The good news I have is not the imminent release of Apple's new version of OS X.

You see, I really like my HP TC1100 tablet PC. But it was getting very sluggish, sometimes flaking out on me during presentations etc. Unfortunately, there has been very little in terms of an upgrade to that particular tablet; HP have moved away from the tablet formfactor and only have 'convertibles' these days. And I was not looking forward to Windows Vista on the new machine either. But I finally gave in and ordered a HP 2710p. I am still in the process of transfering my daily life to the new machine, but there's enough to like to this machine. I am keeping the TC1100 around though...

The great news for Mac lovers around the world is, that after a couple of days of use I am starting to get used to the ugglyness and inconsistencies that are Vista. So now that Leopard is picking up some of the same transparency ugliness and inexplicable inconsistency, there is hope for you yet: You'll get over it!

I'm generally loving my TabletPC. It's just such a great tool to do one-to-one presentations on: you can just hold it in your hands while discussing, hand the whole machine over and let the other party see/experience what you want them to see and they can in turn show you what THEY mean...

This weekend however, for the second time in a row, I had problems using my TC 1100 tablet with a projector (one-to-many presentation...). It works for half a minute, and then the projector will seem to loose the signal. I had to continue my presentation on an external monitor instead of off a projecor... Bummer.

How's Tabitha doing these days? Just fine actually. I'm using my Tablet quite a lot, and doing presentations from a tablet (tethered to a projector) impresses the hell out of people ;-). I like walking around a bit while presenting, and the TC1100 lets me do just that. After about one and a half hour she gets a bit heavy, but other than that the formfactor is just perfect. I just gotta train my left arm a little.

I've even been using Tabitha to get some stitching done while traveling. This kind of works, though picking controlpoints is a bit tricky in a moving train. When using photoshop though, I could use some additional buttons. The TC1100 has 3 reprogrammable buttons and a rocker switch, but unfortunately it only has system-wide settings; I need different buttons/keys when I am using Photoshop than when I am eg using my SPi-V engine. I have been trying to set up Girder to make the buttons behave differently for different applications, but I'm not there just yet.

So, after 2 weeks of having Tabitha around, how do I like it? Turns out I like it/her so much, this is the first time in 2 weeks I find myself behind my main computer; I have to get some development done, and I have all my development stuff on my desktop PC (Clarisse). That, and I like having just that little bit of extra screen realestate. (1280*1024 vs 1024*768 resolution). But other than that, I liked working with Tabitha so much that I didn't touch my desktop much. Perhaps the mess on my desk vs the clean and quiet living room table where I put Tabitha has been of some influence too ;-)

My tablet arrived. Now I'll be the first to admit the lyrics to the N.E.R.D. song I quoted for the title of this post are a bit odd outside the context of the song, but she is sexy! She will be known as "Tabitha".

First impressions:

• WOW
• handwriting recognition has improved dramatically
  
  I have used a Fujitsu Stylistic 3400 with a passive digitizer before, and used Pen Office quite extensively. The tablet PC recognizer is much better, largely because of good dictionary lookups. writing dutch.or trying to do HTML using the recognizer is frustrating though (notice the lack of links and markup in this post)...

• Performance is very good. Looking at a fullscreen panorama on this tablet makes me smile instantly. More on that later, I guess

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3482504745

[image:12,left]Oh, the suspense... Will it make it over the ocean?
Will it make it through customs?
Will it arrive before the weekend?
Will it arrive undamaged?

Did I get a good price (compared to official pricing in the Netherlands)?
Or did I pay WAY TO MUCH (see this auction by the same guy)?