Tablet PC report

After about a week of playing with my new toy - Lenovo X61 Tablet PC - I have some thoughts on its practicality and usefulness.

Overall it's a great tool, with only a few negatives:

1. battery life is solid, but far from advertised (as I expected). 8-cell battery which claims basically 8-hours of computing, can get only about 5.5 hrs under my normal working conditions. That's still impressive though, compared to my previous Lenovo that could last maybe 3.5 hours tops.

2. using fingers instead of the special pen to use touch-screen commands is not as useful as I thought - fingers are too thick to point precisely on the button, even though grab-and-scroll (similar to iPhone) operations work just fine.

3. Fast writing takes a bit getting used to. Writing on screen is different from paper because screen is solid - and tablet pen either touches it or it doesn't. With paper there's a range of pressures that can be applied that make writing fast very easy.

4. Text recognition from fast writing is far from ideal - but my handwriting is terrible to begin with, and plus handwriting has been replaced by typing for the past 10 years or so. As a result I have two choices - not worry about text recognition too much and save my notes as hand-written, without conversion to typed text. Or, I could train the tablet to recognize my scribbling, and maybe write a little slower and carefully/nicely.

another thing to note is that with tablet you realize quickly how much you DO need keyboard and even mouse. Browsing internet, for example, is limited in tablet mode, because of inability to quickly type addresses in (you can use Tablet input panel and convert it to text, but it's still a bit slower than typing it). Then again, a lot of my browsing is done almost keyboard-free lately, with bookmarks and GoogleReader.


There are multiple situations where Tablet PC allows you to do things you couldn't do otherwise - or at least not very efficiently/conveniently.


1. Reading and editing PDF documents/eBooks. Reading papers in a full laptop mode requires a bit of discipline, as the keyboard provides a pathway for distractions. By eliminating keyboard and flipping tablet in portrait mode you can read a paper, or an e-book (I have hundreds of those) without interruptions. With PDF annotator software you can use tablet pencil to edit PDF the way you would write on paper documents - but of course for extensive text revisions one still needs keyboard input.

2. Brainstorming. Often when meeting with collaborators, students or postdocs, we would go through many pages of notepads brainstorming ideas, sketching experimental geometries or doing back of the envelope calculations. Often these notepad pages are useless, but a lot of times they are priceless. I keep folders of these brainstorming notes in my filing cabinet, and of course with Tablet PC you could keep these notes electronically, and email your collaborators copies.

3. Black(white)-board talks - these are similar to brainstorming mentioned above - but sometimes you give a talk (or a lecture) and someone asks you something that requires some writing or drawing. With tablet you can draw right on your empty powerpoint slide, without having to switch from power point screen to whiteboard/blackboard, which is often stuck behind the screen.

4. Drawings/equations in preparation for lectures. Theorists often give talks with hand-written transparencies - because a lot of time they express basic ideas. Experimentalists tend to use powerpoint, because they typically present data that is easier to present/manipulate digitally. Well, now you can combine the two and if you want to include a hand-written sketch into your presentation, that's easy - and you have unlimited range of colors and pens that unlike transparencies never fade.
Basically, you can do your own Dimitri Martin routine (I am also thinking of those simple but highly effective whiteboard UPS commercials).

5. Taking notes in meetings, seminars. I used to have mixed feelings about bringing laptop to meetings or seminars. Sometimes you are giving a talk and you look at the audience and they are all typing away on their laptops - that's rude. So I would typically err on the side of caution and bring an analog (paper-based) notepad and a pen. With Tablet it's different - it's more like a notepad, rather than computer, and there's no typing. In addition to references, I often have to sketch something - perhaps an idea I have from the talk, or some diagram or picture. Once again, electronic storage of notes means they are easily retrievable from anywhere, and take no space in my cabinets (for me it's more of a war-on-clutter thing, rather than save-the-planet thing - but that too)

I will try to write an update in a few weeks when I used it more often, but here's some examples of effective communication of ideas using hand-written drawings: