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Monday, March 26, 2007

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Answering some questions on the LE1700

- Rob Bushway

There have been some comments in the forum and the news posts that I thought needed addressing with another post.

First of all, pressure sensitivity is in both the active digitizer model and the WriteTouch model. The WriteTouch model does use a different digitizer technology (N-Trig), thus a different pen; but pressure sensitivity is there. The active digitizer model still uses the wacom digitizer. I’ve got both units here and pressure sensitivity works.

Second, in regards to the convertible keyboard and extended battery. Unfortunately, the convertible keyboard cannot attach to the back of the tablet when the extended battery is used. I brought this issue up with Motion when the LE1600 first came out, and unfortunately it still has not been addressed.

Third, there have been some questions regarding battery life with Vista. I still have the LE1700 with me and I’ll try to get some examples of standard battery life under Vista. I’m suspecting it will be between 2 to 2.5 hours with brightness fixed at 50% and wireless off. I’ll post a comment to this news post with those results later tonight.

UPDATE FROM BATTERY TEST:

I just had the opportunity to run the LE1700 Tablet PC through a simple battery test. Here is the scenario

1.5 ghz Core 2 Duo
Vista Business
Standard battery
Power plan: Motion Optimized
50% brightness fixed
wireless off ( didn’t come with wireless )
Bluetooth on
Journal, Word, and MineSweeper running

With the above setting, I got about 1 hour 40 minutes. Pretty darn bad. Some of that is definitely Vista, and some of it is definitely Core 2 Duo, but it is hard to say which is the biggest culprit. I definitely wasn’t pushing the machine hard. In fact, my daughter was using it for about an hour of that 1 hour 40 minutes drawing in Journal.

The official specs list battery life at around 3 hours. When I was using the LE1600 1.5 ghz Centrino running Tablet PC Edition, I was getting about 2.5 - 2.75 hours. Now, with this simple, unscientific test, I get about 33% less battery life with Vista and Core 2 Duo. Again - nothing scientific, but it is certainly worth noting. Sounds like people who want the LE1700 will need to do what X60 owners are doing: get the extended battery. It is also something that Motion needs to take a serious look at.

UPDATE #2:

I ran the same scenario above with the extended battery plugged in and got about 3 hours 20 minutes, with the extended battery roughly burning at the same rate as the standard battery test. So, the extended battery appears to add about 1 hour 40 minutes of use. This falls way short of the spec’d 6 – 7 hours.

UPDATE #3:

I’ve been in communication with Motion Computing regarding the LE1700 battery issues I’ve been reporting on.

Motion believes that the experiences I’ve been having with battery times are indeed pre-production issues. For example, there were several production-level tuning tweaks / adjustments in the BIOS and operating system that were not implemented in the units I received. Once those adjustments are made to production units, Motion believes that battery levels will be up to par with what specs quote

I’m going to send my units back to Motion so they can take a look, and hopefully I’ll get some production level units to run further tests on.

Hardware | Tablet PC

3/26/2007 4:57 PM MST

Answering some questions on the LE1700 Comments [16] | Digg This | del.icio.us | Citations

Monday, March 26, 2007 8:21:52 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

how much is the LE1700

Monday, March 26, 2007 8:24:58 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

starts at $2199 for the Core 2 Duo with 512mb ram

Rob Bushway

Monday, March 26, 2007 9:59:20 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Disturbing...

Xotica

Monday, March 26, 2007 10:40:53 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Thanks Rob for a very informative video.
1) The std battery won't cut it. Trouble is, the extended battery makes it 4-1/3 (?) lbs, and not as easy to carry. Could you do a test with the extended battery?

2) The keyboard looks very disappointing, and adds more weight. I wish they had made it like the discontinued HP "transformer" tablets, where the portable keyboard could detach.

3) Also, my 56 yr eyes have trouble with the small type, but I like the higher SXVGA quality. In the multi-touch video, could you show us what SXVGA plus the larger font looks like?

Mike Reilly

Tuesday, March 27, 2007 12:10:52 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Dang, I like this machine but $2790 for the 1GB WriteTouch Dual Core version with View Anywhere is out of my league. Add in the keyboard and extended battery and it's up to $3200. Compare that to an similarly-configured Lenovo X60T for about $2000.

Kenrick

Tuesday, March 27, 2007 7:39:15 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Could one expect higher battery life running Tablet XP over Vista

Tuesday, March 27, 2007 7:53:56 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Intel was working on various ways to crank down power consumption during mobile use, and Vista seems to have some settings to do so as well. The results of power testing will depend on whether the programmers make use of such features and the users have the right settings.

Is there some way to make a 2 CPU computer go down to 1 CPU while mobile? For those who dock a Tablet at a desk and carry it at other times it would be good to get the best of speed while docked and power conservation while mobile.

Mickey Segal

Tuesday, March 27, 2007 10:07:41 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Very nice tablet but the price and battery life leave a bad taste. Rob, have you had a chance to try the C5? If so, what are you impressions?

Roland

Tuesday, March 27, 2007 10:15:13 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

I have only used the C5 on a casual basis, like for 5 or 10 minutes. very nice unit indeed.

Rob Bushway

Tuesday, March 27, 2007 10:28:17 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Generally speaking, most users are expecting better battery life under Tablet Edition vs Vista.

when I do the WriteTouch, I'll demo the 120 dpi setting as well

Rob Bushway

Tuesday, March 27, 2007 11:19:39 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Rob,

I have an M200. When sitting next to my desktop for use in slate mode as a notepad, the thickness is less than stellar - I feel like I writing on a thick Chemistry book. A notepad is typically thinner, my wrist feels better, the writing experience feels better. So, I desire a thinner tablet.

Since I have not had the opportunity to hold an X60 I would like to ask you the following:
Which machine is lighter with standard batteries, the X60 or the LE1700?
Which machine is thinner with standard batteries?
Is there another 12" tablet that is thinner and lighter other than the old and outdated NEC?

Thanks in Advance.

Jas

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 2:15:00 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

When I first looked at this I thought that, regardless of expense, this was finally a tablet for me. I had resisted tablets to date because I can't stand the feel of a wacom digitiser and prefer the feel of a passive stylus on pressure sensitive screen (like my much-loved Newton MP 2001). It looked as if, with the mode switching I could avoid the active digitiser and operate with it in touch screen mode. This turns out not to be the case, at least for my primary use of a tablet, namely intensive text entry (I loath keyboards and although I like voice input, I compose better with a pen). It seems that the touch screen mode is simply not going to permit hand writing recognition use - ditto for motion's touch screen version of the le1600 I gather. So, my only hope is that the Israeli digitiser has a better feel than the Wacom one. Even more so than usual, it will be "try before I buy".
Rob, if you have ever used a Newton, any comments upon the feel of the pen of the le1700 versus such a stylus?
peter

peter davson-galle

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 8:28:32 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

unfortunately, I've not had the pleasure of using a Newton.

The LE1700 WriteTouch automatically switches between touch and active mode really, really well. It auto switches. Another option might be the TabletKiosk i440D, which uses a button to switch between touch and active.

Rob Bushway

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 8:29:46 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Jas: I'll get to your comment later tonight when I have a chance to lay the two side by side. Unfortunately, I don't have an X60 with a standard batteries, though.

Rob Bushway

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 10:55:14 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Rob, have you called Motion to ask about this?

Might a new battery demonstrating HALF of the advertised battery life (as confirmed by another battery doing the same thing) be caused by a defective power supply in the tablet, or other problem with the tablet...?

For a unit to have only an hour and a half of battery life is a very serious limitation for a slate - it won't even make it through a medium length meeting...

Just as bad, for them to advertise the batteries as having double their actual life, even when new, would be very troubling indeed (and after 6 months, these batteries will mostly likely have even less by a significant margin).

Jim Wright (aka CommSoft)

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 11:25:57 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

I am in communications with Motion regarding the battery issue. I'm waiting to hear from engineering.

Rob Bushway

Comments are closed.