6/10/2005 09:17:01 AM|||jason|||

So yesterday one of the reps from Motion Computing, makers of kick-arse tablet pc's, came by to show me and mel their latest tablet.. the LE1600.

It was pretty damn cool.

can I say damn?

will the FCC fine me?

aaahh.. fcuk-em.

Anyway, Jason (the guy's name.. isn't that cool?) showed us a few features of the TabletPC.. it was actually the first chance I'd had to play with one in real life, as opposed to my best-buy experience (grumblegrumble), and I gotta say..

wow.

Mel put it best: "I want one".

We only had a short time to use the machine, and I haven't had a chance to try it with Maya yet, so hopefully next week Jason will come back and we'll get to try Maya and Painter and Plastic Animation Paper, and all sorts of fun products.

Now for a wee plug of the Motion LE1600.. it had the "view anywhere" screen, and man.. it was NICE! I could lay the tablet flat and easily see what I was drawing. Jason could demo something and both mel and I could see what was going on w/out the screen dimming from changing viewing angles. It was an extremely light machine.. and with the extra battery, it would go for 8 (!!!) hours.

8!

holy mother!

Now, I don't think it had an internal cd drive.. which I'm kinda 2 ways about. See, I like having access to cd's.. you know, easily. I'm kinda anti-external-device that way..

however, my mac laptop's cd drive has been busted for a while now, and you know what? after the first 10 minutes of ARRRGGGHHH!! and every once in a while going GAAAAHHH!H!! I don't often use the cd drive. So I'm sitting here thinkin.. is it really SO bad to have to plug in an exernal drive? I mean.. it saves some weight in the machine. and if I'm just takin the tablet to dailies and back and such, and not using the cd unless i'm installing software or ripping some music.. why lug around that extra weight?

Oh, and the machine was just given pcMag's Editor's Choice award.

|||111842022105902860|||Motion computing.. well that was nice!6/10/2005 9:34 AM|||Mau|||Wow... look at that! Your search might be over!
BTW...plastic animation paper... is that a fancy "digicel flipbook" app. kinda deal?6/10/2005 9:40 AM|||jason|||yep! check it out:
http://plasticanimationpaper.dk6/10/2005 11:08 AM|||kaveh|||That looks niiiice!

A few thoughts,

-the site says it costs $250 for adding an extra 512MB memory, and I think it's somewhat expensive considering the regular 512MB memory dimms for laptops are about $50

-About the CD drive being external, if the tablet has a USB port, which I assume it should have, you could just get a USB memory stick for file transfer around the office or anywhere you go (they come in all sorts, 256MB, 512MB and up)

you'll only need the drive for installing softwares or burning CDs then.

-The page doesn't say anything about the graphic card, or I couldn't find it anyway, so if this Jason guy actualy came back next week, it would be nice if you could run a few benchmarks to see how good the graphic card is.

-and you may ask the guy if there is an extra pen included with the tablet, becasue, they tend to get damaged quickly and a new one is about $35

Looks very sexy thou!

-Kaveh6/10/2005 1:43 PM|||Brian "My Fault" Nicolucci|||That is absolutely the worst thing about getting a hands on with a TabletPC, you realize that you can't possibly live without one!6/12/2005 10:20 AM|||Jim|||I think I've hooked up my external DVD drive twice in the year and a half I've had my Tablet. I just haven't missed it.

What will be real interesting is if you find you miss having a keyboard attached at all times (convertible).

I would love to have a thinner tablet, but I wonder if I'd miss having the keyboard attached. I mean, right now, I'm typing this out - I don't know if I would've commented if I would have had to attach the external keyboard (after getting off my fat a-- to go find it, etc. :))

I didn't like plasticanimationpaper - seemed like it was written in 1985.

Oh! - And make sure you get at least a Gig of memory, you will want it.6/12/2005 6:57 PM|||gilgamesh|||I've had a Motion Tablet for 2 years now -- it's a great machine, but the peripherals & addons don't come cheap. $2100 base price, but by the time you've got the accessories and upgrades, it's more like $3900... plus tax...

I love mine -- 1.1ghz and it runs maya 6.5 well enough that i've been doing all my AM homework on it. Centrino rocks.6/14/2005 2:28 PM|||Ali Tezel|||that looks sweet man!

looking forward to hear how it runs maya and painter.