TabletPC

Games Friday 2/8/2008 7:03:02 PM (CST) - Michael Wells    Note to all 2-D game publishers!  The TabletPC market is worth considering.  3DO's Heroes of Might and Magic, Microsoft's Age of Empires, and other games like these are a lot of fun and can be easily operated with a pen. Think about it. [ Comment on this Entry ] [ Email this Entry ]

PDF Annotator Monday 5/22/2006 8:31:01 AM (CST) - Michael Wells    Much has been written about PDF Annotator, especially its deficiencies.  But, it's still the best all-purpose tablet PC tool that I've found yet. Here's what I use it for; General whiteboarding.  Create a blank PDF, and sketch away.  The resulting document is easily saved, viewed, and shared, even with your non-table friends. Marking up project specifications.  Sit at the coffee shop and doodle away on your work documents while you think deep thoughts and sip a dark roast. Templates.  I keep some of my local area maps handy as PDF's (created from Google Maps screen captures and so on).  So when I'm chatting with somebody, I can pop open a copy of a map and doodle on it.  Save it, print it, or just throw it away.  This has been great for comparing running routes with friends, recommending places to visit to a new acquaintance, mapping out travel routes, all kinds of stuff. The reason PDF Annotator really rocks well in these scenarios is simply that it outputs PDFs that can be viewed (with some problems, granted) in Adobe's free Acrobat reader. A tip for users who share their documents...  Don't use the highlighter on documents you share with non-PDF-Annotator users.  The highligher tool is great, but when viewing the PDF in Acrobat Reader, the highlighter strokes become solid. You can no longer see the text under them... rather inconvenient.  [ Comment on this Entry ] [ Email this Entry ]

Bye, Bye Acer... Hello FUJITSU! Sunday 9/18/2005 1:29:35 PM (CST) - Michael Wells    I've finally upgraded!  The old Acer C102Ti is out, and I've chosen a Fujitsu ST1032 as its replacement.  This is an amazing piece of hardware.  I've always loved the tablet pc profile, and struggled along with the Acer despite it's brutally sluggish performance (due largely to Acer's 256MB maximum RAM configuration).  A friend recently bought one of the newer Acers, which has significantly amped up horsepower but is also a big behemoth of a beast.  Very un-portable, especially for a device which is intended to perform usefully in all those places where you'd use paper. But the Fujitsu, now that's a different story.  The ST5032 has everything a technophile could ask for.  Thin, sleek lightweight profile.  12.1" display, clear and bright.  6 hours of battery life (and my test yesterday shows that's amazingly real).  Plenty of application buttons, a wireless keyboard, bluetooth, Wireless a/b/g networking, and even a fingerprint biometric device.  Most importantly, 512 MB of ram, upgradable to 2 GB, and it's fast.  All of my work with MindManager is blazing along, even with my largest maps (1000+ nodes).  [ Comment on this Entry ] [ Email this Entry ]

A ThinkPad TabletPC Saturday 6/4/2005 11:31:04 AM (CST) - Michael Wells    Given the rabid following behind the ThinkPad line, this is pretty serious news for TabletPCs. [ Comment on this Entry ] [ Email this Entry ]

TabletPcBuzz.com Thursday 12/23/2004 12:53:47 PM (CST) - Michael Wells    A very worthwhile site for Tableters.  It is especially useful for staying on top of new TabletPC software releases. [ Comment on this Entry ] [ Email this Entry ]

Fujitsu Tablets Friday 12/17/2004 10:47:37 AM (CST) - Michael Wells    The latest Fujitsu ST5022D Tablet PC is looking quite nice.  I was fortunate enough to explore the first-edition Fujitsu at the TabletPC launch in Chicago, and was very impressed with the form factor and balance.  It felt "right", and features like the wireless external keyboard and the thumbprint recognizer look to be solid and well-designed. With the expanded battery life and memory options, the Fujitsu offering is hard to ignore. [ Comment on this Entry ] [ Email this Entry ]