News Week of March 9, 2008

Microsoft LucidTouch Tablet PC Is Semi-Transparent

As cool as touchscreen displays may be, one of their biggest problems is that your hand (or stylus) will always obscure a portion of the display, making it difficult to be perfectly accurate while still being able to see everything. Microsoft is hard at work developing something that they call LucidTouch technology and what it does is take the touchscreen concept and wraps it around the back.  (Source: Michael Kwan, Mobile Magazine)
Posted Friday, March 14, 2008 by ChrisD
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Bill Gates Predicts Tablet PCs As Future Education Tool

He stated that soon, students will be carrying everything that they need in a tablet PC. They will no longer have to carry around any type of textbooks, or notebooks. All of these tools will be right in the tablet PC.

Gates stated that the schools his daughter is attending, is already using this new technology.

With the cost of new computers continuing to drop, the tablet PC could end up being a cheaper solution than buying textbooks considering the price of books.  (Source: dbTechno)

Lenovo X60 and X61 on sale for more than half off

Direct from Lenovo via their outlet store you can pick up an outlet priced R, T, X, and Z series notebook from Lenovo. The X60’s and X61’s are hitting at around $1400 which is less that half their original advertised price.  (Source:  James Allan Brady , SlashGear)
Posted Thursday, March 13, 2008 by ChrisD
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Evernote: "A tool for lazy slobs." (Invites!)

The app is still a great tool for recording text notes, either typed or written (on a tablet PC). Plus, you can clip text and graphics from Web sites or e-mails (there's a clipper tool that makes it easy). Finding what you've entered later is also easy, thanks to search that works as you type and good ways to narrow down your results by date (and eventually location) or by tag. That is, if you bother to use tags; if you don't, you still have the service's strong search tools.

What's really cool, though, is Evernote's affinity for visual notes. The mobile app lets you snap camera phone pictures and send them directly to Evernote. Or you can drag pictures from your computer into the desktop app. On a Mac, there's a fast way to grab snaps from your Webcam. Everything then gets synched up to the server, which then does text extraction on your photos, dumping the keywords into your search index so you can find things later. (Pro tip: When you take pictures of people you want to remember at a conference, be sure to get their name badges in the shot. Instant people find.)   (Source: Rafe Needleman , WebWare)

Motion Computing F5 Tablet PC Review

Motion recently released their newest Tablet PC, the F5. The F5 is similar in design to the C5 tablet. It is durable and targeted toward the vertical market. It weighs in at 3lbs and sports a 1.2GHz Intel Core Solo processor and 40GB hard drive. Although, they offer a 32GB Solid State Drive, which I am sure sky rockets the price. However, the F5 may just be the perfect solution for making your business paperless.

The F5 Tablet PC. (Source: Tiffany Boggs, TabletPCReview.com)

Engineering Collaboration at Virginia Tech

DyKnow is instructional software whose collaborative note-taking capabilities can deliver course materials to students on individual computer screens as the instructor teaches, allowing students to view and save the instructor's notes as they are made, and add their own notes as well. The product works with either traditional keyboard computers or tablets. Notes from students can be shared with the rest of the class, allowing collaborative groups. Students can save the files to their own computers, and also can access the class files later via Virginia Tech's Blackboard system.

DyKnow's capabilities allow Bostian to display complex circuit diagrams to his large engineering classes on two large screens in class, using his tablet PC, then make notes right on the circuit diagrams. The course teaches circuit analysis--understanding the flow of power and information through a circuit, including voltage and currents. Bostian's notes from class are saved and uploaded for student review later. Students, also using wireless tablet computers, can view the diagrams and notes on the classroom screens or their tablets, where they can add their own notes, as well as viewing and saving Bostian's notes all at once, or at intervals if they choose.   (Source: Linda L Briggs, CampusTechnology.com)
Posted Wednesday, March 12, 2008 by ChrisD
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Tablet PCs: 'Test Drive' Program Puts Tablet PCs Loaded With iMedica's Patient Relationship Manager Into Physician's Hands

iMedica Corporation, a leading developer of healthcare software solutions for physician practices, announced recently a new program that equips physicians with a tablet PC loaded with iMedica's Patient Relationship Manager (PRM), a single-application Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Practice Management (PM) solution, for them to test for a week.

iMedica's "Take a Tablet" program allows physicians to bypass the often costly, time-consuming guessing game of evaluating EHR and PM systems. The program is simple - once a physician practice is pre-qualified, an iMedica representative personally delivers a tablet PC and then trains the physician to use the iMedica PRM, which is already installed on the tablet PC. The physician can evaluate iMedica PRM for a week.

"Physicians need EHR/PM solutions that fit seamlessly into their practices' workflow and that won't slow them down," says Michael Nissenbaum, iMedica's President and CEO. "They want to determine what an EHR/PM solution can actually do for a practice. This process requires more than just listening to a boilerplate sales presentation - it demands a physician test drive."

Interest in EHR implementation has grown in response to recent announcements that EHRs can have a significant positive impact on outcomes and costs in chronic disease management, according to the Rogosin Institute, a not-for-profit treatment and research institute affiliated with New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical College. Such data helps make good on the core EHR promise to enhance care, reduce costs and improve patient care.

Physicians who choose to participate in iMedica's one-week test-drive have the opportunity to try out typical practice tasks such as patient charting, prescription refills, documentation of chief complaints, referrals tracking, task and message management, scheduling, billing and collections.

"We did a lot of research to narrow down our choices - we even accessed one company's web-based portal - but it wasn't until we held in our hands the tablet PC loaded with the iMedica application and tested it like it would be used in our practice that we realized the iMedica PRM was head-and-shoulders above the others," said Louis Marino, M.D., of Buckingham Family Practice in Pennsylvania. "After we used the tablet, experienced the advantage of its 'chief complaint-driven' system, and saw how easy it was to customize, we decided to go with iMedica."

iMedica also meets the criteria of improved portability and accessibility by allowing physicians to chart from any location - with or without Internet access - and by allowing for remote access and disaster recovery.

For more information on iMedica, call 866-960-6890 or visit http://www.imedica.com.   (Source: Press Release)

Smitrix Swiftpoint Triped Mouse For Tablet PCs: Forget Those Annoying Pens

You have already seen the Swiftpoint Slider Mouse, a device that effectively makes your keyboard into one giant mousepad, and now we learn that there is a similar device made primarily for tablet PCs and multi-touch tabletop surfaces. Besides being pointier and cooler looking than the Slider, the Triped aims to "remove barriers to the growth of the Tablet PC market" by eliminating one of its major drawbacks—the pen.  (Source: Engadet via  Simtrix via Stuff.co.nz)
Posted Tuesday, March 11, 2008 by ChrisD
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Review: HP Compaq 2710p Ultraportable Tablet PC

In the Gadget world, reviewing PCs is always extremely difficult. We all have our own requirements and the plethora of options and models available from the various manufacturers makes an objective viewpoint a difficult task. HP recently released their flagship ultraportable convertible tablet PC, and it proved no exception.

The HP Compaq 2710p is an attractive and rugged looking convertible notebook with some ultra cool features. On the downside it doesn't have a very fast processor or an integrated optical drive, but as a result its battery life is fabulous and its LCD backlit screen is responsive and very high quality.  (Source: Steven Ambrose, Gadget.co.za)

Atom-based notebooks to cost between $250 and $300

More than 25 low-cost notebooks based on Intel's upcoming Atom processor are in the works, including models from multinational PC vendors, according to the chip maker's top executive in Asia

The Atom processor, formerly called Diamondville, is a small, low-power chip designed for inexpensive notebooks, a class of device that Intel and others refer to as netbooks. These machines are intended for first-time computer buyers in emerging markets as well as users in mature markets willing to trade performance for a low-cost notebook that complements their existing computers -- a market that until now has been largely dominated by Asustek's Eee PC.

Atom will offer lower performance than Intel's Core 2 Duo processors for mainstream notebooks, but the Atom's performance will be good enough for browsing the Internet and sending e-mails, Shenoy said. (Source: Sumner Lemon, IDG News Service, InfoWorld)

HP Compaq 2710p tablet PC

Review The tablet PC may never have come close to achieving the success Microsoft hoped for when it launched the concept a few years back, but these transforming laptops have won a solid audience.

Unfortunately, with many tablet PCs the inclusion of a screen that can be operated with a stylus but not a finger hasn’t done anything for usability, and the bid to keep the machines light enough to balance on a scrawny arm often leads to a big compromise in other areas.

The latest tablet to come to market, HP’s Compaq 2710p, may change this, offering as it does an excellent mix of comfort, style and build quality, along with its digitised screen.  (Source: Andrew Tiney, Register Hardware)