Thanks to work, I am now the possessor of a rather cool piece of kit: a tablet PC. It’s a Mobile Computing LE1700, and I’m quite impressed with how it works. The big question though is of course… Will it run Linux?
At the moment it’s still running Windows XP Tablet Edition, but that’s only because a Hardy Heron install DVD is quite some way away from me right now.
I just trained Microsoft speech recognition and this paragraph has been dictated using speech recognition. The recognition rate is actually quite good for the amount of training I’ve done, although I am having to go back and correct quite a few minor errors.
Back to handwriting recognition, which is outstanding: it’s only just now, as I write on the screen of this device, that I realise how poor my handwriting has become! Almost certainly this is due to lack of practice and under-use! I can tell as I’m writing that its recognition is somewhat dictionary-based, as if I pause or lift the pen it will make a guess abort what I’ve written which it will change as I complete the word.
Credit where credit is due, I think tablet Windows looks pretty good. Having used it before just putting Ubuntu on, I’ll be expecting a bit more from Linux…
On the hardware side, the machine looks quite sturdy and solid — so much so it’s a bit or the weighty side. I did install the additional battery pack though, and I’m sure that if I was adopting a proper tablet-PC posture it wouldn’t feel as heavy as it does. It has a 3G modem built-in, which works fine with my Telstra USIM (that’s how I’m posting this now), and the usual complement of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, PC-Card, SD and infra-red. It even has a place to stow the pen-stylus.
As I said, I don’t have a Linux disc handy to start setting up properly so the big Linux question will have to wait for a while. Some early Googling shows that there is support for most of the hardware components in it (the digitiser is Wacom, the Wi-Fi is Intel 3945, I’ve even seen support for the 3G adapter. It’s the interface and application level that I’m worried about — the state of handwriting recognition, whether XRandR lives up to the promise, and so on. I’ll post more as I get used to it and see what it can do…
Crossed Wires 