I brought the x200 because of the flexibility it provides for working extended periods. It is thin and light, and the ability to rotate that screen around into a slate form insures it can be used comfortably, no matter the environment. That flexibility was the call of the day, so the x200 went into the bag.

When I settled into the waiting room I pulled the MiFi out of the bag and tapped the power button. That’s the beauty of using a MiFi — one tap for an instant hotspot. It connected to the 3G network in just a few seconds, and created a Wi-Fi hotspot just for me. The ThinkPad came out of the bag, and with another button push it resumed instantly from sleep and connected to my personal hotspot. I was online, up and running in seconds.

I used the x200 in slate mode, and I am still impressed with how much value the touchscreen adds to the slate experience. Tapping things on the screen and sliding the window around as needed is a natural way to work with a slate. When I needed to enter some text I popped the pen out of the silo and the x200 went into full tablet ink mode as soon as the pen got near the screen. This turns the touch off so there were no inadvertent events triggered while holding the pen to the screen.

Microsoft has done a stellar job with the inking improvements of Windows 7. I found it natural to ink into the Tablet Input Panel (TIP), and recognition accuracy was very good in spite of my horrible handwriting. When it incorrectly interpreted my scrawl it was easily fixed given the improved editing mode of the TIP. Tapping on a word in the TIP expanded it for correction, and I just wrote over the letters in error. Microsoft has put intelligent text prediction in this editing mode, and usually after correcting just one letter, the TIP would change the whole misinterpreted word into the new correct one. I found I could fly through the editing as never before.

I was doing a lot of research for an article, and the MiFi supplied fast 3G like a champ. I forgot I was on 3G and not regular broadband, the mark of good technology at work. I was jumping all over the web in Firefox, using touch to move around at will. The entire process was so natural that after a while I realized I was just doing my work, and not thinking about the tools in use at all. That is absolutely liberating, and the way things should work.

I’ll have another chance to work here on Friday, unfortunately. The repair shop had to order some parts for my old Volvo, so I’ll be back here working for the repairs to be finalized. I’ll be happily inking away in my personal hotspot, so aside from the less than comfortable chairs, it will be business as usual. Well done Microsoft, Lenovo and Verizon.

• More storage capacity — a 32GB SSD and 500GB of Eee storage in lieu of the original 16GB SSD, free 16GB SD card plus 20GB of free Eee storage online on the T91
• Newer operating system with native multitouch support — Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium instead of Microsoft Windows XP Home Premium, which offers a far better touch and ink experience.

Aside from those key differences, the T91MT looks much like its predecessor — 1.33 GHz Intel Atom Z520, 1GB of RAM (with support up to 2GB), 8.9″ display at 1024 x 600 resolution and integrated battery. ASUS still claims up to five hours on that battery, but I’d love to test it with the newer operating system. So far, my own testing — still in progress — is showing less battery life on Windows 7; at least on one particular model and in one specific test case.

The T4310 has a modular ultrabay that can accommodate a second battery, a second hard drive or an optical drive. The keyboard is spill-resistant, making it more durable than some touch notebooks. It has a 12.1-inch screen and will be available for order at the end of October.

Image taken with iPhone 3G

I am having lunch at the local Denny’s, enjoying the free Wi-Fi while waiting for my salad. The Lenovo ThinkPad x200 is perfect for this scenario. I have it in slate mode, using the touch controls to surf the web, check email and write this post. Life is good.

The tx2 is officially part of the TouchSmart line, HP’s product line aimed at bringing multitouch computers into the home. It features two digitizers, an active digitizer requiring a pen and providing full Tablet PC features, along with a capacitive two finger touch digitizer for finger operation. The 12.1-inch WXGA screen can swivel for operation in either notebook or slate mode.

The new tx2 runs the AMD Turion X2 processor and can be configured with either 4 or 8 GB of memory. The notebook features HP fancy imprinting on the case and the interior surfaces. The new Tablet PC gains the HP TouchSmart software as part of the rebranding.

Gateway has been largely silent on the Tablet PC front for a good while, but that may be changing soon. Engadget has gotten wind of a new convertible notebook by Gateway that will be running Windows 7 when released. Gateway has produced heavy, clunky tablets in the past, but the EC18T has a pretty small form with an 11.6-inch screen.

Not much is known about the this new Gateway, but the folks at engadget have a gaggle of photos of the new Tablet PC. We’ll have to see what kind of price Gateway puts on the this new convertible.

My very first Tablet PC love might have found new purpose in life. It was late in 2004 when I purchased a Toshiba M205 with the then very usable 1.5GHz Pentium M processor. Ah… but that was back in the days of XP Tablet Edition. What about 2009 and Windows 7 on this bit of hardware?

I installed Windows 7 Ultimate on the device and find it to be quite useful! My battery won’t really hold a charge, but what was once relegated to a dusty corner in my closet is now a journal-type device with all of the inking features of Microsoft’s newest operating system. Would I use this on a daily basis as a production machine for all of my needs? Nope. But I don’t have another large Tablet PC with an active digitizer, so this is fine for note taking and web surfing around the house. Yes, I could have easily stayed on Windows XP Tablet Edition, but I thought this was a good learning experience.

The initial Windows 7 install didn’t provide me with Wi-Fi, sound or some other updated drivers, but some nosing around on the web got me what I needed without too much hassle. In fact, Windows Update was a big help here, although I had to use an Ethernet cable for the initial connection. I’m impressed at how Windows 7 is moving along on hardware that’s five years old. The 32MB of video memory is a bit of challenge, but otherwise, I think my M205 has found new life with a new OS!

The interface shown on the Codex is a hybrid implementation of a Microsoft tool made for Tablet PCs, InkSeine. The photos of the Codex show this graphical interface that is designed to be used much like the video of the Courier demonstrates. Write anywhere in ink and drag objects around. It is interesting to see where the Courier may have gotten its roots.

(images from Microsoft)

Gizmodo has sparked a lot of interest

What the folks at Giz uncovered looks to be a video showing off the Courier as a lifestyle gadget. This could be legitimate, as we recall that is how the ill-fated Origami product line surfaced on the web.  The Courier certainly looks compelling, although as shown might be awfully heavy to carry around. It looks like it’s an inch thick, too, and that would have to change for a consumer project.

It is great to see Microsoft hasn’t given up on the Tablet PC category. Those of us who are familiar with the technology realize the potential, but we’re the only ones. The Courier could change that if it becomes a real product. Stranger things have happened, right? Be sure to check out the Giz video — it’s pretty cool.

One of the things I have been enjoying is using the Tablet PC to stimulate the creative process for writing projects. Our friends at WebWorkerDaily recently extolled the virtues of pen and ink mindmapping for writing projects and they are absolutely right about that. Mindmapping is a great free-form way to capture ideas on paper and then run with them. Doing these maps with pen and ink definitely stimulates the creative process, far more than doing them on a computer. Unless your computer is a Tablet PC and you can do it with digital ink using MindManager.

For me the advantages of ink mapping on a Tablet are outstanding. I can capture ideas as they flow, just like on paper, but I also get to use sophisticated tools to organize the ideas once captured. In this five minute screencast I lay out a simple map for a real article I’m kicking around. You get a chance to see the ideas flow in real-time, duly captured in ink on the Tablet. Once the ideas are captured into a simple mindmap, you’ll see how I can turn it all into an outline in ink with one push of a button.

These two models are bringing some new life into the UMPC space with new components. They both have the Intel Atom onboard, which is not that unusual these days. What sets them apart from the pack, however, is the inclusion of dual digitizers. Both of these new UMPCs have both a resistive touch digitizer along with an active digitizer for pen use.

Both of these new UMPCs from TabletKiosk are available for pre-order, but the new features will not come cheap. The a7330D will set you back a cool $1,495 and the ruggedized TufTab $2,195. Tabletkiosk is aiming these UMPCs at vertical businesses, so they are not priced for the consumer market.

The ThinkPad x200 Tablet from Lenovo is the company’s first foray into the world of double digitizers. The x200 has both a Wacom active digitizer that works with a special pen for inking on the screen, and a two-finger touch digitizer for direct manipulation of the interface. Windows 7 has special features for touch input and Lenovo has pre-installed Windows 7 Pro on the x200 I am evaluating.

In the video you’ll see a brief tour around the convertible notebook, along with a demonstration of using the x200 in slate mode with touch. I show eReader for e-books, Zinio for reading magazines and the uBoard keyboard for quick text entry via touch.

Forget the fact that MS doesn’t make mobile gadgets; well, there is that ZuneHD thing. The rumor has the company advertising for a new product manager who will help bring a tablet with Surface technology to the market. Multitouch, anyone?

The rumors about MS-branded hardware don’t end there. The not-so-secret project codenamed “Pink”, has MS still supposedly working on two smartphones under their own brand. Sure, they said they wouldn’t do it but who believes MS, anyway? Besides, if Microsoft won’t make Windows Mobile phones, who will?

Seamonkey420, a frequent visitor to our site, points out that the Origami Experience 2.0 (OE) from Microsoft can change certain aspects of the Windows interface to have larger controls to make them easier to use by touch. The OE was the failed attempt to turn touch-enabled UMPCs into devices that could be run entirely by touch. This was accomplished by replacing the tiny interface controls in Windows with nice, big finger-friendly ones. OE never took off for a number of reasons, but chief among them was the fact that it was produced to only run on Vista.

UMPC devices as a rule haven’t run Vista well in the past, and most of them currently ship with XP. OE will not run on XP so it was largely ignored by UMPC users. Seamonkey discovered that while OE was developed to run on Vista, it can also run on Windows 7. He produced a nice tutorial for getting it running on Win 7 systems, and since OE is a free download it was a no-brainer for me to give it a go on the ThinkPad x200 touch tablet I am testing.

The first step was to download and install OE. The program warned me that it was only intended to run with Vista but I ignored those messages. It installed without a hitch and then rebooted the system. When the system rebooted it gave a couple of error messages as programs OE installed in the Startup folder tried to launch, but couldn’t run under Windows 7. This was not a problem as I didn’t want to run OE proper, just get at the Touch Settings utility in the Start Menu under OE.

The Touch Settings utility gives a nice interface for “optimizing” different interface controls, such as Start Menu, Scroll Bars and Internet Explorer. You can tick only the features you want optimized, which largely means OE will make them bigger. I opted to only make the scroll bars and title bar bigger, as those were the parts of the interface giving me the most trouble in Win 7 with touch.

Once the settings were changed, it prompted for a log off and log on to enact them. Upon log in the title bar controls and scroll bars were bigger and easier to use, natively in the OS. This is important, because everywhere a scroll bar appears it is now nice and wide. All windows have an easier-to-use title bar, everywhere in Windows 7. This is a tremendous boon to use by touch, and has made a big difference in usability.

I did have to go to the Start Menu and delete two programs that OE installed there, those were the ones giving me the error upon boot. I find the x200 to be much better to use by touch, and I am going right now to install this on the Viliv S5 UMPC. That 5-inch screen is just screaming for bigger controls.

Switching between ink and touch is seamless and useful. I heart this Tablet PC.

* Written on a Lenovo x200 TabletPC with multitouch.

The quick impressions that follow are off the top of my head, and will soon be followed with a video showing more of the x200. The full specs of the device as provided to me (thanks Lenovo) are as follows:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo L9600, 2.13 GHz
• OS: Windows 7 Professional 32-bit
• RAM: 4 GB (only 3 GB usable with 32-bit)
• HDD: 128 GB SSD
• DISPLAY:  12.1-inch, 1280×800, Integrated Intel GMA 4500MHD
• Webcam: yes. I assume 2 MP, not detailed in the docs
• Security: Fingerprint sensor, ThinkVantage TPM
• Ports/ switches: VGA out, Ethernet, 3 USB, ExpressCard, Multi-format media card, audio in, audio out, modem, pen silo, wireless on/off
• DIMENSIONS: 295×228x26.5 mm, 11.61×8.97×1.04 inches
• WEIGHT: 1.58 kg, 3.5 lbs
• Webcam:

The x200 is a true convertible Tablet PC with a swivel screen that locks into slate mode. The device can be configured to auto-rotate from landscape to portrait when swiveled, and also to magically rotate when the device is flipped around. This is done via an accelerometer. The pen lives in a silo on the side of the notebook, and pushing it causes it to pop out.

While the x200 is a very good Tablet PC, using the multitouch features in slate mode rocks. Having the slate in my hands and interacting on the screen with my fingertips is very comfortable and intuitive. Lenovo has very sophisticated multitouch enabled, with up to four touches detected simultaneously. The x200 takes full benefit of the touch features in Windows 7, and is a joy to use in slate mode.

I will be putting the x200 through some vigorous usage scenarios, and will no doubt have plenty to share in the future. I have snapped some photos in the meanwhile, so enjoy the x200. I sure am.