More TX1000 Feedback Coming ...

I've written a fair amount about the TX1000 that I have on loan from HP (through AMD), and there's even more on the way. I'm heading out to Orlando next week on my first ever flight on Southwest, and I'm curious to see how the batteries (they provided two) hold up to a non-stop, cross-country flight in the cramped Southwest confines. I've loaded up some music and movies, and with two headphone jacks, I'll even be able to share it with one of my travelling companions.

Reading back over some of my impressions, it strikes me that I might have been a bit harsh on the Tablet features of this particular unit. Let me just say that the Tablet features all work, and for someone who's never used a Tablet PC before, they would likely not have the same issues that I've had with it. That said, if you have experience with an active digitizer in a Tablet PC, or if you're primarily looking at the machine as a way to add ink to documents or to take ink based notes, the experience is sub-par.

Most of my Tableteering comes by way of Microsoft OneNote, which is an absolutely fantastic note taking application. The big advantage for me is the ability to have all of my documents, notes, research, web links, etc ... all catalogued in one location, and be able to search through it all. In order for OneNote to be truly useful, however, you really need to be able to write into it as effortlessly as you would a regular notepad, and that just isn't happening for me on this machine.

It's only my opinion, but I still believe that the Tablet functionality is a by-product of having a screen that turns around (bringing the screen closer to you for watching video) and a touchscreen (for easy media accessibility with the screen turned around), and that it was never really intended to be a selling feature. That's fine, and if you treat the added features as a bonus, you won't be disappointed.

That aside, my trip next week won't have me needing to take a bunch of notes. I'll be using it primarily for web research and for giving a short presentation in close quarters, and it'll be interesting to see how it does in that capacity. I expect that being able to turn the screen towards the evaluators will be very helpful. I don't know yet if the included remote control will be able to run Powerpoint, but I'm hoping it will ... it'll be one less thing to bring with me. I might even try Vongo a bit and see how it fares. Edit: Maybe I won't try Vongo after all ...

Nearly forgot, I promised some feedback from my wife, and here it is ...

It's a nice machine, but the screen is too small.

I finally got her to elaborate (sometimes you have to drag opinions out of her), and she said that while she really liked the overall size and weight of it, some of the web games that she likes to play had elements that were too small to see clearly. She likes the layout of the keyboard far more than my current tablet, but like me, didn't like how difficult it was to get an ink stroke out of the tablet. She likes the funny sculpted trackpad, but found the mouse buttons to hard to hit by feel. She thinks that the texture of the trackpad desensitizes you to being able to easily find the buttons by feel (and she doesn't like to just tap the trackpad). All in all, she'd have probabaly bought the machine after her experience, but not for the features HP was trying to sell it on.

Yeah, once you get her talking a bit, she does OK. :)

I don't have a problem with the screen size/resolution like she does, but then again, I have perfect eyesight and she doesn't. I hate the trackpad intensely, and really miss my like track stick nubbin thing. I do think that her insight about buying the machine for purposes other than HPs intent are pretty interesting though. As a marketing guy, I had felt that the machine was sort of at odds with its positioning, and that statement from Annie made me realize that it was true ... there's a market for this machine but it's not the one HP might think it is.

Update on the HP TX1000

Tuesday was my first day of classes of my last quarter at the UW. I took HP's new machine to class and received a lot of interested questions from people, which was cool, but the way I grabbed their attention wasn't exactly ideal. Most people in a class won't even notice that you're writing on your laptop screen over the course of the class, but when you "break" the screen to put it in tablet mode, that will usually attract a few glances. Although in my case, I was pulling the screen back up because I just couldn't stand to keep trying to write on it.

Since the TX1000 is using a touchscreen rather than an active digitizer like my Tecra M4, HP had to turn the touchscreen sensitivity way down to compensate for the tendency for you to rest your hand on the screen while you write. The unfortunate side-effect of this is that you have to use a significant amount of pressure to get a smooth, unbroken stroke. The effort required to do this is not insignificant. Unfortunately, when you're trying to multitask during a class (especially late classes when you're pretty tired), you have to put as much effort as possible into thinking about the class and not thinking about writing. While the HP rep that I talked to last week said that it only took him a couple of hours to adjust, I'm finding it much more difficult. So sadly, I've gone back to my Tecra M4 for the time being.

This isn't to say that the TX1000 isn't great in every other regard, quite to the contrary, it's a great little machine. To make sure that you get a fair representation of the machine, I've decided to try something new: I gave it to my wife.

That in itself is a bit of a funny story. When I told her that HP was sending me this laptop to review, the first words out of her mouth were, "Goody! Now I get a laptop." Then I explained that it wasn't really going to happen that way. "So what, you get all the laptops and I get no laptops?" (I can always tell when she's irritated, but still playing with me, because she'll use just atrocious grammar.) "Yes, sweetheart, that's exactly what that means." So when I told her she was going to get a week or so to play with the HP, she was pretty excited. Maybe I'll even let her make a blog post to two about it ... we'll see how it goes.

One last note: in my conversation with HP a few days ago, I asked why they didn't include both digitizers (active and passive) in the machine. They said it was a cost issue, but when I asked them about thier target market, it seems to be targeted at segments that wouldn't be as price sensitive, so I'm not sure that I buy the explanation. Regardless, it seems that Annie is closer to the sort of person that they want to approach with the machine, so her feedback should be interesting. I know that she absolutely loves the size, and I don't know that she'd care so much about the touchscreen being less than ideal for writing, but we'll see how it fares with her under more strenuous use.

More Impressions of the TX1000

The more I work with the HP Pavilion TX 1000 Entertainment Notebook (and I just now decided that I'm never typing all of that again) the more I realize that despite having tablet functionality, this machine was not designed for me. This is not a "Tablet PC", and I think that the lack of Tablet PC branding on the machine should have been a huge clue. In fact, I'm seriously debating at this point if I should even try using this machine at school next week. You can't write on it ... well, you can in a technical sense, but it requires so much effort to write anything legibly enough that it just isn't worth it. Ever try to write on the screen of a PDA? It's exactly the same thing.

It's clear now that HP knew this, and thus the "Entertainment Notebook" branding. So what exactly is that supposed to mean? It means that it's designed primarily as a computer you can watch movies on. So why can you turn the screen? Because it's actually easier to watch a movie when you swivel the screen and put the keyboard behind the machine. The speakers are part of the screen, so they'll always be posititioned correctly for you. Combine that with dedicated DVD playback buttons, DivX codec preinstalled, and a free trial for Vongo, and you've got a capable entertainment device. So what's up with the touchscreen and stylus? Well, it looks like the touchscreen is for ease of video watching when you've got the screen turned, and the stylus is for fingerprint prevention. The only problem is that the touchscreen turned on the Tablet features and that causes a bit of an expectations issue for someone familiar with a Tablet PC feature set.

I'm going to talk with an HP representative later today, and will probably adjust my review plan to focus more on the entertainment features, but that will depend on whether or not HP really wants to position this machine in the Tablet space or not.

The TX1000 is here!

Despite a minor shipping snafu (involving FedEx leaving the package at the completely wrong address, and about two hours spent trying to track it down), I've got the HP Pavilion TX1000 Entertainment Notebook sitting here in my hot little hands. I should have some unboxing shots later (when I get home and can re-create the experience for you), but for now, here are some initial impressions ...

First, this thing is tiny! It's about the size of a small folio (about the same footprint as an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper), although fairly dense. The screen is touch only, which means that it does not have an active digitizer. The extended 6-cell battery gives it a nice little handle by which you can grip the machine in portrait mode. The screen resolution is lower than I'd like (1280x800), but in a 12" size it's fairly serviceable.

The machine is covered in what HP is calling their "Imprint Finish". They should call it the "Fingerprint Finish" because it'll be covered in them before too long. Note to HP ... when you have a device with a fingerprint reader and a touchscreen, expect to combat prints, not enhance them. Seriously though, the keyboard area has this interesting pattern embedded under a clear coat and it's fairly attractive. Perhaps not so much to dissuade potential Mac buyers, but it is attractive with the lid open or closed.

What isn't attractive, however, is the ridiculous amount of pre-installed utilities and software. Call it "scumware", "bloatware", whatever you want, but there's a lot of it. How much? On first boot, there were 16 shortcuts on the desktop, not counting the Recycle Bin, which is the only icon put there by default in Vista. The rest were links to MSN, eBay, Vongo, Rhapsody, and a bunch of HP utilities. But that's not all! You also get two completely redundant icons for pointing devices and sound utilities in the tray, things that Vista does better by default. I'm really not a fan of this trend towards tons of pre-installed crap, and I wish manufacturers would simply include a disc that will allow customers to install it if they wish. Hell, label it as a "must install" if you want, but allow us savvy users to opt out!

Using a finger swipe to login is pretty slick, and should be especially useful in portrait mode. What isn't so useful is the touchscreen, however. It requires a very firm press to activate, and writing on it seems like it will be uncomfortable as a result. I'm going to reserve judgement until I've really put it through it's paces, but so far, I'm not overly impressed with that feature. That said, this device is supposed to be primarily an "entertainment" machine, and the datasheet highlights the swivelling screen as great for DVD watching, which I can confirm that it is. Heck, don't even bother with DVDs ... the 160GB drive has tons of space for downloaded movies as well, so use the weightsaver and save some battery life at the same time!

Another thing that strikes me as being sub-optimal for a user expecting a tablet ... the microphones are placed flanking the webcam on the top of the screen. Ideal for video conferencing (does anyone even do that?) but not at all where you'd want them if you want to record a lecture and write on the screen, since your left arm (if you're left-handed) will be rubbing all over them the entire time. I'd love to see a tablet manufacturer have a second set of redundant microphones on the left side of the machine (which becomes the top in portrait mode) for just such an occasion. Even one on each side of the screen would be sufficient.

That's all I've got time for right now, but I'll be back with more impressions as I put the device through the ringer and see what happens. If there's anything you want to know, leave a comment and I'll be sure to answer your questions for you!

Specs on this model

• AMD Turion64 X2 (2GHz)
• 12.1 WXGA (1280x800) "High Definition" BrightView Widescreen with Integrated Touch-Screen
• 160GB 5400RPM Hard Drive
• 2GB DDR2 SDRAM
• 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN + Bluetooth
• Lightscribe Super Multi 8X DVD+/-RW with Double Layer Support
• 6-Cell Lithium Ion Battery (plus optional 4 Cell battery)
• HP QuickPlay
• HP Mini Remote Control
• 5-1 Digital Media Reader
• ExpressCard/34 PC Card Slot
• Nvidia GeForce Go 6150 with shared graphics memory
• Windows Vista Home Premium
• 1.3 megapixel Webcam
• Fingerprint Reader
• Stereo Earbuds (2 pairs!?)

HP Pavilion TX1000 Entertainment Notebook PC en route ...

It's been a while since I got a new piece of hardware to play with, and very shortly I should receive a new HP TX1000 Tablet PC (which oddly bears no Tablet PC branding) to run through the ringer. Big shout out to Chris at AMD who worked out the details for me, after hearing what a big fan I was of the Tablet concept.

I'll give you a bit of the "out of the box experience" in terms of how the pre-load runs, then I'll load it up with my standard config and see if it holds up to my work and school schedules. I love my Tecra M4, and it'll be interesting to see how a smaller unit puts up with me. This won't be your typical review, but it'll give you an pretty good picture of how this machine lives up to the expectations of a serious tablet user.

The new machine should be here sometime today, so expect some first impressions this afternoon. I've heard Andru over at GearLive should be getting an identical unit around the same time, and I'm sure he'll have all the great unboxing shots and that sort of thing, but maybe I'll have a few as well.

Fair Disclosure: This laptop is a "loaner" and will not be kept by me unless I pay for it in some fashion, unlike the "free" laptops some bloggers received a few months back when Vanishing Point began. Should this change, for example, HP decides to let me keep it (highly unlikely), I will make a full post disclosing the fact.

Update: The Tablet is actually arriving Tuesday morning, so the first impressions will be delayed a pit. Patience, grasshopper.

Vanishing Point Goes Out With a Bang

Well, the live-blogging didn't go as I expected. It never works when I want it to. Oh well.

Microsoft threw what they told outsiders was a "Thank You, Seattle" event, and what the rest of us knew was the finale for Vanishing Point. They were easily some of the most spectacular fireworks I've ever seen, enhanced by the speculation of how the clues were imbedded in the display. After the show, Microsoft shuttled us off all Secret Squirrel-like (the busses had the windows covered in butcher paper) to Fremont Studios, where they had a relatively lavish party for the community. Plenty of laptops running Vista were on display, including one that not many people noticed ... a limited edition ASUS Tablet with a light-up Vista logo in the lid. Oh, it was a pretty, pretty machine, and I'd kill to get one.

While most of the party goers wandered the location convinced that there were more clues to be had, I took the opportunity to talk with some of the people involved with putting on the game. One of whom was Chris Aarons, the head of AMD's Community Relations department. We had a great conversation, and he's definitely someone what understands that technology buzz can be managed at a grass roots level. Eventually the conversation diverged into creating personalized experiences for consumers who are spending large sums of money on products. Why doesn't Porsche put a nameplate on the dash of their high-end cars that says that the car was designed specifically for the buyer? Why doesn't Dell do is on the high-end XPS products? It's low-cost and goes a long way towards building customer relationships as well as satisfaction and advocacy. Speaking of advocacy ... hey Chris, do you know where I can get one of those ASUS Tablets?! :)

Of course, before the in-depth marketing conversation with Chris, I was goaded by my buddy Andru into interviewing Chris on camera for The Bleeding Edge, where I asked Chris about Vanishing Point and the inscribed AMD chip prize. If I win, watch out for the special edition AMD Athlon 64 FX "SuperRob Edition" processor ... coming to a box near you!

When I got home, there were still puzzles to be solved, and the Neowin and Unfiction communities banded together again to break them down. Less than 24 hours later, we're headed down the road to immortality, but to get there, we have to figure out what Loki's name is. Didn't I already do that? Not exactly ... see, Loki isn't one person. She's FOUR distinct people, and you have to find the names of all of them. First person with the right answer wins.

What was my guess? Based on the clues given, I'm certain that the first three names are Lorelei, Odessa, and Kara. The last is somewhat murky, but I submitted Irene as my official answer sometime around 1PM Pacific. We'll see what happens. Regardless, I have over 1300 entries for the contest, so there's still the possibility that I'll be headed into space sometime in 2009. Either way, I'll have the distinction of being the first person to have figured out the prize, and that Loki was more than one person (though I thought she was twins).

My hat's off to the amazing and talented people at 4orty2wo that put together this fabulous contest for Microsoft. I can't wait to see what they do next.

Edit: Turns out that the final name was "Ivy", but I figured it out too late. Despite the website saying different, the winner was notified immediately. Also, they added clues after the fact, which I didn't know until it was too late. Somewhat unfair, really, but I'll live. :)

I've got Vista, and I still have UI Lust

Just saw a post at the team blog for the Origami project ... the thing that became the Ultra-Mobile PC. They've got an all-new, Vista-fied Program Launcher for the UMPC and supposedly for the Tablets as well.

While I still want that original writing-enabled dashboard shown off for Longhorn oh so long ago, this would certainly get the job done. Hey guys, hook me up!

Vista RTM buggier than RC2?

I've had the RTM version of Windows Vista on my Toshiba Tecra M4 for about a week now. Strangely, I'm having issues with the machine that didn't happen in RC2. I think it's all traceable to the nVidia video driver, which was updated through Windows Update right after the install completed. I'm getting massive video corruption coming out of sleep mode (making the machine unusable), to the point where I now have to hibernate the machine instead of sleep.

I can't exactly fault Microsoft for this, except that the driver came through Windows Update, so it should have been checked for issues like this before it was released. Hopefully this can be sorted out before the widespread release in January.

ReadyBoost Enabled on Tecra M4

After Microsoft's suggestions that raw speed doesn't matter as much for ReadyBoost as I/O (seek) speed, I decided to take a chance and get a low-speed cheap 2GB SD card so that I could use ReadyBoost on my Tablet PC without a dongle hanging off of it. A comment on a story I wrote a couple weeks ago suggested that Kingston cards might work, since the commentor was using the faster Elite Pro versions.

I ordered a Kingston 2GB SD card from Buy.com, which cost only $17.95 after $9 rebate and $10 Google Checkout discount. I didn't know if it would work, but I figured that worst case scenario that I could use it as additional memory in my digital camera or the Wii when it comes out next month.

The SD card came today, and in literally 10 seconds, I had ReadyBoost enabled. No fuss, no muss. It'll be interesting to see how much more responsive the OS feels.

Update: Reformatted the card as NTFS, since I'll be keeping it in the system permanently. I could still enable ReadyBoost afterwards. The system feels a touch peppier, but I had 2GB of RAM to start, so I wasn't expecting a massive performance increase. No change in my System Rating, but that's because I'm video limited. Overall, it was a very satisfactory experience. I could definitely see this being a "must buy" peformance upgrade that won't break the bank.

Vista on a Tablet PC (and my resulting workflow)

Now that I've finally tracked down my sporadic ink issues to a bad pen (which coincidentally I ordered a replacement for the same day that the clip finally broke), I've get myself back into the habit of using my Tablet for school work. Each class is different, with different levels of use for things like notes, slides, handouts and whatnot. But I've gotten pretty comfortable with Vista on my Tablet, and along with Office 2007, things are moving pretty smoothly.

Here's kind of a snapshot of how I've set things up for my classes at the UW, and a bit of info on how I work with the tablet in one particular class.

First, I have a Notebook file set up for each class, as well as one for work, and one for "random junk". For each class, I have a section called "Syllabus". I log into Blackboard (which thankfully, each instructor I'm taking is using this quarter), and download an electronic copy of the syllabus. I then Select All, Copy, and Paste into a page, so that I have the text searchable (printing and using Send to OneNote 2007 doesn't seem to yield searchable text). Any other "first day" information will usually go in this tab as well, such as class schedule, unless we actually start to cover course material.

I set up new section for each lecture, usually titled by the theme (if there is one), or by the date. This particular instructor will give out the slides for each lecture early, however, they are only a preview (to encourage attendance, and to ensure the material has been read. I'll print these slides into a page for that lecture. In a new page, I'll take notes as I read the material for the day, with a new page for each assigned reading (so if there are three things to read, there are three pages). Any optional assignments will get another page as well.

During the lecture, I'll take notes right on the slides. For some lectures, if I don't understand the material well before hand, I'll record the lecture as audio (if the instructor permits ... some are touchy about that), and take just enough notes to make an audio bookmark and jog my memory. If we go off-topic, I'll start a new page in order to get those notes down. Any web resrouces mentioned get a quick lookup in IE, and either sent directly to OneNote, or copied and pasted using the Snipping tool (for stuff like graphs or charts).

Official assignments get their own section, where I'll copy and paste requirements and whatnot. Any research is compiled here as well, but the actual work is done in Word or whatever tool is needed.

Some classes require a journal. In those cases, I'll check with the instructor first to find out if using the tablet is acceptable. This quarter, one class requiring a journal had very unusual uses for it, namely that your journal can be used on quizzes. Luckily, this instructor offered to let me use my tablet in this fashion so long as I could limit what I see to just the journal. In this case, I'll put the Journal into its own tab to accomodate that request, but I'd probably have done that anyway.

That's just about it, though I'm sure I've forgotten things. If you have any questions or suggestions, let me know!

Windows Vista ReadyBoost on a Tecra M4

I've been running Windows Vista (Build 5728) on my Tecra M4 Tablet PC for a little over a week now, and I'm pretty impressed with how they've implemented the Tablet PC features. The whole system feels a little better put together than the XP and Tablet stuff that Toshiba had loaded. Could be that it's just the niceties of having a clean install, though. Still a few bugs (the Tablet does NOT like being put into sleep or hibernate while in Portrait mode), but overall, I'm very impressed. Resume from hibernate is snappy enough where I might just use that instead of Sleep.

Office 2007 (Beta 2 Technical Refresh) runs very well on Vista. I love how great all of my work looks, but I'm already starting to pine for the day that everyone's work looks just as good as mine. It's just so effortless to make quality documents and charts. I'm going to need to find some documentation on how to create my own themes, so that I have a look that's all my own. That'll also be handy for keeping documents limited to company-approved fonts and colors as well.

One thing I've been wanting to try out is ReadyBoost, a feature that uses flash memory to speed disk access (sort of like a tertiary cache, after CPU cache and RAM). I've got an SD card slot built into the machine, and I was surprised to see ReadyBoost offered as an option when I stuck an old 256MB SD card in there. Sadly, it wasn't fast enough to use the feature. I'd much rather use the SD slot than a USB stick poking out (especially since I use USB for other things).

Any Tecra M4 owners out there running Vista know of a brand/model of SD card that works with ReadyBoost? Please let me know ... I don't relish the idea of just randomly testing cards until I find one that works. According to Microsoft, you should have at least a 1:1 ratio of ReadyBoost to RAM, so I'm looking at either a 2GB or 4GB card.

School has started again at the UW, and this being my senior year, I'm going to be incredibly busy. I can't wait to be done; it seems like I've been at this grind forever. It'll be nice not having the UW suck a couple grand out of my wallet every few months, too.

First Service Call to Toshiba Goes ...

.. not so well.

After detailing the issues with my Tecra M4, including a stress fracture by the hinge, a dent in the case from a freak drop (it was in the padded backpack at the time), a broken latch, and a small colony of dust bunnies under the screen ... the support rep "Victor" proceeded to ask for my "Ship To" address. Hang on now, I've got On-Site service, so why is anything being shipped? Apparently my on-site service wasn't being shown in the system with my warranty.

Victor puts me on hold several times, and even asks to call me back at one point (which he did very quickly), only to inform me that my on-site service is effectively useless when combined with a SystemGuard extended warranty. Apparently, the on-site technicians aren't equipped to deal with damage like mine. I then asked him why you sell the on-site if you can't use it, and he said that I probably could, but this case in particular would be difficult.

I told him that shipping wasn't an option, I go back to school next week, and I'm not going without the laptop. I asked for the location of an authorized service location, and was given the same spiel about them not being equipped to handle my level of repairs. I'm fairly livid at this point, and basically demanded the phone number for the closest repair center, and the number for the warranty department so I could make sure that on-site service was included in my profile.

So far, I'm starting to see why people can't stand Toshiba service. I never had these problems with Dell, but then again, Dell doesn't offer a Tablet PC.