Archive for May, 2009

Working in the field in direct sunlight has always been challenging. Most Tablet PC vendors now offer some sort of daylight readable display. Beware though, not all daylight displays are created equal.

Some hardware vendors try to pass off daylight readability in terms of brightness, and brightness is measured in nits. So you might see a claim like “500 nits outdoor display.”

We all love to measure things with numbers, but nits is not a good measure of daylight readability.

Simply cranking up the brightness with a stronger backlight on a display causes a number of issues:

1. Significantly reduced battery life
2. Washed out colours
3. Low contrast

The very best solution is actually a display that is readable on little to no brightness on.

In other words, the more readable it is with the least possible nits the better. To achieve the best outdoor readability, you need to address:

• Reflection – Minimising sunlight reflection with Anti-reflective screen coatings
• Diffusing – Reflective, transmissive and transflective technologies work to diffuse light out effectively
• Viewing angles – some achieve up to 180 degrees in all directions, so you can read the display easily at any angle
• Contrast – This is the true benchmark of daylight readability.

According to Rugged PC Review, the effective contrast of an outdoor display is:

1 + (emitted light / reflected light)

So if the reflected light is high, the emitted light needs to be higher just for the screen to be readable.

Getting reflection, diffusion, viewing angles and contrast right can mean that your display is readable outdoors with very little brightness to speak of.

The new motion J3400 is by far the best example of this. As we demonstrated in our product video, you can actually read this display in direct sunlight on the ZERO brightness setting.

That means that you can go out into the field and run much, much closer to the manufacturers claimed battery life of 7.5 hours.

The J3400 is actually the best outdoor readable screen that we’ve seen on a Tablet PC by far and it sports only 320nits. 

A display that has to run at 1000nits to be viewable will of course, not be so good on batteries. So if you have to sacrifice hours in the field just to be able to read the screen, how daylight readable is it really?

We’ve been lamenting the lack of slate UMPC options lately, but finally the gods of UMPC have answered our call with the Viliv S5.

We got up to CeBIT in Sydney last week and got our hands on the Viliv S5 and lots of other goodies.

Our first impression was of the size of the device. Not much bigger than its 5” screen, the Viliv is very “pocketable”, at least for a suit pocket.

It includes 3G and a built in GPS (Sirf Star III) which is going to open up lots of Mobile computing horizons. The screen is not too hard to read, even with the 1024 x 768 resolution on such a small screen. We didn’t get to try it outside yet though.

Viliv ship this unit with Windows XP home and not the XP Tablet Edition. We find that resistive touch screens are pretty poor at handwriting recognition anyway, so the Tablet Input Panel is not really missed on this.

Viliv’s on screen keyboard software with haptic feedback was very easy to use. I found that with about 5 minutes of practice I was happily typing away. For users with specific key entry requirements there are dozens of on screen keyboard applications that will work well on this device.

The Atom processor on the S5 was very capable. We didn’t notice any slowness or lag during our demo. The unit comes with 1Gb RAM which we assume could be expanded to 2Gb. Battery life is exceptional at 6 hours.

Best of all, we think the pricing is awesome!

Pricing:

Stock is arriving very soon, so get your orders in now.

According to an article in the Ballarat Courier yesterday, Ballarat District Nursing is deploying Tablet PCs with a local software program called UNITI.

This would allow nurses to access patient information and make requests in real time while visiting clients.

UNITI manager Dean Parish said in the article:

By removing the need for field nurses to return to the office after visiting patients to complete associated paperwork saves time and could make some nurses feel more independent in their job.

This is another example of Healthcare leading the adoption of new technologies in Australia thanks to government and corporate leadership.

While there will undoubtedly be change required and some short term pain with it, initiatives like this will result in better care for patients and less stress for nurses!

The Viliv S5 is on its way to Australia for CeBIT next month. Our UMPC partner Tegatech Australia will be launching the device at stand V70.

Look out for great features:

• Pocket sized slate form factor
• Awesome battery life
• 5” screen – 1024 x 600 resolution
• Atom 1.33Ghz – Runs windows
• Integrated 3G option
• Great pricing

UMPC Portal preview:

 JKK Mobile review:

This is a brilliant device. Whilst UMPCs have not gained widespread adoption, devices like this one will certainly help the cause. As a mobile computing device for eBook reading, digital media, web browsing and basic data capture this UMPC will beat any netbook hands down for 2 reasons:

1. It fits in your pocket
2. You can *practically* use it while you are standing, walking and sitting.

If you come across a second hand Lenovo X200T for sale in Melbourne over the next couple of weeks, check out the details because it could be stolen.

We had one stolen from home on Thursday 30th of April along with our video camera. Details are as follows:

Lenovo X200T Tablet PC

Part number:  7448 CTO

Serial number: L3AAB2C

If you come across this Tablet PC, please don’t buy it. Rather call us on 03 9012 6602, 0400 687 887 or crime stoppers on 1800 333 000.

It was the personal laptop for one of our staff so we are keen to recover it.

Video details below:

Your assistance in tracking it down would be greatly appreciated.

Also, if you ever have a Tablet PC stolen, let us know about it and we’ll do what we can to track it down via the web.