After all the speculating I've finally gone out and purchased a Tablet PC. It's a Lenovo X61 Tablet and ignoring the hassle of getting the machine, I do like it a lot so far.
There was the initial disappointment of a single broken pixel, but it is only one and that's the way they sell them these days. Its only one in 1,470,000. Infact only one in 4,410,000 as there are 3 LCD sub pixels per pixel.
I am left with many questions
- Will I actually use the pen long term?
- What is Vista like?
- Can it survive 5 years of daily humping around in a rucksack, at least as well as my old Toshiba?
Hardware - speed and build
First the good points. It really does fly. Well at least it passes the acid test for me, which is that Visual Studio is faster them it used to be on my old machine. In fact it is not just faster. The first time that I did a build I had to run it again to check hadn't missed it. That was what I call fast. Admittedly it was only a dozen files in a single project but it was literally instantaneous so I am pleased.
The build is rock solid. It has no flex like my Toshiba had from new which I hope means it will survive at least as long. It is heavier than I would have expected with the big battery on it, but it is definitely much lighter than my old two battery solution.
Stability
There is quite a lot of noise on the web about the stability of the X61 with Turbo memory, I have seen multiple blue screens, which I can live with as I'm sure the much vaunted Vista SP1 will go some way towards resolving those. However what's far more annoying is the hanging lock up. I can re-create these any time I wish by trying to log on a second user using Fast-User switching. Since I no longer have an option to run Internet Explorer as another user and have that screen on the same desktop, then logging on as that same user is now the only option. Shame I have to log off my High privilege user first.
Handwriting is a revelation
Here I am on the train, feeling very tired this morning and therefore suffering with a little RSI. So just after the 3rd paragraph I switched to using the pen.
Now anyone who has seen my handwriting especially that produced on a moving train will held you lam not an ideal candidate for pen-based computing.
Yet, it works perfectly. Well nearly but the editing tools are first rate. So even when you make a small mistake, its just a quick tap to get the list of alternate words up again. I am currently finding I have to correct only about once every other sentence, so that's a huge improvement over any other pen interface I have ever used before.
Vista
I am still coming to terms with vista. Some things are great. For instance any Nokia phone just works as a modem via Bluetooth. We don't even need to download and install Nokia's hideous software (sorry guys but I like integration with the OS, I don't want another systray application always running just because marketing think nobody can use windows to connect).
On the other hand I the entire way that network connections works is completely different. I think I am about half way through the learning curve here, i.e. I am at the acceptance stage. I don't know how long before the luddite in me starts to see the benefits.
I can say the same for the new start menu too. I still don't see the benefit particularly when using the pen, as we get no auto-suggest. Integrated search is nice but I haven't found it useful yet, although making the menu bigger does help. I mention this because I usually tend to embrace change. I have friends who never managed to move away the classic Windows 3.1 style start menu, and in fact I remember one of them who when seeing XP's start button for the first time, took only long enough to utter "What is that?" before turning it off. Maybe I'll mellow with time.
The resource monitor off Task Manager is great for watching things like which application is using how much Network, great for working out whether Visual studio is still publishing to a website or just crashed.
Sync centre is a good idea but doesn't seem there yet. I was expecting it to take over from Sync Toy and yet I end up using them both.
In Summary
I love it. Good job really