Back in October I blogged about purchaing the HP TouchSmart TX2z multi-touch tablet computer. After I got it, I was less than enchanted with the device, but that is no slight to HP. The TouchSmart TX2z is one of the better Windows 7 touch tablets available today.The problem I had with the TouchSmart TX2z is that my expectations were out of whack with reality. I wanted the TouchSmart to be as responsive and pixl-point accurate as my iPhone and it wasn't. In addition I had high hopes for its pen input and writing recogination, which was also a big disapointment.
The fact of the matter is: the multi-touch tablets for sale today will pale in comparison to the iPhone when it comes to touch interaction. That will be solved over time, but right now if you buy a tablet don't expect to be blown away but its responsivness. They all pretty much suck next to the iPhone.
Soon after I recieved the TouchSmart TX2z, Ausus released the lightweight Eee PC T91MT netbook with Windows 7 and a touch screen. Last month I blogged about ordering that device, which is half the price of the TouchSmart. Since I got the T91MT I haven't even picked up my TouchSmart again. In fact, I just sent the TouchSmart back to HP a couple days ago. I'll be keeping the Asus T91MT.
To be honest, in terms of power and touch responsivlness the TouchSmart is better than the T91MT. But to be fair, they both pretty much suck in my opinion. So why keep the T91MT and send back the TouchSmart? It has almost nothing to do with performance or touch sensitivity.
Early next year I'll be taking a two month sebatical in Central America and I need a very lightweight computer to take with me. I like the size of the T91MT and I think it will be an ideal computer to have while traveling. If I wasn't going to Central America I would probably return the T91MT too. While I do like it and its a pretty good eReader (with Kindle for the PC), its not much of a multi-touch device.
In short, I've been disapointed but not entirely surprised by the poor responsiveness of tablet computers with Windows 7. It's not really a Windows 7 issue so much as a hardware issue. Until manufactures are able to provide the same kind of precision and responsiveness as the iPhone on these larger tablet screens, there just isn't much to get excited about.
I'm optimistic, however, that all this will change by the middle to end of next year. Sadly, a lot of people are going to be dispapointed with their touch computer until they improve.
4 comments:
Hi, your focus on NUI makes for good reading; I've added you to my Google Reader. That said, I have a couple of comments for you regarding your experience with Windows 7 Tablet PCs.
On a few issues regarding the HP tx2 I agree with you. The heat, battery life, weight, noise and build-quality are substandard. However, I am pinning this down to the price they were targeting prior to mass-popularity/production of tablet devices by all OEMs.
However, I have found the hand-writing and touch recognition on my tx2 to be impeccably accurate. It has nearly never gotten my writing wrong and the touch keyboard has become very good at predicting my custom words etc. I think this has to do with improved drivers released by N-trig recently. It seems touch will improve even more in newer releases.
I am sure that I will not find a screen size below 11 inches or bigger than 13 inches usable on any tablet device, so many of the other OEMs cannot be in consideration for me. There is of course price as well, where the better built tablets are often close to $1500 in price.
However, I am encouraged by the tm2 tablet announced by HP at CES which will be on sale on Jan 17. It seems to address the heat, battery and weight issues with the tx2. It uses an Intel ULV processor and can optionally come with discreet ATI graphics. So, 5 to 6 hour battery life can easily be expected in the real world.
It makes me wish I hadn't bought the tx2 in July of 2009, but I did need a new machine then. However, I do hope HP improves its customer support tremendously, because so far they have sucked horribly.
Hi,
thanks for your comments. I don't think I complained about the HP weight, battery life, or custmer service - the HP tablet is, over all, well engineered and their customer service was simply excellent. It was the quality of the touch support as well as handwritting recognition that I thought was so bad.
Anyway, we had very different experiences and it's good we did- that gives people a more balanced perspective.
All the best!!
I'm looking at the T101MT, the big brother to the T91MT that will hopefully be out shortly (ASUS showed it off quite a bit at CES, from the reports I can find). The one thing I wanted to check was that the T91MT actually implements "real" Windows 7 MultiTouch. From a developer point of view, this is all that really matters to me.
I had tried to use the Wacom Bamboo tablets to start doing multitouch development but their version has the driver doing translation between a limited set of gestures and standard windows messages.
Also, do you happen to know how many points of contact the T91MT supports?
Thanks for your helpful posts. If the T101MT gets delayed too long I'll probably purchase a T91MT based on your information!
As I noted in a later post (http://theclevermonkey.blogspot.com/2009/12/2010-year-of-e-reader-but-not.html) I ended up sending the Asus back too - it was pretty disappointing. It supports two touches as far as I can tell and not very well.
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