Archive for the ‘Tablet PC’ Category

If you are available to work in Sydney and you’re interested in an opportunity to sell cutting edge Tablet PCs like the new Motion Computing F5v and Motion Computing J3500, then it might be time to contact us!

Our website generates hundreds of leads in the Sydney area so this will not involve prospecting! This opportunity would involve:

• Understanding the needs of customers
• Selecting and demonstrating appropriate Tablet PCs
• Visiting customers at their premises – this could be anywhere in NSW – travel may be required
• Managing and reporting on your own sales activity.

Send your resume through to jobs@tabletpc.com.au with a one page cover letter explaining your experience and why you would be good for the job. Phone calls will not be accepted at the initial stage.

Successful applicants will need:

• Top level communication skills – we deal with very large companies at a high level. Your presentation will need to be top notch.
• Experience with sales – tell us about your sales training in your letter.
• Technical knowledge of Tablet PCs – if you have used a Tablet PC then you’re ahead of the game.
• Access to your own presentable transport.

We will be closing applications when a suitable applicant is found and we’ll remove this post once the offer has been filled. Good luck!

After a huge run up to the end of 2009, we took some time to think about all of the “2010 – Year of the Tablet PC” rumours. There is no doubt that 2010 is going to be an exciting year for Microsoft Windows based Tablet PCs and UMPCs, and maybe even some Apple and Google ones too.

We’ve already had some very interesting hardware shown this week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

However, here at TabletPC.com.au, we think that the year of the Tablet PC was 2009!

Sure, the consumer devices from the like of HP, Lenovo, Viliv and Apple will make some waves this year. On the Windows front we have already seen a wave of pen and multi-touch devices like the Lenovo X200t and Fujitsu T4310 with capacitive touch screens.

But the serious Tablet PC business really kicked off last year. 2009 saw many large and small Australian organizations deploy mobile computing solutions with Tablet PCs.

What happened in 2009 for Tablet PCs?

1. Windows 7 – Mobile computing  took a huge stride forward in 2009 on the back of improvements in Windows 7.
2. Outdoor Screen Technology – The introduction of the Hydis AFFS+ display by Motion Computing was a technical breakthrough for Tablet PCs (currently on Motion Computing F5, C5 and J3400) – Most Tablets are used outdoors at some stage, so this technology is essential.
    
3. Mobile Broadband Access – We now have Tablet PCs with 21mbps mobile broadband access with GPS onboard.
4. Applications – Software developers are continuing to embrace mobile applications in areas like building and construction management, building and pest inspections, sales force automation, digital forms, GIS and mapping.

Who started using Tablet PCs in 2009?

Hundreds of Australian  organisations deployed Tablet PCs in 2009 because of advancements in hardware and software that make field computing solutions now practical. Here’s a taste of the types of companies that we helped deploy Tablet PCs with in 2009:

• Defence and Police Forces around Australia
• Local Governments from North Queensland to Tasmania and across to WA. 
• Distribution businesses
• Manufacturing businesses
• Nurseries, Farms,
• Building, engineering, architecture and construction companies
• Physiotherapists, Occupational therapists, Nurses, Doctors, Clinics,  Aged Care Facilities and Hospitals
• Restaurants, Hotels, Bars and Pubs

And many more from small “Mum and Dad” businesses through to multinational companies.

Why did they choose Tablet PCs in 2009?

Our customers have many reasons for choosing Windows based Tablet PCs for their jobs and projects. They generally boil down to the following:

• You gain true computing mobility without sacrificing power
• You can now read the screen without effort
  • Outside reading is comfortable with good battery life
  • Screens are much bigger than PDA (PDA screens are too poky for many jobs)
• They can run their existing Windows programs without having to learn a new system or pay to develop a completely new one
• They were surprised to find that handwriting recognition really works, particularly in windows 7
• You can now work all day away from a power source.

Why did they buy from TabletPC.com.au in 2009?

The largest to the smallest Australian companies called on tabletpc.com.au for advice in 2009 because we are still the only independent Australian company that employs real Tablet PC and UMPC experts.

• We sell all of the Tablet PC brands that are available in Australia to independent resellers, including:
• HP, Lenovo, Toshiba and Fujitsu Convertibles
• Panasonic Toughbook Rugged Tablets
• Motion Computing
• Xplore Rugged Tablet PCs
• Tablet Kiosk, Logipad, Getac
• Viliv, Gigabyte, Asus and Samsung UMPCs
• And if it’s not on the list, we can source it for you…
• We are able to give you advice on your specific needs – We don’t have allegiances to any brand, we will only sell you the best device for your job!
• Our staff have all been involved with Windows Tablet PCs since the launch of Windows XP Tablet PC edition in 2001 – in real world use.
• We have a worldwide network of software solution providers to make sure
  that your Tablet PC is not just a piece of hardware, but a solution that will work for you.
• We supply training and support with all of our Tablet PCs that cheap web sellers and even the manufacturers just can’t offer (because their staff have no idea about Tablet PCs!) – We make sure that you know how to use your Tablet PC effectively.

Screen breakage and scratching have always been a risk with Tablet PCs. Most Tablets are fairly resistant to scratching – particularly the rugged ones – due to the special glass that they use.

However, we have seen plenty of scratched up and broken screens over the last 7 years – especially after years of hard use.

Thanks to the innovators at Motion Computing and Corning that risk can now been significantly reduced. Motion have introduced Corning Gorilla Glass to the rugged F5 Tablet PC and C5 MCA. Gorilla Glass significantly improves scratch and breakage resistance for the F5 and C5 screens.

Motion recently updated the display on the F5 and C5 to include Hydis AFFS+ technology which puts C5 and F5 on par with the J3400 for outdoor readability. This is undoubtedly the best outdoor display technology on the market now (remember that outdoor viewing is not about brightness – nits).

The combination of Gorilla Glass and the Hydis AFFS+ outdoor display is a giant leap forward for the C5 and F5.

Motion Computing keep pushing the envelope in the Tablet PC game. These two innovations are huge for rugged tablet computing!

Want to try out Tablet PCs and talk with Tablet PC experts? Find us this month at the Australian Business and IT Expo in Melbourne at the Convention Centre.

Email your name, company, email address and phone number to events@tabletpc.com.au for a free entry pass.

Event details:

Melbourne Exhibition Centre Southbank, Melbourne CBD
Friday 21 August, 10am – 8pm
Saturday 22 August, 10am – 5pm

Tablet PC will be demonstrating several digital ink software solutions including:

• Apex Nexus – Technical Sketching Software
• eNoteFile – Electronic note taking, filing and collaboration tool
• Active Ink – Digital forms system
• Microsoft Office and OneNote
• Mindjet MindManager 8
• Windows 7

We will also be displaying several Tablet PCs and UMPCs TBC.

See you there!

Tablet PC users have been amongst the few friends of Windows Vista to date due to the significant improvements of handwriting recognition, pen and touch input from Windows XP.

Background: Microsoft Windows XP Tablet Edition, Microsoft Windows Vista and now Windows 7 all include sophisticated multi-language handwriting recognition software. They are capable of recognising even the worst handwriting. They recognise your natural freehand writing style (cursive script or printing) so you don’t have to print or learn a special way of writing.

Thankfully, as Windows 7 hits the market with much better mainstream acceptance, Tablet PC users will no longer have to apologise for their choice of operating system!

There are some significant improvements in the way that Windows 7 handles recognition, even after the leap forward that we had with Vista.

It’s all thanks to an enormous amount of work from the Windows Engineering Input team. You can read more about their incredible work here:

• Ink Input and Tablet PC
• Recognizing Improvements in Windows 7 Handwriting

Some of the features that you can expect to see in Windows 7:

• Inline text recognition – less mental power required!
• New correction gestures and options
• Improved support for East Asian Languages – Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean and Japanese
• Math Input
• Easier web addresses
• Touch optimised keyboard.

Here are some video previews (bear in mind that screen capture programs don’t do well at following tablet input due to the graphics intensity, so the videos don’t do it justice… but you get the idea).

Handwriting conversion as you go:

New correction gestures and options:

Improved web address entry:

For Tablet PC veterans, some of the changes may take a little getting used to. Seeing your chicken scratch turn into nice legible words on the go is a little disconcerting initially.

It was only when I read the articles above and analysed my method of working in the TIP (Tablet Input Panel) that I realised how much concentration it takes to work that way. Windows 7 lowers the requirements significantly by converting your handwriting as you go.

Since in Windows 7 you can see the recognition results without moving your gaze far- up, down, across, etc – it takes much less effort to write and correct. Even a mac user could do it! ;-P (Please, it’s a joke! I love mac users and l even have an iPhone!)

As with Vista, Windows 7 recognition keeps getting smarter. You can train the recogniser to work with you particular writing style and the system also learns automatically from your corrections.

The correction methods are awesome in Windows 7 and it is very difficult to work on Vista now without them!

We can happily say that Windows 7 will be a big boost to your Tablet PC productivity.

Thanks to the stronger Australian dollar prices on Motion Computing products have fallen significantly.

If you have spoken to us about motion products in the past, please contact us for a new quote.

Motion Product Detail links:

• J3400 Tablet PC
• Motion C5 MCA
• Motion F5 Field Tablet PC
• LE1700 Tablet PC

For more information, contact us on 03 9012 6602 or 0400 687 887.

Since Tablet PCs are generally designed for business applications, they are very difficult to find on display in retail shops.

Many of our customers have asked for place they can go to get their hands on the latest Tablet PCs.

We have listened, and we are happy to announce that we have opened a demonstration centre Mulgrave (South East Melbourne).

Here you will be able to see the Tablet PC operating system for yourself, as well as:

• Try out handwriting recognition
• See digital ink in action in Microsoft Office and other applications
• Test applications specifically designed for your business and Tablet PCs
• Get your hands on the latest Tablet PC hardware

Address:

Suite 4 (Datacard offices)
2 Gilda Court,
Mulgrave Vic 3170

The demonstration centre is open to business customers from 9 AM to 5 PM Monday to Friday.

However, demonstrations are strictly by appointment. So please call ahead to book an appointment.

Call us on 03 9012 6602 or 0400 687 887 to book an appointment.

If you’re in business you’re probably well aware of the “Small Business and General Business Tax Break” otherwise known as the Government Investment Allowance.

According to the ATO the Investment Allowance is now law and you can still take advantage of it in this financial year by purchasing before June 30.

For small businesses (Less than $2 million turnover a year) you may:

• Be able to claim a 50% expense in addition to your regular asset depreciation schedule
• Have until December 31 2009 to make the investment
• Have until December 31 2010 to take delivery

For other businesses (More than $2 million turnover a year) you may:

• Be able to claim a 30% expense in addition to your regular asset depreciation schedule
• Have until December 31 2009 to make the investment
• Have until June 30 2010 to take delivery

Tablet PC does not provide financial or Tax advice, so you need to seek professional advice to determine whether this information applies to your business.

Visit the ATO website to read the explanatory memorandum here.

We finally got around to reviewing the multi-touch HP Tx2! The Tx2 has been a very popular Tablet PC and it is introducing many newcomers to the wonders of touch computing.

The HP Tx2 is a great way to get into Tablet PCs for a very good price. While most full sized 12” Tablet PCs are selling for over AU$3000, the Tx2 is under $2000.

Best of all, it’s packed with goodies like the iPhone style multi-touch capacitive touch screen.

We’re looking forward to trying out Windows 7 on this machine! Roll on Tablet PC air-hockey and finger painting.

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?