesnt calibrate perfectly."

Toshiba and ZD are running a virtual symposium focusing on the Tablet PC on May 24^th (Eastern Time).

The tagline “Everything You Need to Know About the Tablet PC and Why Your Company Can’t Afford Not to Embrace It” sounds promising.

You can register here and review the program here.  Check it out.

Darryl Burling has a new Toshiba M400 and is Tableting. Darryl is a creative guy and has been known to make some really cool apps in the Windows Mobile space.
"I've got a nice new shiny Toshiba M400...
It arrived about a week ago, but I've only just had a chance to play with it in the last day or so. I started by installing Windows Vista on it - a late internal build. Very nice. "

Maurico over at Geekzone reports that Telecom is going to have notebooks and tablets with embedded EVDO modules on show at Convergence Oceania '06 which will be held at Te Papa in Wellington on the 25th of May.
"One of the notebooks being shown is the Toshiba M400 Tablet PC, embedded with Telecoms CDMA EV-DO Mobile Broadband cards, allowing users to do away with data cards and connect as soon as they turn their notebooks on."

I've just received word of a Wellington office user group meeting. Here's the details:

"Pizza and drinks will be provided, along with some great information.

When: Wednesday 24 May 2006, 6:00-7:30pm
Where:
Microsoft New Zealand
Level 12, 157 Lambton Quay
Wellington

Topic 1: Ryan Duguid, Microsoft Technical Specialist.
Microsoft Office InfoPath is a Windows-based application for creating rich, dynamic forms that teams and organisations can use to gather, share, and reuse XML based information. This session will cover the basics of InfoPath forms and look at advances in InfoPath 2007 that support the gathering data from email forms and browser forms.

Topic 2: Steve Schapel, Microsoft Access MVP
Where does Microsoft Access fit in? A brief discussion from the point of view of the user/developer, with some real-world example scenarios of where Access is found a niche.
This promises to be a very informative and entertaining evening!"
Convenor: Steve Schapel
www.woug.info

Jk links to BetaNews who are reporting that Samsung will be demonstrating hybrid hard drives @ WinHec next week.  From BetaNews

Hybrid hard drives eliminate the need for the disk to spin continuously, which would contribute to a longer usable life as well as less risk of data loss from dropping or jarring. This is due to the NAND flash memory acting as a cache.

Either a 128MB or 256MB cache would act as the first step in storing data. The hard disk would only need to spin to save data when this cache is filled, roughly once every 10 to 20 minutes. The cache could also assist in allowing a PC to boot quicker.

I look forward to these being widely available. I suspect that if you have an older machine you want to breathe a little extra life into then – in addition to more RAM – this will be a very worth while upgrade.

Well it was a small audience tonight - there were just 7 of us for most of the meeting (though an 8th did make it for the second half).

Still - the small size of the group did make for quite an interactive session.  It was also a bit of blessing as both Mauricio and I had a few technical issues with the projector.  I could not get my tablet into duplicate display mode of my video driver to work.  I was demonstrating inking into applications and you can't do that with extended desktop :)  As a result I did a couple of my demos on my tablet with people gathered around.

Links of note from the meeting - check out the Mi-Forms demo on available on the Mi-Corporation website.

Also refer to Mauricio's posts on Vista on the M205:

Running Microsoft Windows Vista (build 5381) on my Tablet PC

Windows Vista Defrag: dumbbed down interface

Managing Multi OS (Windows XP and Windows Vista) Boot: VistaBootPRO

Dchoung over at TabletGear links to a story about a Toshiba M4 that had a glass table shatter under it.  Perhaps the glass table was not designed to have something as substantial as the M4 sitting on it

Seriously though - the high end Toshibas have quite a few features hidden away that will increase their chances of surviving such a fall.  These include shock mounted drives, cruple zones in the case and an accelerometer that can detect the fall and park the head of the drive before it hits the deck.  Had it it the floor there is a good chance it would have been OK.

Unfortunately Hugo Ortega has had to cancel - some unexpected developments require his attention. 

The show must go on, the revised agenda includes:

• Filling forms with a Tablet PC - Craig Pringle
• Vista on a Toshiba M205 - Mauricio Freitas
• Prizes
• Beer and Pizza

The venue remains the same - see the original post for more information.

I previously posted that I was going to compare the relative merits of four types of mobile PCs.  It is my opinion that the distinct types of devices are evaporating as the spaces between the types are populated.  Instead of distinct types we now have broad and overlapping categories populating points along a continuum of mobile device.

In this post I am going to compare the relative merits of the traditional laptop and the convertible tablet.  Before I begin let me start by stating the obvious.  I am speaking in general terms in this post.  If I make a sweeping, general statements like “Laptops are physically bigger than convertible tablets” I fully accept that it does not apply in every case.  For example there are some ultra-portable laptops.   That’s fine – as I said we are dealing with broad and overlapping categories.  The exceptions to sweeping statements are the overlaps.

 

The Laptop

Lets start looking at the traditional laptop.  The laptop has been around for 20 + years and has come a whole heck of a long way.  So what’s the good and bad?

Pros

The main advantages of the traditional laptop as I see them are:

·         Cheaper – This is the big one.  If you look at two machines that are of similar specifications and one is laptop and one is a tablet then the laptop will likely be cheaper.  There are good reasons for that – well look at those later.

·         Larger screen sizes available – where tablets models are pretty thin on the ground at 14” and above.  By contrast laptops abound at 15” and above.   If a large physical screen size is important to you then dropping back to 12-14” may be unacceptable.

·         Lighter - for similar physical size and battery life a laptop will usually be lighter than a convertible.  This is largely due to the engineering of the hinges – I’ll explain this later, too.

Cons

Where does the laptop fall down?

·         Not as flexible – I use my tablet on a daily basis in situations where it would not be possible or practical to try and use a laptop.  Flicking a convertible into slate mode simply gives you another option that you lack on a laptop.  An example situation where this is handy is sitting on a train (on my train the seats are too close together to use a 15” notebook comfortably because you can’t open the screen all the way.)

·         Takes up more physical room – the downside of 15”+ screens is that they make the device physically bigger.  This extra size can be a limitation if you often work in situations where space is at a premium. 

·         The barrier effect – few people use laptops in meetings.  Why?  If you sit down facing someone then open a notebook you have an instant barrier between you and them.  For meetings with clients this is rarely acceptable.  For internal meetings it depends on the culture of the organisation.  If you have to check your laptop at the door you will be reduced to capturing data on paper then at best you will double enter that data or any actions.  At worst you will lose it.

 

The Convertible Tablet

Convertible Tablets embody device comprimise.  They may not be quite as sleek and light as a their slate cousins but they also lack some of their limitations.  Be sure to check back for my next post in this series pitting convertibles against slates).

Pros

Advantages of a convertible:

·         Added hardware fleibility – as I aluded to earlier convertible tablets have an edge over the traditional laptop.  Simply put the fact that the screen can be rotated 180 degrees and closed with the screen out gives the users another option.

·         Increased software flexiblity – as the hardware offers increased flexibiltiy the tablet gives developers more options.  These options include adding ink markup, inserting drawings or sketches and capturing gestures.  Properly implemented these features add real power to applications.

·         Additional input methods – there are additional input methods available to the tablet user.  These include direct ink input, handwriting recognition and speech input. 

Cons

On the down side of the convertible tablet:

·         Weight – the additional engineering that goes into the swivel hinge adds a considerable amount of weight and probably a bit of cost as well.

·         Cost – tablets have something that laptops don’t.  A digitizer.  This adds additional cost in manufacture and this cost is passed on to the consumer.  All else being equal a tablet will cost more than a laptop.

 

When to Pay the Extra

Some use cases that will benefit from the additional flexibility include:

·         Replacing analog forms with digital versions

·         Users that spend lots of times in meetings.  Especially if using a laptop in meetings does not gel well with the culture of the organisation.

Next up – I’ll compare the merits of Convertible Tablets and Slates.

Once upon a time in a company called Compaq (which was later acquired by HP) there was a design team that came up with a truly inspired tablet design.  It was sleek and light and had a really funky removable keyboard.  It was of course the TC1000.

A common complaint with the TC1000 was that it was a bit underpowered.  When HP refreshed the design with the TC1100 those concerns were put to rest. 

The design team that brought us these great tablets must have been an amazing group.  The evidence is in the finished product.  Even now, years after its release, the TC1100 is still considered to be one of the best designs ever.  The TC1100 has such a loyal, almost cult-like following.  When HP announced that they were discontinuing the TC1100 without an heir-apparent the protests were loud.  There were ranting posts, email petitions and even poetic laments.  Even though it is now discontinued it is often spotted on TV shows and is still used in Tablet demos for new Vista features.

The last two tablets to come from HP – the TC4200 and the recently released TC4400 have failed to inspire at all.   Full stop.  They are both functional tablets, but they lack the thoughtful design and attention to detail. 

Somewhere out there are the people who brought us the TC1100.  Are they still at HP?  There is nothing in the recent tablets to suggest that they are.  I know that the design team does not set the direction for a company like HP, but if creative and innovate people were directed to make JAC (Just Another Convertible) would they stay?

I wonder where they are now?  Do you know?  Comment or trackback here if you know where they are now. 

Introducing the TC4400

I’ve been evaluating a pre-production version of the TC4400 for the last few weeks.  In addition to the usual poking and prodding I’ve used the TC4400 in anger for the last week or so because my beloved TC1100 became a bit unstable.  

Those who know me may be wondering how I’ve managed to keep this a secret for this long.  Sure – posted a couple of teases but I kept the cat firmly in the bag.  How is that possible when I am by nature a person who is passionate about gizmos, gadgets and especially tablets?  Well to be honest it was greatly helped by the fact that the TC4400 is, well, not all that exciting really.  While it has some good features and some points that need improvement there is nothing in particular that I’ve been dying to share.

In this post I’ll give you a visual tour and then drill down into the good and bad points.

An overview…

Lets have a look at the TC4400.

Firstly on the front edge there are four lights.  These are Wireless, power on, charging and disk activity.  There is also both a touch pad and stick type pointing devices, so you can use which ever you prefer.  The touch pad features an area down the right side that behaves like a scroll wheel.

The left side (when in laptop mode) includes a power button, a button to enable and disable wireless, a button that launches the HP info centre and a USB port.  There is also a cable lock connector and a sizable vent.

On the right there is a powered USB port, audio in and out ports, a PCMCIA slot and a S.D./MMC card reader.

On the back (when in laptop mode, pictured here in slate mode) there is another USB port, a RJ11 modem port, RJ45 LAN 10/100/1000 LAN port, power, VGA and S-video port.

The Good

·         The screen:  The viewing angle and the brightness are pretty good.  It is an XGA screen though, so the resolution is 1024x768.

·         The Swivel:  The hinge has a good solid feel to it and moves smoothly.

·         USB Connectors:  The three USB ports are on three different sides of the machine.  Personally I like this on a machine – when all the ports are jammed next to each other it can be hard to plug in multiple items – especially if you have a fat USB key.

·         The latch:  The latch is magnetic and works very well.  As you close the lid the magnet pulls a little metal latch into position and it locks securely.  This is one of the better latches I have seen on a convertible.

·         Charge indicators on the batteries: I’m a big fan of this feature.  You press a button and it tells you how charged the battery is. 

·         The stylus: It has a since feel to it. It is slightly shorter than a standard pen, but it has a nice weight to it.

The Bad

There are some features that are really not great.  Here’s the run down of some of areas that could be improved.  The really annoying thing is that many of these issues have been carried forward from the TC4200.

·         Extended battery connector cover: There is a sliding cover over the extended battery connector on the bottom of the unit that really bugs me.  There is not a very strong positive lock on this cover, which means that if you so much as nudge it the cover will move.  I found that when I use or carry the tablet in slate mode I frequently end up with a fingertip on this cover.  When it slides the whole tablet moves and I almost dropped it once as a direct result of this.  This design flaw exists in the TC4200 as well.  If I actually owned the unit I would get a screwdriver out and pop this cover off quick smart.

·         Hardware buttons covered up in slate mode:  There are seven physical hardware buttons and three soft buttons on the TC4400.  Four of the seven hardware buttons are covered up when you spin the tablet into slate mode.  The covered buttons include the presentation button, the mute button and the volume up and down controls.  Hardware buttons are useful in slate mode – why on earth cover them up?  I actually got caught out when I resumed the tablet in slate mode in a meeting, thinking it was muted and I got the resume noise really loud.  Oops.  I’d like to see more hardware buttons accessible in slate mode.  This was also a problem with the TC4200.

·         The Q-menu button is a soft button.:  What were they thinking?  As a long time TC1100 user I love the fact that I can bring up the Q-menu and mute the tablet, adjust the brightness, standby, hibernate and more using nothing more than the hardware button and the jog dial on the side.   With the TC4400 you have to use the stylus to activate the soft buttons, so you need to get the stylus out, tap the button and then you may as well use the stylus to tap the icon in the menu – the jog dial is a bit useless.

·         Square edges:  The edges of the TC4400 are not at all rounded.  This make it a bit uncomfortable to hold in slate mode.

·         Heat:  The bottom of the unit gets quite warm when it is in use.  I found it got to the point of being uncomfortable to use in your lap in both slate mode and tablet mode.  It also gets quite warm in standby mode – don’t put it in a bag in standby, even for a short time.  It will go into thermal shutdown.

·         The plug:  All of the HP tablets and laptops my wife and I have had in the past have used exactly the same power supply.  This is a handy thing because if you invest in an additional power supply you can keep it when you upgrade.  The power supply on the TC4400 is the same voltage, ampage and polarity but they have changed the connector so you can’t use your old power supply that is right in every other way.  Very disappointing.

Conclusion

The TC4400 is not bad, but it fails to dazzle.  A cursory search on Froogle seems to indicate that the TC4400 will be a similar price to the other Core Duo tablet on the market – the Toshiba M400.  I prefer the Toshiba M400 – you can find my review of that tablet here.

OK - for the last 6 weeks or so I have been testing a pre-preoduction model of a new tablet.  Now I can tell you what it is. Here's the badge:

I'm putting the final touches on the review now so you'll be able to read all about it soon.

My poor little TC1100 has developed some pretty weird issues - but I can't say that I am surprised.  I've been installing and uninstalling all sorts of software - much of it beta - for the last few months.  I've swapped over to the secret tablet for now and will be using that until I get time to rebuild the TC1100.  I promise to post a full review once the NDA is lifted.

In the interim I have the secret tablet running Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005, Office 2007 Beta 1 Technical Refresh, IE7 Beta 2, Active Words, Mind Manager Pro and more.

Time for another Tablet PC User Group meeting – and another speaker coming from overseas!  This time around we are going to be joined by leading Aussie tablet blogger Hugo Ortega.  Hugo is a passionate tablet advocate, distributes TabletKiosk slates and has recently been appointed the official blogger for CeBit Austrialia – which is happening this week.

 

Should be an interesting session – not only will Hugo be able to give us an update on the happenings from CeBit but as if that is not enough he will have a TabletKiosk EO Ultra Mobile PC to show off as well.  The EO is one of the first UMPCs (aka Origami) devices to hit the market since the much hyped launch of the platform a couple of months ago.  To my knowledge this will be your first opportunity to see one up close in New Zealand.

 

Needless to say we will wrap up the meeting with some pizzas and a couple of beers – and a couple of prize draws. 

 

When:  6:00-8:00pm Thursday, May 18^th

 

Where: **Different Location**

Gen-i

L2, Gen-i Tower<