Inspirational Technology

A tale of two tablet PCs (Part 2)

In the last episode I offered a "review" of the Acer 110TCi. OK, so it was really more of a rant about the incredibly poor usability design of the product, but you get the idea. I ended by asking the question of whether or not I've now changed my mind about how the Tablet PC can be useful to a Macintosh user. The answer is no I haven't, you just have to have the right hardware. Hardware designed with some actual thought into how it will be used.

First let me be clear, if Apple made a Tablet PC like device, I'd forget all about the Windows XP driven Tablet PC of today. Unfortunately, it's doubtful Apple will offer such a device, even though there are rumors circulating that one is being manufactured. All is not lost however, there does exist a Tablet PC that a Macintosh user can, if not love, at least can like. If you're a Macintosh user and are interested in buying a tablet to complement your existing Macintosh setup, I highly recommend the Compaq TC1000.

The Compaq is far from a perfect device so to start I'll mention the major criticisms often leveled at it.

First it's slower then any other Tablet PC. There's no debating this point. It uses a Transmeta Crusoe processor running at 1Ghz, but because of the design of the Crusoe it doesn't really feel like a 1Ghz PC for many operations. In particular launching applications and running those applications for the first time will be slow. This is because the Crusoe has to translate the Intel X86 instruction into the Crusoe's own VLIW (very long instruction word) instructions. What's interesting though, is that as you use an application more, the Crusoe optimizes parts of it and the end result is something that performs perfectly fine. It's kind of weird, but for what it gives you it's probably worth it. Of course, what it gives you is better battery life. An extremely important feature for a device intended to be used the way Tablet PCs are used. From what I've seen so far, the TC1000 performs vastly better in the battery department then the Centrino based Acer did. With the Acer I always felt like I should be plugging it in as I watched the battery meter drop, and with the Compaq I watch in wonder at how long it lasts. (one caveat here is that the Acer I had did have a defective wireless card so it's possible that the battery life was adversely affected by that, but I've seen similar reports elsewhere as well.) So coming at this as a Macintosh user, speed is not the most important thing, it's the other qualities of the device that will make or break the experience. The device does need to be faster, but even with this considered I still find it to be vastly more usable then the much faster Acer.

The second major criticism of the TC1000 is that it doesn't have a pressure sensitive pen. The TC1000 uses a different digitizer then all the other Tablet PCs. Most have Wacom digitizers, but the Compaq uses a Finepoint digitizer. For me I don't see this as a real problem. I played with the pressure sensitivity on the Acer and clearly for an artist it will be important, but for the average user I doubt it's really necessary. Would I like to have it? Sure. Do I miss it, not really. The primary reason for this is that the pen on the Compaq works dramatically better then the pen on the Acer. In particular the calibration is much more consistent, the Acer would constantly have problems with the pen near the edge of the screen. So far I haven't seen any of this with the Compaq. Again the caveat is that I'm not positive that the Acer was working correctly, but also again I've seen many reports from other people that the Wacom digitizers have lots of problems with pen calibration around the edges. The other downside of the pen on the Compaq is that it requires a AAAA bettery. This is definitely annoying, but I really like the weight it adds to the pen. The compaq pen feels much more like an actual writing instrument, rather then the cheap plastic excuse for pens I've seen on other Tablet PCs. The Acers built in pen was especially bad, and while it includes another larger pen as well, there's no way to attach it to the device.

There is one other thing to mention while talking about the negatives of the Compaq device. The TC1000 is still a first generation unit and is sure to be upgraded in the near future. There are various rumors floating around, but nothing concrete has been seen. It seems the two most common rumors are that the next gen will either switch to a Centrino or use the next generation Transmeta chip called, I believe, the Astro. Whichever route they go, I really hope they don't trade battery life for a small boost in speed.

Ok, wait, one more thing worth mentioning. Heat, the Compaq can definitely get warm and this hasn't been helped by the fact that the AC in the house isn't working correctly right now. It has a fan and the fan does make noise. In a lot of ways it seems pretty similar to the fan in the Apple 15" Powerbook. When it comes on you know it. This is actually what I consider the most serious flaw in the current design. It would be bad to have the fan come on while sitting in a meeting or something. However compared to my old Dell laptop the Compaq is whisper quiet so maybe it isn't all bad. On the Acer I don't think the fan ever came on.

So now having gotten the major faults of the Compaq out of the way, what's good about it? Well that can be summed up in one word, design! Which provides a benefit in the form of another word, usability! The Compaq engineers clearly thought about what they were doing. They didn't release a device that was full of features at the expense of usability and refinement. Where the Acer felt like a cheap plastic, piece of junk PC, the Compaq feels, well ..., it feels like it could have been an Apple product. It's not quite all the way up to Apple standards, but it comes far closer then any other PC I've ever seen and it's a thousand times better then the pathetic Acer.

The Compaq feels like a device that you can use as a companion (exactly what I was looking for). It has a very stiff frame and a piece of glass over the screen. This gives it a very solid feeling and makes it feel like it would be safe to carry it around. The edges are smoothed and rounded with no bulges that mar the clean lines of the device. Basically it feels good in the hand, a very nice thing considering how Tablet PCs are intended to be used.

The glass over the screen has a number of nice features. It protects the screen, it alters the glare profile so that you can actually use it while holding it in your lap, it's much easier to clean, it allowed the for the face of the device to be entirely flat and it makes writing feel a little more natural then writing on the screen usually does. The downside is that looking through the glass does slightly alter the quality of the image. I've seen this described as being like looking through a very, very shear nylon stocking. It's a little annoying, but given the benefits of the glass and the way it makes the device feel and work I will take the glass every time.

All the cable connections are either on the top edge or the bottom edge of the device when in portrait mode. This design makes perfect sense. It's intended so that if you lay the device flat on a desk, all the wires that would go off the back of the desk(power, ethernet, USB, VGA) are on the top and those that would likely go toward the user (headphone and microphone) are on the bottom. This allows you to plug it in and still be able to pick it up and hold it fairly easily. With the Acer you would have wires protruding from three sides in this scenario. The one thing that bugs me a little is that the headphone cable ends up stabbing you in the stomach when you hold the device. I kind of wish they would have put the headphone and microphone jacks on the bottom of the left side instead of on the bottom of the device. This would still allow clean wire routing, while also allowing you to recline while listening to music through the headphones and reading on the device in portrait mode.

The Compaq has a number of buttons on the side of the device (esc, tab, Q and email) along with three user programmable pen activated buttons(launch input manager, launch journal and screen rotation) on the face of the device. All of the side buttons, except the email button, are also user programmable. In addition, there's a jog dial on the side that allows you to scroll through documents and serves as a return key when pressed. The button layout isn't perfect, I'd actually like to see a few more buttons that are user programmable, however compared to what was on the Acer this is a vast improvement. The pen activated buttons on the face are in particular, a sign of the considerably greater refinement to the Compaq device. The jog dial is also much easier to use then the button mechanism on the Acer and it doesn't fatigue your finger at all (something that was a big problem on the Acer).

To go along with the longer battery life in general, the Compaq also has the very nice feature that you can swap the battery without shutting the machine down. This is something that Apple machines have done for years and why it's not a standard feature on all PC laptops I'll never understand. Again a nice consideration for how people will actually use the machine. A portable machine that can't stay portable for extended periods isn't particularly useful and having to shut down to swap the battery is a huge disruption to your workflow and a waste of time.

One of my criticisms of the Acer was that the power cord was too thick and too stiff, making it unpleasant to hold the device while it's plugged in. The Compaq is better in this regard, but not perfect. The cable is both thinner and more flexible then the Acer's, but not nearly as thin or flexible as the cable that Apple uses. This is a little detail that PC companies constantly miss, the Compaq isn't bad, but Apple shows it can be done better.

The Acer is a convertible design with a screen that can pivot around and lay flat to make a tablet. The Compaq is also a convertible design, but with a much more interesting ability to remove the keyboard entirely and run it as a pure slate. This makes the slate portion lighter and substantially improves the feel of it, as mentioned above. It's a compromise and in my opinion an extremely good one. The keyboard isn't a major selling point to these devices and Compaq did a great job of providing a pure slate and the ability to still use it as a regular laptop. The design they chose also has some interesting characteristics like fitting better in the cramped spaces of an airline seat. I'm not going to comment too much on the keyboard as I haven't really been using it much. What is interesting though, is the level of detail that went into the design of the keyboard. Maybe I'll write up something else later about the industrial design of addon components and talk about the TC1000 keyboard.

Overall there are many other things that I could comment on, however this is getting pretty lengthy so I'll just leave it with what I've covered so far. I'll maybe write more about this in the future as there is a lot more to like about what Compaq has done. I also haven't talked at all about the software on the device or the usability of Window XP for tablet computing. That will follow in the future.

So what does my rambling about the Compaq hardware mean. It means that a quality computing device is much more then just the sum of its parts. The Acer 110TCi is full of great parts, but the whole is horribly weakened by the terrible design that was applied to create the product. As I mentioned in the last installment, it's disappointing to me that such an inferior product could receive so many good reviews. In contrast the Compaq TC1000 has what on paper looks to be a vastly inferior list of parts. In fact that list of parts looked so unattractive to me, that when i was shopping for a tablet I didn't even seriously consider the Compaq. OK, actually, it was on the complete bottom of the list. It was only after the hands-on with the Acer that I seriously looked at the device. What I found was a device that, while flawed, was overall considerably less flawed then anything else available when you consider the whole package. It may be tough to understand this if you're a PC user used to the more speed, more features, cheaper price treadmill, but Macintosh users will get what I mean. I guess you could say, it's not about how big your parts are, it's how you use them. And Compaq has chosen parts that when put together to form a complete product, achieves something that is plain and simply, more satisfying to use. I've never said that about a PC before, but I'm saying it now. If you're a Macintosh user who's looking for a tablet device the Compaq TC1000 is the way to go. Forget the spec sheet. The Compaq is a device that can be your friend, it's refined, elegant and pleasurable to use for the kind of tasks that a Macintosh user might want (unless you're an artist). As it stands right now I won't declare my love for the Tablet PC, the software is the key there and I'll be writing more about that in the future. What I will say though, the Compaq TC1000 is a beautiful device that works well and does everything that I was hoping it would do. For a PC that's not too bad.