The Tightwad Presenter's Tablet: Notebook

The Tightwad Presenter's Tablet: Notebook plus a Grafire Tablet

So I was amazed an impressed by the instructor who showed off the tablet PC at the AICPA intructor confab in Dallas about five months ago. The main issue with the tablets is as follows:
1. The reviews say that the battery lives pretty well stink.
2. The processor speeds seem to jbe somewhat anemic by normal laptop standards.
3. The devices seem to cost a minimum of $500 more than comparably equipped PC's

Now, I'm not the kind of guy who will stand between an instructor and their gear, but there IS good sense to all things. Since I've got a 1.5 Ghz notebook (although it is as heavy as a boat anchor), and have a pretty good idea about when I'm buying my next notebook (probably after next tax season), I jumped off the cliff and bought the Grafire tablet from Best Buy this week (think it's $59.99 after a $20 MIR). So far, it seems to be a decent substitute for the full-on tablet. The ink annotations on the tablet seem to work well (if my seminar in Columbia, MD gives different results, I'll amend the post here). The biggest thing I've noticed is that the pen is a little too sensitive- but that could just be my issue- I write really hard.

I haven't used the tablet with MS OneNote as of yet- I spent much of the weekend reformatting my laptop hard drive and reinstalling all of the apps. It seems to be running faster, and a lot of the junk I never use is gone now (My ACT! database works now, so I was able to re-export the phone numbers of my contacts to Outlook again yesterday- It's hard when you lose the main phone number for your top 1,200 contacts, and have to live without them for a few days.)

On the plane to Baltimore right now, using the handy-dandy hBlogger to post this. I love that program- it really rocks!

[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]

Comments

[Jim Myers]

Brian - How do you use the tablet in your presentations and what else can it be used for? (BTW - Graphire - I looked it up).

Thanks for the Blog. I read it often.

Jim