Early adopters (those brave souls) are starting to report on their just-delivered Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 slates. Mine won’t arrive for another day, but I’m as interested as anyone else in people’s early impressions of this highly anticipated slate.
If you’re a new Q550 owner, share your observations with us!
The Q550 Arrives!
Since writing the first installment of this commentary, I’ve been pondering precisely how to organize and present my thoughts. It seems logical to start with Wacom although, ironically, their dual mode digitizer is less well known to me than N-trig’s. So I’m going to keep my present comments brief, at least until I think I have something more definitive to say about Wacom.
Wacom’s pen digitizing technology should be familiar to all except possibly the most recent tablet owners. When Microsoft formalized the tabletPC as a distinct product back in 2001, Wacom was the overwhelming technology supplier of choice (FinePoint probably being the other major supplier), and there was good reason for that because Wacom’s pen and digitizer provided an unparalleled inking experience with excellent positional accuracy, smooth, even pressure response and no need to put a battery in the pen. Over the years, Wacom has maintained the quality of their inking experience through several generations of tabletPCs.
Then came touch and the seemingly simple desire to combine the existing inking capability that was so fundamental to our tablet experience with this new input functionality. Except it hasn’t turned out to be so simple! We’ll talk about N-trig in subsequent installments, but N-trig’s appearance on Dell’s Latitude XT (late 2007) started the debate. Judging from discussions in the blogosphere, most people felt that Wacom was “better” than N-trig.
So finally, we come to what I think is a pivotal issue in the Wacom versus N-trig debate; how well does either company’s dual digitizer perform? In exploring this, two related questions immediately occur to me: Is combining pen and touch as simple as it first seems? And, when people say that “Wacom is better,” are they really only thinking about Wacom’s inking, and not about Wacom’s dual digitizer as a whole? More to come in future installments, but feel free to weigh in with your thoughts now!
Lenovo made some great improvements to the X220 Tablet PC that make it a joy to use as a tablet: a smooth writing surface, a comfortable rubberized grip for both right and left-handed use, and a raised battery providing a nice angle for writing while in landscape mode.
Enjoy the photos that highlight the hardware features of the Lenovo X220 Tablet PC.
FluidMath is an application that solves hand-written math expressions, and after working with a demo version of FM for the last ten days, I’m very impressed. Although it is clearly a work in progress, the debut version is quite capable and the developers, Fluidity Software, make it clear that improvements are planned. The user interface (UI) is pleasingly uncluttered and the visible workspace is large, making FM useful even on some of the newer small tablet platforms that have limited screen space. Further, tabs provide easy accessibility to individual workspace pages in which to collect specific calculations. FM’s near real time character recognition works smoothly and provides very timely feedback so that errors can be quickly corrected. Working in combination with a scribble feature to delete characters, corrections can be made on the spot as they occur, creating immediate confidence in FM’s operation and the resulting solution. In addition, FM provides the ability to fine-tune the recognition engine by allowing the user to designate a preferred recognition character for a particular written input. In my experience, this is somewhat unique. FM also has an automated plotting feature that is easy to use and incorporates an admirable number of plotting options. The development team is to be congratulated for creating such a robust and flexible recognition engine and UI.
The screen shot above shows how a numerical problem might be solved and how another problem might be plotted. In each case, the blue characters show that FM has correctly interpreted the hand-written math. Plots are created using an arc-like gesture as shown in the second problem. When the plot appears, the arc disappears. Some videos that provide a better sense of how the UI works can be found here .
This second screenshot shows a sampling of the range of problems that FluidMath can currently solve. Note that FM can produce symbolic as well as numerical results. Pretty impressive!
Of course, there are some things that warrant improvement. The current User’s Guide and other documentation isn’t too bad, but with a few additions and revisions, it could be greatly improved. In particular, FM has a clever animation feature; but it’s not well documented and is therefore not overly easy to use. Also, I encountered some recalcitrant recognition issues with some specialized math operations (for example, absolute value: | -3 | ; the recognition engine kept giving me 1 -31). Given the complexity of recognizing the wide variety of math notation, such issues are not unexpected. The developers are aware of these and other minor bugs and I assume that fixes and improvements will be forthcoming.
Finally, there is the issue of price. FluidMath was conceived as a classroom teaching tool, and so it is offered with either an annual, renewable license which allows the user to upgrade as new versions are developed, or with a “perpetual” license (at a much higher price) that allows the user to update a fixed version with bug fixes but does not allow access to newer versions of the application. Neither of these approaches is likely to be too attractive to the private user, but company users may find it acceptable. Despite this, readers who have a need to do general math on a daily basis should give Fluid Math’s demo a try. It can be pretty addictive! FluidMath
Just a few hours ago Microsoft released a video previewing their new touch interface for Windows 8. Even though there was no mention of ink, I’m pretty excited about what I’ve seen so far. Not only did Microsoft borrow heavily from the Windows Phone 7 UI, they drastically improved upon it by taking full advantage of multi-tasking and extra screen real estate, tiles, switching between applications, browsing, snapping windows, the qwerty keyboard, and more. They showed tonight that you can have the best of both worlds: a no-compromise entertainment tablet experience in addition to being able to use traditional Windows applications.
I’m pretty pumped by what Microsoft unveiled tonight. It tells me that they do know how to design with the user in mind, and they can indeed think outside the box. Will developers begin taking advantage of building HTML5 apps for Windows? We’ll see.
Watch the video below and let me know your thoughts.
A couple of days ago, Rob threw down the gaunlet, and it looks like Microsoft might… just might… be rising to the challenge!
Still in development, but looking promising! (Illustration credit: Engadget)
As expected, President of Windows Steven Sinofsky briefly introduced the new OS during his presentation at the D9 Conference. Setting aside the hardware aspects for now, the developmental user interface looked very promising, with a strong flavor of Windows Phone 7′s Metro UI and its tile-based presentation. Rather than repeat the particulars, check out the coverage at Engadget and watch the accompanying video:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/01/microsoft-unveils-windows-8-tablet-prototypes/
Like Rob, I’ve been waiting for the Windows Team to break out of the existing Windows keyboard-and-mouse mentality and provide us with a fresh user experience. It certainly looks like we’re finally headed in that direction. Two questions still linger in my mind, though:
To what extent will inking and the pen be embraced by this new UI? And…
Will the Office developers FINALLY fall in line and create a complementary version of Office that will truly exploit the advantages of the pen and touch?
What do you think?
Justin Campana has an awesome post on using ObjectDock, Rainmeter, and Fences to provide an optimized touch experience on Windows 7. Justin has full instructions on his blog. This should get us by until Windows 8 comes our way. Awesome job, Justin.
I’m continuing to plug away on my new work computer, a Lenovo X220T Tablet PC. I’m thoroughly enjoying this tablet, which I’ll continue to share more about later. The X220T features a Wacom capacitive touch and active digitizer. As most folks know, Windows 7 isn’t the most touch friendly OS in the world, so Lenovo tried to help them out a bit by including a touch friendly program launcher called SimpleTap.
The interface is easily kicked off by touching a round icon that stays hidden on the side of screen. The SimpleTap icon can easily be moved to any side of the screen by simply holding down the icon and dragging it. After pressing the SimpleTap icon, a screen of commonly used utilities pops up: volume control, screen brightness, camera control, rotation, and more. The icons can be easily moved around, as well as quickly reorganized into a grid. In addition to these included touch friendly icons, existing programs like OneNote, Word, Evernote, etc can be added. It is clear that Lenovo spent a great deal of effort designing this new launcher utility as many of the controls are designed for touch, but they stopped about 40% through the effort. Instead of improving the touch functionality of Windows 7, they highlighted just how bad it is by sticking with the traditional Windows forms approach which results in difficult to scroll lists, small target areas for choosing programs, traditional drop downs, and more. It feels like a Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde approach to user interface design. Checkout the gallery of screenshots below.
This is why Microsoft and their partners continue to get hammered on the user experience front. During a time when the battle for eyeballs and fingers couldn’t be more intense, I expected Lenovo to finish the job – not highlight their deficiencies.
I’ve been waiting for this day a long time…my brand-spanking new Lenovo X220T Tablet PC arrived today and it is everything I hoped it would be.
Here are some quick specs:
1) Core i5 2.5 ghz processor, 4gb ram, 64 bit, Windows 7 Pro
2) 300 gb 7200 rpm hard drive
3) Wacom capacitive touch and ink digitizer
4) 1366 x 768 resolution
5) docking station
Specs are great, but the true test of a touch-enabled tablet pc is how it handles inking while resting your hand on the screen. Put simply, the Lenovo X220T Tablet PC is pure awesomeness: no vectoring, no accidental icon presses, no stray ink marks, the pen was quiet, and the ink was as smooth as silk. The only way I knew the X220T had a touch screen was when I chose to touch the screen…imagine that! Kudos to Lenovo, Wacom, and Microsoft for getting this right. I couldn’t be more pleased with the inking experience.
I do have a bone to pick with Lenovo, though. I ordered an UltraBase docking station and it was missing two things I consider critical to docking solutions: 1) a power cord, 2) a Display Port adapter so I could plug in my DVI-based monitor – the port is there, but I can’t use it without an adapter. It would have been great for Lenovo to specify on the ordering page that the UltraBase did not come with either and give the buyer an opportunity to order them. Fortunately I have a few extra Lenovo power cords laying around, but I need to run out to BestBuy and get that DisplayPort adapter.
Stay tuned over the next couple of weeks while I put this X220T Tablet PC to the test. I’ll share more in a detailed review, maybe post some a few videos, and who knows what else.
I’ve got a new Tablet PC. It is all mine. And I’m very happy!
Otto Berkes, the man behind Microsoft’s Origami and Ultra Mobile PC, is leaving Microsoft. Berkes had the vision and knew where mobile computing was headed long before the iPad came on to the scene. As we all know now, Apple executed on it ways Microsoft could not.
Todd Bishop interviewed Berkes today and asked him his thoughts on the iPad:
“It’s been bittersweet,” he said. “It certainly validated the notion of having a truly touch-centric, connected computing device, but I obviously wish that Microsoft had gotten there first. … The concepts were certainly all there, but the investment level required and the clarity of focus on that class of product was not what it needed to be to achieve the kind of commercial success that Apple has achieved with the iPad.”
