TeacherTabletPC

GottaBeMobile.com video review of the LE1700 Tablet PC

We are very pleased to bring everyone this first look at Motion Computing’s newest Tablet PC, the LE1700, in this special launch day video review. It has been about two years since the release of the LE1600, and many people were wondering if this day would ever come. It has!

TabletPC2.com: Motion LE1700 Tablet PC Leaves the Competition playing Catch Up

Motion Computing®, a leader in ultramobile computing and wireless communications, today unveiled the LE1700, the company’s latest flagship slate tablet PC. The most feature-rich tablet PC on the market, the LE1700 integrates the latest technologies aimed at enhancing productivity of mobile professionals in healthcare, field sales and service, government and hospitality, among others. New technologies available on the LE1700 include Motion’s exclusive WriteTouch display option for dual-mode writing and touch-screen input; Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN) integration; the Microsoft® Windows Vista™ operating system; and Intel® Core™2 Duo mobile technology.

PC Magazine: Motion Computing LE1700 Tablet PC

Bottom Line: If working while standing is in your job description, this slate tablet is the best in the business. For all else, look for a convertible tablet that has a built-in keyboard.

Pros: Digitizer pen has no equal. Lightweight. Well connected with a variety of wireless options. Good amount of RAM to run Windows Vista Business.

Cons: Can get warm at times. Geared toward vertical markets. Add-on features can easily put this system above $3,000.

And some more:

• MobileWhack: Motion LE1700 Integrates Compelling Features, Ultimate Slate Mobility
• Mobile Magazine: Motion LE1700 Slate Tablet PC Boasts a Number of Firsts
• iTWire: Motion LE1700 tablet features inbuilt EV-DO or 3G connectivity
• MobileTechReview.com Forum: Motion Computing Announces their new LE1700 Vista Tablet
• TabletPCReview.com Forum: Hands On – Motion LE1700 Tablet PC

From GottaBeMobile.com:

Josh Einstein, the developer of TEO 3.0, has created a nifty new application for OneNote. The OneNote Calendar gives you a calendar view of all of your notes, allowing you to view them by when they were created or modified. There is a preview pane that allows you to view your notes. More good news. It is free.

A note for those of us that use Firefox—the install page just doesn’t seem to work in Firefox, so you may want to try IEtab or (ugh) MSIE.

CDW-G, the government/education arm of CDW (located in the northern suburbs of Chicago; one of my preferred sources of computing equipment and the source of my X41 tablet), has a white paper on 1:1 computing (PDF) on their web site.

This paper profiles how 1:1 computing, using notebooks and Tablets on mobile wireless carts or individually assigning mobile PCs to students, helps improve student learning. Today’s students come to the classroom comfortable with technology. Therefore, they are good candidates to benefit from Department of Education Secretary Rod Paige’s vision of “digital age educational opportunities to match the expectations of digital-age students.”

The Center for Digital Education has an interview with Dr. Katherine Clark, principal of Ocoee Middle School (sorry, that last link seems to obnoxiously resize its window):

Ocoee Middle School was the first public school in the nation to put Tablet PCs in the hands of students. During the 2002-2003 school year, we had a class set of Tablet PCs that the students on a seventh-grade team used every day in either math or reading. This was very successful. This year, we were involved in a national pilot with Microsoft, HP, and Holt, Rinehart and Winston. This pilot provided a Tablet PC for every student and teacher on one seventh-grade team. The 150 students on this team did not use textbooks. All of their learning resources were online. We have partnered with Florida State University to do some preliminary research on the impact on teaching and learning. The project has been exciting for students, teachers and parents.

(as seen in The Tablet PC Education Blog)

You know the annoyance of trying to select multiple files with a pen (or touchscreen or other such interface), especially on a device with no option to “convert” and use a keyboard? Microsoft seems to have provided a solution in Vista, though it’s not on by default and not necessarily easy to find.

From GottaBeMobile.com (since, you know, I still use XP and haven’t even touched a Vista machine):

Here is how to turn on checkbox file selection:

1. Go to Start, Computer
2. Next, go to Organize, Folder and Search Options
3. Then, Go to View, and scroll down to “Use checkboxes to select items” and check it.
4. Click Ok
5. Now, when you hover over a file name with your pen or mouse, a checkbox will appear that will let multi-select items much easier ( see image below ). For touch users, you “just have to know” that the checkboxes are on the upper left hand corner or beside the folder – another nuance of not having hover in touch. By touching in that empty area, the checkboxes will work. It just takes a little practice to figure out where they are.

Guy Barker’s Herbi Writer looks like it has the potential to be very useful in elementary education settings:

Herbi Writer is a Tablet PC program for people learning how to handwrite. It shows sample letters being written, and lets the student know whether their own attempts to write the same letter are correct. For a letter to be considered “correct” the student must write the letter in the same way as the sample letter was written.

Herbi Writer Version 1.1 demonstrates the potential that software has in the area of handwriting teaching by providing a small set of limited, but useful features. Future versions will expand the set of available features to make the program more useful.

(as seen on The Tablet PC Education Blog)

From GottaBeMobile.com, there’s a guy in the UK working on building his own tablet PC.  Nifty as this is, he has run into some snags.  I really hope he keeps writing about it and can finish the project, because this is just too cool.

Since I did that HP tx1000 post two weeks ago and the Lenovo X60 post yesterday, I figured I should go ahead and do a Toshiba Portege R400 post (and like with Lenovo, I wouldn’t mind a free one, but I doubt that’ll happen).

TabletPC2.com: Toshiba adds “WOW” Factor to their R400 Tablet PC

When you take the R400 out of the box and feel it in your hand for the first time, a audible *WOW* is likely to escape from your lips. The simple elegance of the high gloss piano white finish combined with high gloss Piano black trim of the R400 makes a for a great first impression. This is without question the most elegant computer design I’ve seen.

GottaBeMobile.com – CES Report: Two part demo of the new Toshiba R400 Tablet PC – Your Tablet PC and Ultra-Mobile PC news source

One of the main things we wanted to see at CES this year was the new Toshiba R400 Tablet PC. Today we got that chance in multiples! In this two part GottaBeMobile InkShow, we were able to get our hands on this new piece of hardware for a quick on the floor look and walkaround, plus got a full demonstration by Kevin Roberts, the product manager at Toshiba responsible for this machine.

Toshiba’s Not-So-Potent Portege

The Good: Nice design; e-mail and battery alerts even when computer is closed; bright display; elegant hingeThe Bad: Expensive; short battery life; lacks internal CD drive

The Bottom Line: Buyers on a budget may want to look elsewhere

Toshiba Breaks New Tablet PC Ground

With Apple MacBook-like looks, a fantastic widescreen display and the kind of portability usually found in Lenovo ThinkPads, Toshiba’s Portégé R400 is the most groundbreaking Tablet PC eWEEK Labs has tested. Unfortunately, users will pay for the innovation—in terms of both price and performance.

Toshiba Portégé R400 Tablet Laptop: Gadget of the Week – Popular Mechanics

Which brings is to the option-wealthy Toshiba Portégé R400, which has a touchscreen display, allowing it to be used as a tablet, as well as a tiny OLED screen that’s visible when the computer is closed. This Personal Information Assistant can only display one line of text and a few icons, but it lets you scroll through e-mail headers when new messages hit your Outlook inbox. No one, not even James Bond or Jason Bourne, needs this sort of preview feature, but it’s certainly cool.

Rob Bushway at GottaBeMobile.com has posted some info on the Motion LE1700 gleaned from some FCC filings, I think.  This could be the slate that would convert me from convertibles.

Mostly because I think it’s a good machine, but partly because I like my X41 so much and want an X60 and partly for the oh-so-slim chance that someone at Lenovo might decide to send me a free one (like that’d ever happen), here’s some recent stuff on the X60.

ForbesOnTech: Convertible Computing–What Works and What’s Needed

First, an observation: if you need an example of an ironclad bond between a user and their machine, look closely at tablet computer users. In my case, along with true persistent wireless connectivity it’s literally changed how I view personal computing. My tablet, a Lenovo X60 convertible notebook, is the first thing I pack when I leave my house. Leave my shaving gear at home? It happens. Forget to pack enough undershirts? JC Penney’s is a nationwide chain, so that’s not a problem either. Leave my power supply in my car? Well, I regularly get six hours of battery life out of my beloved X60, so I’ll get by until a kinsmen can overnight the power supply to me.

TabletPC2.com: New 2007 Editors Choice Tablet PC

Filled with exciting new features that include a touch screen, that can be viewed indoors or out and built in EDVO, The new Lenovo X60 has convinced this die hard slate style Tablet PC user that it was time to switch to a convertible. (Which for the record was no easy task) Before my first week with a pre production X60 Tablet PC was over, I knew that if the production unit of the X60 was everything the pre production unit was, there was going to be a new Editors Choice Tablet PC at TabletPc2.com.

First impressions: Lenovo X60 Tablet PC | Office Evolution | ZDNet.com

I’ve had the Lenovo X60 Tablet PC for about a week now and the system is configured for my trip to Seattle for the Microsoft Global MVP Summit next week (after a quick weekend in Phoenix to see some spring training baseball and an Eric Clapton show). I’m happy to report that my first impressions are almost universally positive.

WIRED Blogs: Gadget Lab

Even though Lenovo’s latest feels like it packs a lot of yesterday’s tech, it’s still a capable machine, at least for business users. The ThinkPad X60 doesn’t truck with such trappings as a touchpad or a widescreen LCD. This is strictly old-school: Its charms displayed on a 12.1-inch TFT and powered by a 1.83GHz Core Duo (and our test unit even ran XP instead of Vista). A few newish frills await the patient: Integrated WAN from Verizon, a touchscreen that works with pen or fingertip, and a surprisingly low 4.6-pound weight. With a battery life of more than four hours (thanks to a giant Frankenbattery), it easily trumps most notebooks in longevity.

Lenovo ThinkPad X60 Tablet 6366 (Core Duo 1.66 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HDD) Reviews. Laptops Reviews by CNET.

The good: Lightweight, portable design; comfortable stylus and keyboard; screen automatically rotates when you adjust tablet position; touch screen is usable in direct sunlight.The bad: Expensive; lacks S-Video port; price does not include an optical drive.

The bottom line: The Lenovo ThinkPad X60 Tablet strikes the best compromise between a ultraportable tablet and a full-featured laptop.