BYTE.com > Chaos Manor > 2003
Tablet Tips
By Jerry Pournelle
June 9, 2003
(Tablet Tips
: Page 1 of 1 )
Column 274 (Continued from the Previous Week)
Lisabetta, My Love
I love my Tablet, but I will admit that until I got the new morphing code I was
muttering that if I get a chance to get a Tablet PC with the same features and
a faster CPU, I'll take it. Lisabetta was great for everything but online
work, but the combination of the slower CPU, Windows XP, Tablet PC software,
and Office XP was enough to try one's patience.
The new morphing code doesn't entirely fix that problem, but it sure makes a
lot of it go away.
Oddly enough Compaq was warned about the Transmeta Crusoe chip, and the
engineering samples sent to Compaq, Sony, Fujitsu, and other companies were
slow; but Transmeta assured everyone those were first samples, and the
production chips would be faster. A number of companies, including Compaq,
built Tablet PCs with those chips, because they certainly do have good
battery life, low power consumption, and low waste heat. Alas, while the
production chips were a bit faster than the samples, they are still slow, and
it took a long time to get the new morphing code to make them faster. The Pentium M is not only faster but more energy-efficient than the Crusoe. Of
course, the Pentium M wasn't available when they were designing and building
the Compaq Tablet PC.
Once again, slow is a relative term, but you can judge for yourself: Play
FreeCell, win, and watch how long it takes for the cards to stack themselves.
On anything but your slowest desktop this happens almost instantaneously. On
the Crusoe-driven Tablet PC you can see the cards move one by one.
And for all that, I like Lisabetta a lot. The keyboard is small, but I can
write on it just fine, as well as I have been able to write on any portable
keyboard. The pen interface works splendidly.
The bottom line here is that for many years it has been my practice to set up
one heavy duty portable in my hotel room and leave it there, while I carry
another with me to meetings and for work in the press room.
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