The Fujitsu Q550 and Motion Computing CL900 both feature Intel’s new generation Atom Oaktrail processor allowing manufacturers to create lightweight small tablets with up to 8 hours battery life.

The CL900 will break new ground for work Tablet PCs in Australia. While other manufacturers see Tablet devices as simply viewers, Motion Computing has always pushed the boundaries of real productivity.

The CL900 and other Motion Tablets like the J3500 and F5v are designed to allow you to create and capture data wherever you are – On the job, on site, in the office, on the street, in the field, on the road. The provision of both four point multi-touch and a smart Active Digitizer pen allow you to do things like:

• Taking fluid handwritten notes – your handwritten notes are searchable too
• Converting your handwriting to text – now or later
• Scribble on you PDFs, Word Documents and Excel spread sheets
• Draw on PowerPoint slides during a presentation
• Annotate and mark up drawings, screenshots and diagrams
• Draw your own designs and sketches wherever you are!

Ultimately, a device like this gives you access to all of the fastest and most convenient methods of input for mobile devices.

What you can expect to see on the Motion CL900:

• Corning Gorilla Glass
• 4 point finger touch and an Active Digitizer (Smart Pen)
• Wide viewing – outdoor readable screen
• Gobi 3000 Mobile Broadband – Fast 3G with any carrier – Telstra Next G, Optus, Vodafone
• Up to 8 hour battery life
• Desktop docking station and other work ready peripherals like payment modules and scanners.

The CL900 is due to arrive in Australia sometime in April, so this is a pre-production example. Brett was kind enough to give us an exclusive interview with the CL900 in Syndey on Monday!

Official pricing and stocked options for the Motion CL900 are still coming. Stay tuned for that and some more videos soon!

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!

I am startled at how far this goes. It is rife through consumer oriented forums like www.gottabemobile.com where I have occasionally written some articles. I was even more surprised to read this perspective from a very well respected Tableteer Dr Conrad Blickenstorfer at Rugged PC Review. I understand Conrad’s experienced and long term view(and maybe a little well placed distaste for Microsoft) on this…

But, as far as mobs go, this ones wrong… As usual. That is because there are three major factors that are left out of the discussion of Windows and Tablet PCs.

1. Windows has a massive “app” base.

We’re talking about many millions of “apps”, not just a couple of hundred thousand with very limited use. These are fully functional rich environments from off the shelf applications to bespoke corporate and small business systems.

For the most simple example, just yesterday while I was on the road between Coffs Harbour and Grafton in NSW, I pulled out my windows 7 tablet PC, picked up 30mb of PDF files, zipped them into 3 separate packages and emailed them. A simple feat like that would be unfathomable on a consumer device, but I was able to do it on my convenient and powerful Motion J3500.

So we have a very rich environment in Windows that businesses like to take advantage of without having to rewrite all of the programs that they rely on. Granted, this will not be majorly exciting for consumers wanting to whittle their lives away playing pacifying games.

It is far more advantageous for businesses invested in Microsoft technology (95% of them) to make the rich environment of Windows more mobile than to switch to a new environment.

2. Rewriting the code is never a good idea – adapting it makes a lot of sense.

As a former software developer, I’m a big fan of Joel Spolsky’s number one rule: Never rewrite from scratch!

Rewriting windows from scratch for touch and tablets would fit right into Joel’s single worst strategic mistake category.

So Microsoft have taken the right path, and have done an excellent job adapting windows for Tablets effectively. Sure, there is still more that can be done and it no doubt will be done.

In future, Microsoft may adapt the Windows Phone 7 OS for consumer tablets too, but there will always be full Windows tablets. And it may surprise you how well Windows and Tablet PCs go together.

3. One device or platform will not fill everyone’s needs.

Much of the mob noise that is out there now is really focused around consumer tablets. Consumer tablets don’t fill the needs of most businesses very well at all – as evidenced by the hundreds of business people (short term iPad owners) that have contacted us this year looking to upgrade something that meets their needs.

On the one hand, if you wanted to show pictures to customers at a trade show or in a retail situation, the the iPad or an Android tablet would be perfect. Does the job well and cheaply.

On the other hand, if you’re looking to collect data outdoors like an insurance assessor, a park ranger, a geologist or a surveyor would, then consumer devices with glossy screens and limited “apps” and power would never do the job well.

The real future of Windows Tablet PCs

With the Windows 7 Tablet PC advancements and massive consumer focus on Tablets, the 2010 year broke all records for Tablet PCs. Our own Tablet PC sales covering all parts of Australia more than doubled. And that happened while the typical quality tablet sold for over AU$4,000. Our website visits went through the roof, and our humble YouTube channel attracted over half a million views around the world.

In 2011, you will see quality tablet devices featuring Windows 7 and the new Intel Atom Oaktrail processors opening up markets that could not afford to get in the game at $4k+. We expect to see these tablets landing in Australia for around AU$1,000.

Our prediction for Windows Tablet PCs for 2011:

1. These devices will sell across the globe in the millions (It is estimated that there are already 5 million+ Windows tablets shipping each year)
2. They are unlikely to cross over much with consumer slates
3. They will eat into the market for data collection PDAs.

2010 was an exciting year for Tablet PCs in Australia, but if you are into Tablet PCs, 2011 is going to blow you away!

I’ve been using tablet PCs for 8 years now and my experience led me to the J3500. Explaining why is sometimes hard to do, but this German company has encapsulated it in the following video perfectly!

Now you’ve seen that a top class Windows Tablet PC like the J3500 is so much more than magical. It’s productive, versatile, compatible, brilliant and fun!

Touch on windows 7 is regularly bagged in the mainstream IT media, but the real experience of windows 7 and a good touch tablet is actually very good. It may be that this perception is a hangover from the early windows touch devices which left a lot to be desired.

Right now in 2010 and we have exceptional touch tablets like the Motion Computing J3500 with the touch friendly windows 7 user interface combining to bring us tablets that are not just fun and easy to use, but tablets that are real work horses that will make you more mobile and productive.

This latest generation of Windows touch tablets have made the mobile, paperless office a reality!

Contact us for a demonstration of the Motion computing J3500 with touch.

Cheek out our video review below.

One of the things that does bug me on the iPhone is the lack of flash support. The reason that it bugs me is that it completely limits the viewing of websites like YouTube. Yes, “there is an app for that”, but as the video here points out users should not have to be thinking about apps all the time – besides the YouTube app on the iPhone is unreliable and very limited in my experience.

So with Flash Player on the HP Slate device,  I’m able to access the full web and not just a part of it. – Alan Tam, Adobe Flash Marketing

Fortunately as you will see in the following video, soon we will have a consumer oriented slate device that will support flash in the HP Slate.

After my fantastic experience with Windows 7 multi-touch on the Fujitsu T4310, T900 and HP Tm2, I think it is definitely worth passing over the iPad to wait for a real consumer slate that acts just like my PC.