The series 7 features hardware that will allow you to have the best Windows Tablet PC experience possible.

• Intel Core i5 “Sandy Bridge” processor – for awesome performance and battery life – I expect between 4 – 6 hours use time although Samsung claim up to 7

• Wacom Pen and Multi-Touch Screen – The absolute standard for pressure and proximity sensitive Active Digitizer Pen and touch input
• Active Docking with HDMI, USB, Ethernet, Power and Audio – essential for a Tablet that can replace your laptop!

Amazingly, the Samsung Slate PC Series 7 weighs only 860 grams! I am staggered by how fast we have arrived at a Slate PC with Intel Core i5 laptop replacement power in form factor that is competitive with consumer tablets.

The only drawback for this tablet is the lack of a removable battery, 3G or 4G mobile broadband options. We may not see the kinds of accessories needed to make this Tablet a viable alternative for the big users of tablets – field workers, but it will be a hit with Executives, Corridor warriors, Digital Artists, Designers, Students, Teachers, Lecturers and IT Geeks.

We will be taking pre-orders as soon as we can secure stock!

More soon…

You can see the Motion Computing F5v tablet PC in action with SP Ausnet here in the case study video that Microsoft prepared.

Click on the picture below to see the video.

Tablet PC have helped thousands of companies – from Australia’s largest such as Rio Tinto, Newcrest Mining and SP Ausnet down to small innovative regional businesses like Renee Kelly Occupational Therapy in Mildura, Victoria – to find the best tablet PC solution for their business and then to back it up with essential training and exceptional support.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business to eliminate rework and speed up your field data collection.

My apologies for disappearing for over a month! Demand for information on a host of new products has had ns run off our feet here!

CL900: – Has progressed to production process. Will be here in a matter of weeks. Delays on the new Intel Atom chip have held all at these new tablets up. Will be worth the wait! Docking station will be under AU$250.

Q550: – Fujitsu have released models and pricing. Starting from $1349 and expected around EOM.

T901: – Fujitsu’s new power-house tablet is already awesome, but about to get even better. 3G option will be out in a matter of days, NVIDIA Optimus dedicated graphics will not be far behind!

Stay tuned! More sooner…

Over the last few years, more and more commercial and general aviation pilots are adopting the electronic flight bag concept.

On my flight back from Perth on Friday I noticed that Qantas provides its A330 pilots with Panasonic ToughBook CF-19

tablets in this role. Apparently the ToughBook CF-19 is commonly deployed on modern Airbus aircraft like the A380 and A330.

A key benefit of the Electronic Flight Bag is the possibility of eliminating paper (and weight) from the aircraft. In some cases, manuals can account for more than 20kg. With a tablet pc you could increase the documents you carry but reduce the weight.

From Wikipedia:

Key criteria in selecting EFB / Tablet PC Hardware:

Screen visibility

• Outdoor viewable
• Wide viewing angles

Why? If you have to move the tablet to see the screen, it is not an effective paper replacement.

Power management

• Long battery life

• Fast charging

• Hot swap batteries -12/19/24v Power

Why? Long battery life is not enough. Power management and flexibility will allow you to run much longer than the longest battery life (consider operations longer than just flight endurance).

Ruggedness

• Gorilla Glass

• Drop tested

• Water resistant

Why? A Tablet in the cockpit will be stowed and retrieved frequently. Vibrations, bumps and knocks will all be part at the environment. Your EFB can’t be too precious.

A final consideration would be mounting options, This of course may be subject to further certification.

More interesting discussion on EFB:
http://www.adrsoft.com/Electronic_Flight_Bag/Press_FAA_Certification.htm
http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/issue/feature/918.html

Tablets to consider for EFB Role:

1. Motion Computing F5V
2. Motion Computing J3500
3. Motion Computing CL900
4. Panasonic Tonghbook CF-19

So I spent a couple of months with the TH550 without the pen and I was very impressed with the size, shape, weight and performance. The TH500 feels more solid than a standard netbook, and you’d expect that with a Fujitsu product.

I decided not to review it on video without the pen (as most Tablet PC users know – Active Digitizer Pen is for work, touch is for play). That said, our new TH550 demo stock arrives tomorrow (with pens), so a video is on its way real soon!

The n-trig touch screen performed well once I removed the unfortunately bundled Norton Anti-everything (It’s simply not designed for an Intel Core i3 tablet PC sorry Norton). N-trig have designed a swag of multi-finger gestures and swipes which I’m sure will be seriously useful. Want to see them?

I found the three finger “show all windows” gesture particularly useful for touch. Some of the four finger gestures like the screen capture move are a bit harder to achieve since you need to use 2 hands – tablets are often one handed devices. The windows 7 screen snipping tool does a much better job of this anyway.

More on the TH550 / T580 soon. Demonstrations will be available from next week. Contact us for more on 03 9999 1601.

Fujitsu has given its new Windows 7 Slate Tablet PC a name – Stylistic Q550.

Here’s a slightly eccentric video intro of the Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 from Fujitsu’s design engineer Meinolf Althaus.

We’re chasing up pricing and availability for Australia. We’ll let you know when we have more!

Welcome back to the slate game Fujitsu!

Our other favourite Tablet PC manufacturer – Fujitsu – has informally announced that they too have some slates on the way. The as yes unnamed Fujitsu slate will run Intel’s new Oak Trail Tablet processor and will weigh around 700 grams!

Fujitsu only recently dropped their Stylistic slate tablet PC series, so it’s good to see them coming back to the slate form factor with some innovative products.

More details at Engadget.

Early indications are that we should expect to see this tablet in Q2 this year. Looking forward to it!

Contact us for more information.

We’ve been waiting for a respected company with a strong brand to re-embrace the Tablet form factor introduced with the HP TC1100 and Motion LS800. Austin, Texas based Motion Computing are best placed to meet the needs of this market with their experience as the largest manufacturer of Windows Slate Tablet PCs for business.

The new CL900 utilizes a brand new chipset from Intel called Oak Trail giving it an 8 hour battery life with Dual Core processing performance.

Important things that you’ll want to know about the Motion CL900:

• Includes N-Trig Active Digitizer Pen and 4 point multi-touch screen
• Rugged – Gorilla Glass, MIL810G Drop and IP52 ratings!
• Weighs around 900 grams
• 8 hour battery life
• 10.1” wide screen with HD 1366×768 pixel resolution
• 3G Mobile Broadband and GPS via optional Gobi 3000 module
• Pricing from under US$1,000 – Australian pricing to be confirmed.

The new CL900 is expected in Australia around March this year. It is the small, lightweight companion tablet that many of us have been waiting or since the HP TC1100 and the Motion LS800!

We will be taking pre-orders of this tablets as early shipments will be sold out. We’ll let you know once we have pricing and ETA.

Stay tuned, for our announcement video shortly!

We all know that the promised flood of consumer accessible Slate Tablets in 2010 did not eventuate, and the only Tablet that did slip through (HP Slate 500) has failed to ship and will be out of date and dead in the water by the time it actually does ship.

That’s about to change as a whole host of interesting devices are about to emerge at this years CES conference in Las Vegas. Here’s a teaser of what’s coming from ASUS:

There are a number of hardware advancements that have been ticking away in the background that will make these Tablets remarkable.

• Better speed and processing power for low cost
• 8 hours+ battery life
• Better screens and display resolution
• Pricing around AU$1000

We’ll keep you informed on the Tablet PCs that make our stringent cut. Stay tuned – CES starts on Jan 6th US time.