Penmanship, like hieroglyphics and the IBM Selectric, has lost its purpose. Let's erase it for good.
In all my years of school, there was only one time I cried in class. It was the first week of first grade—Mrs. Scougie's room—and we were learning cursive. Q. I hated the letter. But it wasn't that I couldn't get the strokes right. It was the way I held my pencil: with four fingers around the base, not three—an apparent crime against writing protocol. And though I still write that way, thank you very much, I haven't used script since elementary school. I type, I Twitter, I Facebook and IM. I e-mail co-workers who sit feet from my desk, and text rather than call. The only time I pen a handwritten letter is when I write to my grandmother. So when I hear people say that penmanship is dead, my response: it's about time. (Source: Jessica Bennett, NEWSWEEK)
HP’s Touchsmart TX2 is unusual among Tablet PCs in that it’s intended for home use rather than corporate use. You’ll find glossy patterned plastics more in-keeping with the company’s Palivion range than its Compaq machines. The only question is, is there actually a market for touchscreen displays on consumer laptops?
The panel works with both a stylus and fingers, making it easy to navigate the Vista OS. We found it too responsive, however, with the device reacting before we’d even touched the display. As such, it’s impossible to rest a palm on the screen when scribbling away with the stylus, forcing you to adopt a more uncomfortable hovering motion.
Although it’s a bright and sharp screen, image quality is lessened by the touchscreen technology, with a hazy finish that looks almost greasy. It’s at its worst when viewing small text, where we found it uncomfortable to use over longer periods. (Source: Stephen Patrick, Pocket Lint)
Posted Thursday, February 26, 2009 by ChrisD Rating: 2.66Comments (0)
Sleek and thin with a beautiful display the HP 2730p EliteBook Tablet PC is packed with features and small details that make the HP EliteBook Table PC experience stand out from the crowd.
With so may Tablet PCs available today what makes the 2730p Tablet PC standout?
Ease of use, an exceptional screens..... There is no question that HP paid careful attention to detail when designing the HP 2730p EliteBook Tablet PC. The listened to users It's sleek, sturdy and powerful, the case is fingerprint resistant, it has a great pen and ink experience,a built in webcam and a light to illuminate the keys.. Those are just some of the features that made the HP Tablet PC stand out from the crowd.
Full Sun Inside In the Shade
The HP 2730p EliteBook Tablet PC Tablet PC has an exceptionally good indoor /outdoor display
It's All in the Details........ (Source: Linda A. Epstein, TabletPC2.com)
Netbooks are going to be hot this year, with both Dell and Sony — among others — trying to get in on the Asus Eee PC and its success as a cheap, functional laptop for light computer use. So how about a net-tablet? That's basically what this modded Eee PC is, worked over by a Japanese modder who ditched the keyboard and turned the Eee into a handheld ultraportable tablet computer.
The end result is a fully-functioning UMPC that's only 1.68 pounds, with buttons on the face of it for simple navigation, and a stylus to interact with the touchscreen. It'd be interesting if the Eee PC's voice commands made it in, too. (Source: Kevin Hall, Dvice)
Dell this week revamped its tablet lineup with the new Latitude XT2 tablet PC that offers a range of new features, including new multitouch capabilities. In addition, the Dell Latitude XT2 tablet offers more battery life, the choice of two different ultra low-volt Intel Core 2 Duo processors, DDR3 memory, a solid state drive option and a starting price of $2,399. The Latitude XT2 tablet builds on Dell's previous tablet offering - the Latitude XT - which help bring Dell into the tablet market for the first time in 2007. (Source: eWeek)
What looks to be the official spec sheet for the previously spotted 12.1-inch Dell XT2 tablet PC has been leaked as of this weekend. The chart confirms some earlier specs while others are new, including the support of up to 5GB of RAM. Processors will include the ultra low voltage Intel Core 2 Duo at 1.2GHz or 1.4GHz. The weight of the notebook is now rated at about 3.6lbs with the four-cell battery and 3.8lbs with the optional 6-cell, making it nearly identical as its XT predecessor and not significantly lighter, like previously reported. There will be one more optional battery, a nine-cell, which will extend the battery life of the convertible netbook significantly. There are two displays, both with 1280x800 resolutions, with one rated for viewability in broad daylight. Storage will come from a choice of 80GB or 120GB SATA hard disk drives as well as a 64GB solid state drive option. Available operating systems will comprise of various Windows Vista editions, including Ultimate, Business, Business 64-bit and the option to downgrade to Windows XP Tablet Edition. (Source: Electronista)
Posted Monday, February 9, 2009 by ChrisD Rating: 2.33Comments (0)
Fujitsu has updated the LifeBook T5010, T1010, P1630 and T2020 convertible Tablet PCs, which now join the mini convertible notebook LifeBook U820, providing users with integrated AT&T BroadbandConnect HSUPA. In addition, the LifeBook E8420 notebook is expected to boast support for EV-DO connectivity, a feature that is slated to become available in the second quarter of this year. (Source: Traian Teglet, Softpedia)
Posted Thursday, February 5, 2009 by ChrisD Rating: 2.5Comments (0)
Jennifer Snodgrass, an assistant professor in the Hayes School of Music, will demonstrate ways she and her students use Tablet PC laptop computers in the classroom. Snodgrass uses the technology to teach music theory classes.
“We want the campus community to see what we do, how you can use Tablet PCs to deliver instruction, and how effective our tutoring center has been,” Snodgrass said.
Funding for the Tablet PCs used in the classroom was made possible by a grant from Microsoft, an Appalachian Foundation Fellows Grant, and funding from the Office of Academic Affairs and the Hayes School of Music. (Source: University News, Appalachian State University)
Brian De Francesca the chief operating officer at Tawam Hospital, said the IT award was in recognition of a project involving sophisticated equipment used by doctors on call all around Al Ain. “Our doctors and nurses visiting home patients are able to access their records using a tablet PC. This is very hi-tech stuff. They can access the records from anywhere in the world.” (Source: Mitya Underwood , The National UAE)
Posted Monday, February 2, 2009 by ChrisD Rating: 2.38Comments (0)
Wordpad enhances the document reading experience by using the multi-touch platform and using the zoom and pan gestures. Zooming, panning and inertia lets the user get to a particular piece of content very quickly in an intuitive fashion. By using the zoom gesture, the user can zoom in or zoom out of the document which is akin to using the zoom slider at the right of the Wordpad status bar. On multi-touch capable hardware, the user can zoom in and out of the document by placing his fingers anywhere within the document window and executing the zoom gesture. Wordpad also supports the pan gesture to pan thru the pages of a document that is open in Wordpad. By executing the pan gesture, the user can scroll-down or scroll-up a document similar to using the scroll bar of the Wordpad application.
In Paint multi-touch data is used to allow users to paint with multiple fingers. It is an example of an application that allows multi-touch input without the usage of gestures. For Paint’s functionality, providing multiple finger painting ability was more compelling and enriching than allowing for zoom, pan, rotate or other gestures that act on the picture in a read-only mode and not in an edit-mode. New brushes in Paint are multi-touch enabled, and they handle touch inputs via multiple fingers and allow the user to simultaneously draw strokes on canvas on finger drag. These brushes are also pressure-sensitive, thereby providing a realistic experience with touch by varying the stroke width based on the pressure on the screen. While adopting the multi-touch platform to enhance the end-user experience in Paint, conscious design decisions were made to preserve the single touch experience for functionalities where a multi-touch scenario does not apply such as the color picker, magnifier and text tool. (Source: Riyaz Pishori and team, Windows 7 Blog)
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