Motion Computing delays LE1700 Vista Tablet PCs until July 31

Motion Computing has been informing their partners this week that Vista based LE1700 Tablet PCs will be delayed until July 31. Here is the message that was sent to their partners and also posted in the GottaBeMobile.com forums :

Motion has postponed the shipment of Vista on the LE1700 to July 31, 2007 to allow time for further testing. Recent industry-wide testing of Vista has revealed critical errors that Motion has also observed while running Vista on the Motion LE1700. Although this postponement is very disappointing, Motion has made this decision to ensure a stable Vista environment for our current and future LE1700 customer base.

I certainly hope that at least some of the industry wide critical errors that Motion and other OEMs are seeing, are in the area of battery life. As readers might remember, when I tested the LE1700 with Vista ( see my video review of the LE1700 here ), I was getting around 1 hour 40 minutes on the standard battery. Motion communicated with me then that some BIOS tweaks were needed on the pre-production machine I was reviewing. Good move, Motion. Better to get it right and ship when its ready to go.

Along those lines, XP Tablet Edition based LE1700 can be ordered and are shipping according to availability. There are Vista upgrade paths available for those who order the XP machines.

It is interesting to see Motion comment on the “industry-wide” aspect. Apparently Motion is not alone in getting Vista to cooperate on these new machines, thus all the delays with Vista we are seeing from other OEMs: TabletKiosk, OQO, Medion, etc. They are the first, that I’ve seen, come out and publicly say that the industry is experiencing critical issues in deploying new machines with Vista, addressing publicly what others are likely talking about privately. This is definitely larger than the tablet pc space, that I’m sure other spaces are seeing. Microsoft needs to seriously reconsider their “XP is dead in 08” stance.

Interesting to say the least.