HP's TabletPC Line Updated - Other Touch-Enabled Notebooks, Too
March 1st, 2010
HP took the wrapper off the successor to the HP 2730P today, launching the HP Elitebook 2740p TabletPC. This model is the successor to the TabletPC that I currently use for work. The new Elitebook will feature Core i5 and i7 processors. I have not had a look at the display, but it looks like HP will retain the low-reflection design that is currently on the 2730P. Thankfully, it will also have the impact-resistant, chemically-hardened treatment that the 2730p also rocks.
The big news in this model is the implementation of both an active digitizer for us penabled folks, and multi-touch interaction for that crowd who is now used to putting their fingers all over their phone. MIL-STD 810G ratings are in place on this bad boy, with the DuraKey finish on the keyboard, and DriveHGuard protection for the hard drive.
Integrated wireless broadband will be available; no word on carriers yet, although this time it will include GPS functonality. Right now it appears to be CDMA and EV-DO, so maybe Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T might all be possibilitites. I have never personally used the QuickLook functionality on my 2730p, but it is here in the new model. This is the quick launch, near instant-on capability that allows you to get at your email and the Web without having to boot into Windows. You can peep some more of the specs from the sheet and some pics below. The models will come in at 1.25 inches thin and about 3.8 pounds.
HP has also updated its Elitebook 2500-series with the HP 2540, as well as its ProBook 4000-series lines. As of this time, the 2740p and 2540p were not available to order. The 4000-series updates (ProBook 4320s, 4420s, 4520s, and 4720s) are all available now, ranging from starting prices of $949 for the 4320s to $1059 for the 4720s.
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GameWatch Updated
February 28th, 2010Check out the latest from the Journal of a Gamer over on the Other Half
Ubisoft's DRM Scheme is a Crock of Poo
February 21st, 2010This just in from MaximumPC. And I agree. I admit it, there is a large population on the planet of that are dishonest bastages that are leeching thousands, maybe even millions of dollars out of the PC publisher and developer coffers. But...do we really need a regime instituted that is so onerous? I have no issues with one-time validation schemes. Heck, I would not even have a problem if I had to call in to an automated line and enter some type of validation code while I was online before I was allowed to play my game. But what Ubisoft is doing is absolutely making me unwilling to pay any of my cash for any PC title released by Ubisoft.
I understand that companies have to do things to protect themselves. Given the choice of exiting a market, or creating a nazi regime for gamers, I guess I would choose to exit the market. Is there really an absolute need for Assassin's Creed II on the PC? If not, I think it would be a better maneuver for Ubisoft to simply not release a version for the PC. There are clearly a lot of emotional issues with this issue. What I think all of the entertainment industries fail to realize is this: consumers are offended to actually pay their money for content, to then be treated like criminals in order to access it. You see, the pirates don't care about the emotional impact of your DRM scheme. They just giggle and set about devising means of cracking it. The ones you are pissing off, and therefore losing revenue on, are the customers who were actually paying for your content in the first place. It's kind of like gun laws. They only work against people who are obeying the law. The ones who are determined to break them are not impacted at all.
While I have emotional issues with this move by Ubisoft, it's more productive to discuss the technical and business issues. I have been a proponent of digital distribution models, particularly for consoles. While the optical media is available, I prefer to purchase those versions. These positions may seem in opposition to each other. The truth is, if optical media were to go away, I would not rail against it. However, while optical media continues to be available , I choose to buy those versions.
I mention this to illustrate that I am on the side of industry assuming that their most important consumers have broadband connections. But when I say that I am on the side of that argument, it is with the caveat that there be no gamer left behind. Mechanisms must be provided to ensure that gamers without broadband connections have access to that same content via some other outlet. One means of achieving this is to have the content available at the standard brick and mortar shops, who might be unwilling to carry game systems that are wholly supported by digital distribution models. They could have kiosks where games without broadband connections could bring in a thumbdrive or other medium to download the content.
My point here is to illustrate that I have no problem with Ubisoft making the assumption that their most important customers have access to a broadband internet connection. I take extreme umbrage to Ubisoft assuming that I am willing and able to always have that broadband connection on. What I have a problem with is Ubisoft not allowing me to maintain my save file locally. I have been a PC gamer for a long time, and I do not need a publisher to coddle me under the guise of ensuring that my save-game files are secure and available in the cloud. I did not ask for this level of service, and I am quite happy having local control of my save-game files. If I need them on another PC, I'll copy them to my NAS and remote in to copy the files over.
What I have a problem with is Ubisoft creating a schema that assumes that I either have access to that broadband internet access all of the time, or want to be connected all of the time. There are still (idiotic) hotels out there who charge for internet access. I refuse to pay these hotels for a service that should be a free commodity for hotel guests. So, because Ubisoft decided their schema is better for me, I now cannot play my game in this hotel?! I also mentioned before that there are times when I do not want to be connected. I just do not like being connected to a network if I am not actively doing something with that access. I am not intersted in being forced to maintain a connection to public wireless network to play a game when that connection provides not readily visible value added to my gameplay experience.
There are all kinds of things wrong with this appraoch by Ubisoft. It is simply ridiculous. I am also absolutely certain that it will be cracked. When someone pirates a game, they rarely care if they have access to the online content, patches, stat tracking, or any of the so-called advantages law-abiding consumers will "gain" from this "service". Those guys, for the most part, just want to steal the game once, play it, and be done with it. One of PC gaming's largest detracting factors has been the fact that it can sometimes be a pain in the arse in comparison to the console plug-and-play paradigm. I deal with this additional effort required because I typically feel that the overall entertainment experience gained by playing on a PC is of greater value than the experience on a console. Maneuvers like this by the big publishers are not helping the case for PC gaming's continued existence. Anyone who has access to both a console and a PC would be a fool to choose the PC version of Assassin'c Creed II. I hope Ubisoft has fun killing the potential of a great franchise run on the PC.
- Vr/Zeuxidamas..>>
Back to School on a TabletPC
February 17th, 2010I am going back to school. I have about 3 months of freedom left. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. I won't get into those. What I will get into is the fact that I am trying to prepare by revisiting how to study and take classes using a TabletPC. This will be my second foray into academia on the HP EliteBook 2730P. This time around it will be configured with Windows 7 Professional 64-bit and Office 2007, so some things will be a little different.
Key amongst these differences is the fact that, by virtue of having moved to a 64-bit OS, I have lost the ability to send any document to Microsoft OneNote using the MS OneNote print-driver. This is due to an oversight by MS, failing to include a print driver in Office 2007 that is compatible with 64-bit OS'. A further failure still that they have not rolled out a patch, plug-in, or other fix that would return this functionality to those of use who have migrated to 64-bit. This has been a principle feature of MS OneNote, which I have been using for about 7 years now. WIthout it, I'll need some other tricks in my bag in order to get through school if I am going to do everything electronically.
One of those alternative functions that I employ is to capture a part of a screen using the Windows 7 Snipping tool. This function is a brilliant inclusion in the native Windows OS. So if I am doing research on the web, or if I am handling a document that I can now not print to MS OneNote, a useful alternative is to capture as much of the artifact as I need. I then paste it into MS ONeNote and mark it up with whatever notes I feel compelled to. In the example below (left), I used this methodology to make a page that helps me keep track of whatever Podcast I listened to last and other household chores and tasks. While I cannot show actual notes from class, this gives you a gist of how I might use it in a class or for a research project:
Thoughts on the iPad - Finally
February 14th, 2010I have been silent on the iPad, at least via any of my online outlets. Warner Crocker posted some questions on Gadget Fatigue over at GottaBeMobile, and a lot of those issues point to the reasons behind my silence. It has just been so loud and so fatiguing going through all of the data available, and more so in reading through some of the comments that defy an reasoning that I can comprehend. Over the weekend, Dan Ackerman over on CNET attempted to identify and offer some alternatives to the iPad, and I finally got off my duff to enter some of my thoughts on the device. Some of this might be without context without reading the full article over on CNET and breezing through some of the comments that I was responding in opposition to, but for the most part you are ok if you just peep the thoughts below:
"These are just my own opinions:
I found the article ok in its objectivity. The writer pointed out the same issues that I have in some other posts and blogs: UMPCs (which are what the Windows-based tablets are) have higher utility than an iPad in most cases, while an iPad will be easier to use, again, in most cases. And you, know, neither of these platforms has to be "right" or "wrong". My own opinion is that, "no", running background apps and presenting alerts is not equivalent to the definition of "multitasking" that I associate with a full OS (I have used different variations of Windows, OS X, and LINUX) or the some other mobile OS'. Windows Mobile and WebOS both offer multi-tasking in mobile OS' that present more utility to me as a user, while I concurrently admit that for some users, the iPhone OS' background alerts might be sufficient.
UMPCs have been around for a while, and they have been useful for some group of users. I, personally, am not going to define a device's success by number of sales. While I understand the need to use this metric as a yardstick by stock buyers and financial analysts, it is immaterial to me as an individual user. The iPhone has sold millions, but I found it a bad fit for my needs and had the cellular service stopped an now jsut use it as iPod Touch. I just need to know if a device is the right fit for me, and then I have to determine if a device is the right fit for the users who sometimes ask me for advice. For some of them, I am going to recommend an iPad, for some of them I won't. For all of them, I will point out the alternatives available on either side of the fence regardless, because I feel people should not make their gadget-buying decisions in a vacuum.
For Microsoft and PC makers, my one item of concern is that they are taking the UMPC spec, building new devices to that spec, re-labeling them Tablets, and in some cases positioning them through marketing as iPad competitors/killers. I am not sure this is the right approach. UMPCs have a high degree of utility, but are not good fits for the average user. In my own testing, I know that I can do a lot more on a UMPC, but I know it takes me longer and takes more patience to do certain activities than it would on an iPhone or on a netbook or larger PC.Ditto for Windows Mobile, where I feel I can do more, but certain activities take me longer (like navigating my web-browser), than certain activities used to take me on my iPhone,. But I've stuck with Windows Mobile for one of my smartphones and abandoned my iPhone because being able to do more was mosre important to me than being able to do fewer things more quickly. I've owned three UMPCs, and I continue to use them because they give me high utility in an extremely mobile platform.
In researching my own alternatives to an iPad, I am looking at devices with 7" to 10" screens with OS' lighter than Windows XP/Vista/7. In some cases I am looking for higher utility than an iPhone-like OS and Windows-compatibility (so I have looked at some WindowsCE and Windows Mobile devices), in some cases I have looked at ease of use (in Android or re-skinned versions of LINUX).
The iPad will probably, in my opinion, be a good fit for lots of users. It won't be for me. One major reason being that I insist that a device in this form-factor and occupying this use-space for my own needs be one that I can pick up off a table and write a note on, or be on a phone and write messages or notes from the phone-call on, so digital inking is a requirement. Again, this is just for me. I understand some people will maybe use the iPad in these scenarios and I guess type their notes (a usage scenario I attempted to use my iPhone for and eventually determined was not a good fit for me and abandoned) or tap o the screen one-handed while on the phone (or use a headset and type with both).
As for this comment thread and others on the iPad, I guess I am more interested in hearing how people evaluate their own usage-scenarios and how they project the iPad will fit or not fit them and how well. I am less concerned with hearing people attempt to summarily declare that their definition of usage scenarios defines the rest of the tech-using world, and therefore is an unquestionable yardstick of the iPad's potential success or failure. People say that UMPCs, and in an adjacent market, TabletPCs, have been failures. But certain companies continue to keep them in their product line-up. While those devices may not be their product-line leaders, I suspect that they have some rationale for maintaining production, through several iterations of a given model-line in some cases, other than just occupying another market-space. I am guessing that it is because they have found sufficient sales in a, granted, niche market, to support the number of units they have chosen to build each year. No one of these tablet alternatives to the iPad is likely going to be market leader in and of itself due to the extreme dilution of the market we are likely to see with the sheer number of different device produced. But the iPad itself, and some of these alternatives are going to be good for the different striations of users that exist. I personally am more interested to hear who these different types of users are, how they plan on employing a tablet device, and which device they think will fit them best. Sorry for the long post, and I have enjoyed reading the comments of everyone else.
- Z..>>"
Less Good Gaming
February 14th, 2010Today's crop of shooters are a mess. Much in the same way that we PC Gamers have brought extreme DRM into our midst because of the all the pirates that are members of our community, so has the FPS community clamored for the watered-down "who has the most kills" game designs that are now prevalent on the market. I can hardly be troubled these days to place my copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 into my 360 due to the experience that I know to expect when I enter the public gaming forum. It seems as if gone are the days where teamwork means anything, and the experience of dropping into a group of random players and discovering a rewarding team-play experience is nearly unfounded.
Current Top Ten List
February 14th, 2010These are not my favorite games of all time, but just my top ten lists of my current phase of gaming:
- Ghost Recon
- Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
- Ground Control 2
- Icewind Dale II
- Just Cause
- Left for Dead
- Mass Effect
- Max Payne 2
- Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed
- Need for Speed Most Wanted
- Project Gotham Racing 4
- Project Gotham Racing 3
- Halo 3
- GRiD
- Gears of War
- Forza Motortsport 2
- F.E.A.R.
- Dead or Alive 4
- Chromehounds
- Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
- Rainbow Six Vegas 2
- Prince of Persia
- Need for Speed Carbon
- Madden 2004 (PS2 title being played via hardware backwards compatibility)
- Killzone 2
- God of War (PS2 title being played via hardware backwards compatibility)
- Fight Night Round 3
- Borderlands
- Battlefield: Bad Company
- Assassin's Creed II
Status Update - Tech Style
February 8th, 2010Things are rough. Changes at work. Looking at a 2nd Masters. Closing. Moving. Packing. Trading out cars. It is almost too much. And all of this iPad hype has not helped. I am in an almost constant daily soul-search for determining an altruistic means of defining my own tablet needs. My own use of TabletPCs, UMPCs, and Smartphones muddy these waters. Combined with my past experience with handtop PCs way back. Uggggghhhh!!!
I've also been trying to decide whether or not the Palm Pre stays or goes. I've at least resolved that it is staying for a while. Long enough to justify the purchase of some additional accessories, most of which will just be copies of some of the ones I already own. That will be in March. But the question of whether or not it is a "good" smartphone for me has not been answered. I am concocting a sort of Smartphone Olympics; 3 sets of exercises in groups of 12 to 15 tasks to be timed and run on smartphones of different OS'. My plan is to run these myself and parse them out to others for some analysis of the time deltas.
Tablets. I've been through the full gamit on this philosophical train. First I said the iPad was insufficient because it did not run a full OS. I started looking for a comparitively priced UMPC. Then I realised I already have one; my Fujitsu U820, which I rarely use as a Tablet. Then I started asking myself questions about companion computing devices (CCDs) in general, and asking myself how I use them, and why I do not use some as much. So, I have taken my four CCDs (HP 2730p TabletPC, Fujitsu U820, HTC TouchPro, and Palm Pre), and paired them with larger computing platforms. I've also designated a specific app to primarily use on each platform for daily computing. most of the effort on these devices is to manage my numerous thought bubbles; the creative ideas, hobby tasks, and real-life stuff, that pops into my head dozens of times a day.
Right now, my Gateway P-6860FX 17" laptop is my primary project PC for the week. This month it is paired with the Fujitsu U820, where I use Windows Journal as my primary Thought-Bubble app. I keep a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet on each of my CCDs with my projects and tasks for the week. This works well on the Fuji where I can ink on the spreadsheet once I have finished the baseline typed entries. I have also been using the Barnes and Noble Desktop eReader on the Fuji this week to read the first in the Dragonlance Lost Chronicles Series, Dragons of the Dwarven Depths.
Despite putting all of these tablet devices (all of which support digital inking) to more use, I still am on the lookout for true Tablets (which I now believe should NOT run a full OS). If yout take a look around the 'WERKz, you might notice the new skinning of the site. In the past, I would have called this a facelift, but since it was simply selecting a new skin, I can't sound all high falutin' anymore.
My latest Firefox Plugin of choice is CoolPreviews. That's it for the Status Update this week. Check back for more content on some random day of the week. Late.
- Vr/Zeux..>>
What's Been Up: Gaming
January 24th, 2010Ha. Pretty interesting. A coupe of weeks ago, I finally realized that the 32" TV in the game room has a VGA input port. So I am tapping this post out tonight on the HP EliteBook 2730P TabletPC while it is connected to the Westinghouse 32" LCD as a secondary display. (Yo can peep the setup via my TwitPic feed) Earlier tonight, I viewed a few minutes of Last Chance Harvey, a movie I have encoded on my NAS, sending it to the TV using VLC Media Player. I now have iTunes blaring out fom the TV's speakers while I write this entry (Finger Elven's "Sad Exchange", from the Daredevil Soundtrack). I'll be working with this setup for the remainder of the week (minus the two days of business travel I have scheduled). Since I'll be out of pocket for a couple of days, I've decided to get a little gaming in over the weekend.
What Will They Call the Apple Tablet?
January 20th, 2010I am even starting to doubt that Apple will announce anything remotely resembling a Tablet Computing device next week. I far more so expect to see a touchpanel equipped iMac. But if they do let loose with what half of the tech/gadget community has been talking about for the last three months, I highly doubt that will be called the iTablet or iSlate. The reason is because these labels have been used before.
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