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| Subject: | RE: GISList: TabletPC -- If my memory serves me......... |
| Date: |
11/13/2002 08:35:45 PM |
| From: |
Neil Havermale |
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Wow! Sounds like the ticket...
The tablet is really not new, but repackaged and updated. I still have one
or two of Toshiba's 80286-25mhz/Win3.1 based tablets with two PCMCIA form-2
slots or one form-3. About a decade old I have to guess! Toshiba did an
excellent job in that while it didn't have handwriting recognition it did
have a pop-open keyboard. The pen was the mouse and the pen didn't rely on
any battery like tablets of the era.=20=20
We built a "heads-up feet-down" farm asset and scouting notes system on
MapInfo back when ArcView was not even a 1.0 free-ware. Worked very well
and still does - just not on a WinCE! But we always knew we wanted our
field GPS to reside on a "real" computer and OS!
Heck, you got me curious. Pulled one of my 12 inch Toshiba's out. It has a
16x640x480 B/W transflective screen - the brighter the day the better
contrast. The darned thing booted up and my old application, FarmGPS, is
navigating hooked to my 12-channel WAAS GPS. Also has a "sleep" mode that
still allows instant-off/on as well. Of note, the darned thing even had a
good battery for its day's - about four hours+ without backlight. Toshiba
was pretty smart on preserving its battery in that it would slowly discharge
over four to five weeks. Why is this important? You don't want to store a
charged battery unless you can afford Lithium types. We will see if five
years on a shelf croaks the battery.... Looks good: just pulled the
charger's plug and the battery kept the old partner alive and ticking on
each GPS epoch after only twenty minutes on charge.=20=20
Hmmmm.... might just add some current street files, plug it in to my car's
cigarette lighter (The T100 is natively 10-16 volt no converter
needed!)charge up my WAAS Garmin batteries and go out and do some field
mapping work. Heck even the MapBasic routines for FarmGPS still remain
compatible with MapInfo Pro 7.0! I may just buy one of those new fancy
Tablets!=20
The only issues I can recall on my experience with several hundred of these
Toshibas in users hands were the screen-akes if they were dropped. Smart to
have a screen protector too for pen versus dust scratches. I doubt I'll buy
a color screen as even the best SONY Clie still has trouble in full
sunlight. Disk drives never croaked but the screens did crack. Best
solution is to keep the neck strap around your neck!
For anyone really interested in the "tablet" take a look at Panasonic
equipment. Passes the $2,000 "Whoops, it just jumped out of my hands" test.
Very rugged and dust/water proof as well! Oh, and most of the models are
touch screened and include hand writing recognitions for WIN2000 as well as
current XEs. It just gets better.... DVD on the beach?
FWIW
MidNight Mapper
aka Neil
11/14/02
-----Original Message-----
From: David Nealey [mailto:dnealey@worldnet.att.net]
Sent: Sunday, November 10, 2002 8:01 AM
To: gislist@geocomm.com
Subject: GISList: TabletPC -- First Impression
Although some industry experts are saying that the vote is still be out on
the new TabletPC=AE, the device offers us GIS users a powerful mobile
computing tool for data collection and verification that will be more
convenient to use than existing devices. .....
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