 |
||||
|
|
|
||
|
Contents 
Introduction
Fujitsu Stylistic T4020C
Lenovo ThinkPad X41
Acer TravelMate C310
Toshiba Portege M200
Hewlett-Packard TC4200
How we tested
Specifications
Editor's choice
About RMIT |
|
||
|
|
||||
|
|
||||
Scenario 1: This company wishes to supply its mobile executives with Tablet PCs.
Concerns: The execs will be concerned with style, performance, and features.
Scenario 1 Winner:
Acer TravelMate C310
Acer wins out here because of its good performance in Winstone. It also has more features than any of the other tablets and styling any executive would be happy with.
The Acer, more than any of the other tablets here is more suitable for someone who is going to use the tablet more as a notebook than a tablet.
Scenario 2:
A hospital IT manager is looking to evaluate tablet PCs for its doctors, who will be making rounds and inputting notes from the bedside, plus using the device as their regular desktop in their office and possibly from home.
Concerns: The docs are particularly interested to see if handwriting recognition will work even for them. Also size, weight, portability, battery life, cost, durability, and performance are key factors.
Approximate budget: AU$5000
Scenario 2 Winner:
Lenovo ThinkPad X41 Tablet
Picking a winner here was easy, the tablet that was lightest, most portable, durable, comfortable and had the best best battery life was the ThinkPad. It's not the fastest but there is so much going for this tablet that it outweighs its lack of speed.
Editor's Choice
The Lenovo ThinkPad X41 Tablet wins the Editor's Choice award for being the most comfortable to use and also for having excellent communication offerings from gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth, and Wireless a, b, and g support. Its super light for a Convertible and the build quality is second to none.
It's down on processing power compared to the rest of the field but it's no slouch.
When it comes to high resolution (ie DPI, not total pixel dimensions) LCDs, I fail to see the problem. Just turn up the font size, or inform Windows that it has a high resolution display in the display control panel.
This should be done automatically by any OEM with half a brain. I would think that enabling "large fonts" is simply not that big a deal.
With that setting, you can get lots of screen "working area", plus readable, smooth, clean looking text.
There are a few broken apps out there that can't cope with non-default font sizes (this appalls me) but they're not that common, really. The worst problem with Windows its self seems to be somewhat ugly quicklaunch icons and the XP Pro login screen background image being too small for the dialog. An OEM could trivially fix both of these.
I'm one of the frustrated community of users who /want/ high res LCDs, because I like smooth readable text and the option to fit lots on the screen when I need to. It's frustrating to see reviews like this panning a laptop for having a good display.
I'd be happy to hear from you if you have any particular views on this - craig@postnewspapers.com.au .