If you watched us trying to destroy Mobile Demand's T8700 Rugged Tablet PC in our last InkShow, you might be surprised to know that the T8700 is actually still working! If you have not seen that InkShow yet, I highly encourage you to do so. You get to see Team GBM having more fun than a geek should be allowed to have.

In this InkShow, I take a look at a few accessories like the docking station, carrying strap, and carrying case with enclosed keyboard.

• Download it here or watch the embedded version below
• Visit MobileDemand to learn more about the xTablet T8700 and the accessories you can buy.

Click To Play

It appears that my lucky streak with computers has finally been broken. My last experience with having to send a system in for repair was in about 1996 when my IBM ThinkPad 701C had to go in for repairs on its famous butterfly keyboard. After a mere 12 years, I have to send in another system.

My HP Compaq 2710p is broken. However, it is one of those random problems that can strike anyone at about the 4-6 month stage of ownership and I don't blame HP. The motherboard appears to have a problem, probably as a result of the natural burn in process, where the second memory slot causes random memory errors. I determined this after some testing using a handy BIOS utility that tests the memory outside of the OS. With 2 sticks in place, it errored almost immediately. With either stick in (but no second stick) each memory stick tested out just fine. That unfortunately points to a motherboard issue, probably with a loose connection on the secondary memory slot. :-(

One of the ways that the MacBook Air achieves its svelte thinness is from changes that Intel did for the Core 2 Duo processor inside that package. Apple asked Intel to reduce the physical size of the processor, and Intel obliged, reducing the size by about 60% while also reducing power draw from about 35 watts to about 20 watts. That's a big size reduction, but there is a less obvious side effect - smaller processors with lower power draw typically generate less heat and therefore can get by with a smaller thermal solution (fan or heatsink). This too would help that unnatural thinness. And the lower power draw will also help to extend battery life, the bane of any mobile device.

On the good side, Intel doesn't just develop processors for the fun of it; they want to make money. So, those lovely small footprint Core 2 Duo's from the MacBook Air will soon be showing up in other laptops that probably won't be quite as flashy, but may have some mundane benefits like a user replaceable battery and a wired LAN connector. Or one can hope.

via InfoWorld

Just a few quick thoughts about the M700 over the past few days...

• FAST - wonder what it would be like with a 7200 RPM drive??
• Feels very light - If you didn't see the unboxing, I didn't think the battery was in the unit when I pulled it out the the box
• Lots of crapware installed on it from the factory
• I like the keyboard, with my bigger hands, it doesn't seem as small as the x61 keyboard
• Screen is crisp, doesn't seem as 'grainy' as the other Toshiba's I have had in the past (M400, M4)
• Writing on the screen feels good - like paper, not glossy
• Battery is lasting for a good amount of time - I haven't been able to do any real tests, but I was on it for over 3 hours last night in 'balanced' mode and still had juice left - surfing, feed reading, e-mailing and reading a PDF for quite a while.
• Resolution is OK and I would like it for a daily computer, but give me a high res option and I would be in love :)
• I don't like the Firewire on the front of the machine - but it's better to have Firewire than not have it at all though
• I like that it has the wheel on the front for the volume, it comes in very handy
• Webcam works great - very clear, Skype and MSN have worked well with it
• This is the first widescreen Tablet PC I have played with for any length of time.  I really like the unit in tablet mode, some web pages are a little tight and you have to scroll, but writing in OneNote 2007 is great - Plus reading documents is easy too with the longer screen real estate
• I keep forgetting I have touch... - Touch is very responsive though - and I am surprised my fat fingers are so accurate
• Vista needs to have a "fat' start menu for touch devices
• I can see a lot of cracked screens from people trying to twist from the top of the screen - the catches might break in with use, but new they are pretty tight - it flexes the screen quite a bit if you try from the top... (maybe they thought of this already and have some support in there, I don't want to find out though)
• I want more space on the screen running Visual Studio - but it does well in running and building
• Pushes external monitors easily
• It fits what I do for my day job really well... processor is fast, memory is fast - it's done wonderful in all my testing - I want it for my daily computer, but that can't happen right now :(

What else do you want to know?  I have it for only a short time so get your questions in fast!!

The other day I posted about connectivity being one of, if not the key issue, to mobile computing. Certainly if you rely on the cloud you need to have access to that data. Recent connectivity outages point up those issues even more, and always make me think about a backup scenario. India and the Middle East are suffering from a cable break in the Mediterranean, that is forcing all sorts of work arounds, not just for Internet access but for a variety of communications that affect a range of businesses. Users are being asked to voluntarily cut back on media and music traffic to help the strapped system stay up.

I also just read that AT&T Edge service in the Midwest is down, affecting users from Chicago to Kansas City. While they hope to get it back online later today, the repairs may take until February 5^th according to some reports.

Out here in the boonies, we experience some intermittent problems with connectivity that can bring our small theatre to its knees when it occurs, and is making us take some serious looks at our plans for using the Internet to manage our two venue in two town operation.

How about you? What’s your backup plan if you loose connectivity?

I'm wrapping up production on another MobileDemand InkShow ( look for it later today / tonight ), and then headed out to a client for the rest of the day.

What am I taking with me?

• TC1100 Tablet PC for note-taking. Been loving using a TC1100 as a pure slate the past week. Wanna know the feature I love the most? The built-in stands that angle the slate up about 10 - 15 degrees. It makes note-taking a pure joy.
• MacBook running Vista and OS X. My family bought this for me for my birthday. I sold my MacBook last year and totally regretted it.
• iPhone - access to Google Reader, email, and more
• Tom Bihn Buzz Bag - the best mobile bag on the market in my opinion.

That's it. Gonna be there the rest of the day doing SQL Server and ASP work.  I do all my project planning and code organization using MindManager, which is available in both Mac and PC versions.

Where are you working today, what are you taking with you, and why?

Wow. Amazon certainly seems to be shaking things up in the digital media space: first MP3's, then the Kindle, now acquiring Audible, the king of the audio book space. I wonder when we will see audio books on the Kindle?

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Audible Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBL).

Audible.com is the leading online provider of premium digital spoken word audio content, specializing in digital audio editions of books, newspapers and magazines, television and radio programs and original programming. Through its web sites in the US and UK and alliances in Germany and France, Audible.com offers over 80,000 programs, including audiobooks from well-known authors such as Stephen King, Thomas Friedman, and Jane Austen, and spoken word audio content from sources including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Fresh Air and Charlie Rose.

"Audible.com offers the best customer experience, the widest content selection and the broadest device compatibility in the industry," said Steve Kessel, Amazon.com's senior vice president for worldwide digital media. "Working together, we can introduce more innovations and bring this format to an even wider audience."

SSD drives are one of the best things to happen to mobile computers in quite some time - performance boost, boot time, and more. James Kendrick recently noticed that HP added a 64 gb SSD option to the 2710p Tablet PC, but it comes at a price - about $900. It may sound high, and it is, but that price is in line with what other OEMs are charging for a 64 gb SSD right now. Hopefully prices will start dropping soon.

After using a 32 gb SSD in the OQO Model 02, I can attest that the 13 gb of free disk space can get a bit confining. Although, for mobility purposes, it has suited me just great and I highly recommend SSD over HDD any day of the week if your budget can accommodate it.

Microsoft Windows Vista is celebrating birthday number one today on the anniversary of the public release. You can certainly say it has been a controversial first year. Vista has taken its knocks from many quarters, certainly from the mobile sector, but it has also continued to grow in terms of sales. If you follow the industry news, it looks like there is a growing trend that is moving beyond the “knocks” into the “Vista isn’t all that bad” column. That said, there is still a large chorus that wants to see Vista branded as a Windows ME type failure and move on. Some even say Vista is the best promotion that Windows XP has ever had. Recent confusing stories of a potential 2009 release of Windows 7 certainly doesn’t help. The final release of SP1 is supposedly just around the corner and there is a lot of emphasis and interest to see how well that changes the matter and the perceptions.

From a Tablet PC perspective, Vista certainly offered some great advances, (check out our GBM InkShows on Tablet PC features in Vista) and in many ways ushered Touch into the picture. Unfortunately, from my perspective, the big hope of making Tablet PC functionality available across the board by rolling it all into Vista (the bits are there, all you need is the hardware) didn’t yield the hoped for increase in interest and development of new Tablet PCs from OEMs. That is a marketing failure as much as it is anything else, as you need to look really closely in any of the hype about Vista to know that improved Tablet PC functionality is a feature.

If it seems that Vista has been around for longer than a year that is because it has. In the roll up to the final release to consumers, the various release candidates, the release to business customers, and of course the delays, were all covered breathlessly, and it seems, endlessly (certainly here on the pages of GBM), and rightly so.

TEO developer Josh Einstein has waged a one man campaign in the GBM Forums and comments throughout the year defending the OS from some of the charges leveled against it, and done so admirably, especially as it relates to issues that might be caused by drivers and hardware from Microsoft hardware and software partners. He’s raised some excellent points along the way and in our small world here, put the focus where it needs to be in some cases. In the final analysis though, the fact that Josh has felt the need to do so, demonstrates that Microsoft missed the boat by not being proactive in discussing and addressing some of the issues that caused concern. But then that seem to be the “accepted way of things” when it comes to talking about issues with operating systems and new releases. I think the large turnover inside Microsoft, shortly after Vista’s release, also had some impact on this as well, and if you ask me the timing of those moves was not only questionable, but in some cases damaging.

So, it has been a bumpy ride in Vista’s first year. In my one man’s opinion, there is still a lot to learn, still room for improvement, and there are still some questions unanswered. While Vista and some of its attendant issues have given me some headaches, I’ve used it almost exclusively since the fall of 2006 and continue to do so. For better or worse. Mostly better.

What are your thoughts?

If you’re trying to sort out what’s what with which chip in which UMPC, you might want to take a look at Chippy’s UMPC Reports: UMPC CPU Overiview Q1 2008 at UMPCPortal.

Chippy has put together a pretty thorough walk thru on what’s out there and what’s coming from Intel, VIA, AMD, and ARM as we look ahead into 2008.

Here’s a question for you. How much does the processor platform play into your decison about purchasing a mobile device?

One of the many common themes coming from the great comments you all are leaving is in the area of broadening the content coverage. I'll address other general themes like usage scenarios with the devices we are using / testing, design layout, etc in future posts.

First area - broadening coverage: some want us to build on the "mobile" aspect of our name and include coverage beyond Tablet PCs, UMPCs, etc. Others were looking for more mobile coverage out of CES than the extensive Tablet and UMPC coverage we brought you.

This is an issue we have been discussing for quite awhile as a team - broadening coverage, defining that coverage, staying true to our original base build on Tablet PC, etc. It is true, the mobile world is much bigger than Tablet PC and natural human interface technologies.

These are some practical questions / thoughts I have in relation to broadening coverage and I'd love your feedback:

• Are you looking for more mobile phone hardware /  software / usage coverage, along the lines of iPhone, Smart phones, Windows Mobile phones, etc? We've touched on those subjects in the past, but they have never been a focus of ours.
• Should we look at covering all mobile computers like the MacBook, Sony Vaio TZ, Dell ultraportables, etc? We've been testing this with the Eee PC, and everyone seems to like that. How do you feel about Apple coverage? I'm a big Apple fan, use MacBook, iPhone, etc. As an example, being able to run Vista and OS X on a MacBook has tremendous mobile benefits, especially when .mac syncing is working behind the scenes to tie back to a iMac. Throw in a Wacom 12WX Digitizer and you have Vista tablet functionality running on a MacBook.
• Define mobile gadgets - what are you really looking for there? To be honest, I don't want GBM to become another gadget site that loses its focus. Embracing all kinds of mobile gadgets scares the heck out of me. However, I am hearing what you are saying.
• By broadening out to more mobile coverage, will our coverage become too watered down and lose the uniqueness that GBM currently brings to the table?
• Our focus to date has been on the intersection between mobile computing and natural interface technologies like ink, touch, handwriting, speech, etc. Can we still do that and broaden in to other mobile areas? Maybe.

Keep talking. This is good stuff.

Based on your feedback, we've already implemented two changes:

• Clicking on the page title now takes you directly to the comments. We are going to watch the performance on the site after implementing this change. If it negatively impacts performance, we'll put it back. dasBlog documentation suggests not implementing that feature on high-traffic blogs. Guess we'll soon see.
• We've added Older / Newer post links to the bottom of the page. Those links will let you page through older posts that don't appear on the homepage. You can also use the calendar option on the right, as well, to navigate to specific days.

Keep it coming - we're listening.

Tonight there won't be much M700 testing going on, but I will be streaming my Slingbox on the M700 to see how it does.  No work tonight - Why?  I love the show Lost and it starts back again tonight!

Any other GBM fans out there Lost fans??  Maybe we should start a thread in the forums to talk about what's going on with the show! We talk a lot about Tech on the site - but there are other things that some might have in common that help to build better relationships and a stronger community!

Anyways, so far so good with the Slingbox - though I am not very mobile with it right now, I am wired up at home.

General Dynamics Itronix is finally releasing an update to the Duo-Touch line of rugged Tablet PCs. The new Itronix Duo-Touch II maintains the characteristic Itronix ruggedness (watch the video to see!) while updating the processor and, most importantly, the screen. The new DynaVue screen claims to "dramatically increases outdoor viewability in all ambient conditions including direct sunlight". For the kind of people who need a fully ruggedized system, outdoor viewability is of paramount importance.

Claiming to be the "smallest, lightest Rugged Tablet PC', the new Itronix Duo-Touch II features include:

• Compact Size: Length: 10.6” (27.0 cm) Width: 7.2” (18.4 cm) Depth: 1.65” (4.2 cm)
• Weight: 4.1 lbs (less than 2.0 KG)
• Processor/Memory: Intel® Core™ Duo Processor U2500 at 1.2 GHz with 2MB L2 Cache, 512MB to 2GB DDRII SDRAM 533 MHz
• Display: 8.4” SVGA TFT Transmissive display with DynaVue™ Patent-Pending technology for optimum outdoor viewability
  DynaVue™ exceeds the minimum contrast ratio as required for bright sunlight per DOD-STD-3009
• Storage: Shock mounted 2.5” 80 GB and 120 GB hard disk drive with heater. Optional 16 GB or 32 GB Solid State Hard Disk Drives
• Optional Integrated Wireless Communications:
• 802.11 a/g/n WLAN
• Bluetooth®
• GPS
• Radio ready options include: EV-Do; EDGE/GPRS/UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA
• Up to 3 RF modems and GPS can be integrated at one time

via Engadget

Dennis O'Reilly has penned (perhaps literally!) a great article on using digital ink in Microsoft Office 2007 apps. Although he's specifically talking about Office 2007, many of his tips and hints actually work just fine in earlier versions of Microsoft Office. I know I've sent many handwritten emails using Outlook 2003, for instance.

In my opinion, the great thing about the article was that it was NOT on a Tablet PC site. This was a general CNet blog that is pretty widely read, and therefore many people who don't know about inking may have just gotten their first exposure. And that's a Good Thing.

Oh, and if you haven't tried it already, Microsoft is offering free trials of Office 2007. It really is an improvement for inking.