HP Compaq Tablet PC TC1100

...a defining feature of the HP Compaq Tablet and essentially it is this feature which separates this product from every notebook on the market and there is a clear distinction between cheaper alternatives and this sturdy piece of technology. The screen is 10.4 inches adopting the appearance of a digital book, when in portrait mode the screen conceals the keypad which is underneath and allows you to navigate your PC using just a pen.

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...or have never used one before it is probably useful to mention at this point that the pen acts as a mouse and therefore it controls your cursor movements as well as right and left clicks. I personally found it rather tricky to get used to despite having a fair deal of experience of using regular computers. The main difficulty is double clicking which involves tapping the screen twice in quick succession using a pen. Although this is something that ... more

You may well be wondering what this little device is I wasn’t entirely sure when I first saw it but my husband soon explained all. Basically it is a half notebook half PDA style device which is perfect for busy people who are always on the move.

I think it’s probably clearer if I break my review down to cover each aspect of this product separately because there is quite a lot to mention about each feature and hopefully this way it will be more useful to you.

>>>THE SCREEN<<<

The tablet screen is a defining feature of the HP Compaq Tablet and essentially it is this feature which separates this product from every notebook on the market and there is a clear distinction between cheaper alternatives and this sturdy piece of technology. The screen is 10.4 inches adopting the appearance of a digital book, when in portrait mode the screen conceals the keypad which is underneath and allows you to navigate your PC using just a pen.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with these devices or have never used one before it is probably useful to mention at this point that the pen acts as a mouse and therefore it controls your cursor movements as well as right and left clicks. I personally found it rather tricky to get used to despite having a fair deal of experience of using regular computers. The main difficulty is double clicking which involves tapping the screen twice in quick succession using a pen. Although this is something that you get used to at times it can become inaccurate and needs to be calibrated properly, this is a relatively easy process described in the instruction manual. However I would definitely not replace the pen and screen concept because it is a useful and convenient tool when you don’t have the time to open up the keyboard and type in a note; you simply write straight onto the screen and the handwriting recognition will interpret what you have written. The quality of handwriting is second-to-none compared to the substitutes on the market. The on-screen writing capability allows you to draw pictures or sketch, annotate documents, write and store information exactly as you would on a piece of paper.

The screen also features a protective cover on it which means you can rest your hand on the actual display when using the pen, without causing any interference with PC to Pen interaction. Some similar products don’t feature this screen and although on paper it doesn’t seem to be a particularly important feature when it comes to the practical usage of the product it makes life a whole lot easier because you don’t have to worry about where you’re putting your hand.

The best screen resolution is achieved at 1024x768 on this PC. Anyone who knows about this sort of thing will realise that this it isn’t an ideal resolution, but it works best on this Tablet PC; because text comes out very crisp and clear. Although the colours are impressive unfortunately the lack of brightness on the tablet PC screen degrades the colour quality slightly.
The only major downside to this screen that I have experienced while using the Compaq Tablet is using it outdoors. Under sunlight I could barely read the screen which obviously isn’t ideal if you are planning on using it outside. An improvement would be to include a power brightness ratio as we have on our ordinary PCs but unfortunately this is a feature that very few notebook screens have.

>>>GRAPHICS<<<

The Tablet PC uses NVIDIA GeForce 4 Go 420 32Mb (AGP 4X) for graphics. I’m sure this is fairly meaningless to most people but compared to other products this is a fairly average but adequate graphics adapter for a tablet pc. The graphics adapter is a low end model in today’s high end graphics market but to be honest it doesn’t matter particularly, at least for day-to-day usage it is perfectly acceptable unless of course your reason for buying the product was to play games which is unlikely.

>>>KEYBOARD AND MOUSE<<<

Unlike regular PCs the tablet PC doesn’t have cursor control besides the pen. Unlike some tablet PCs this particular model does not have a touch sensitive pad to control the cursor; however it does have a touch point device in the centre of the keyboard. Personally I find this easy to use it’s similar to what you’d find on a laptop the only real problem though it is a relataively minor point really is that when browsing web pages it does put a little strain on your finger though for a handheld device it is acceptable, though I would prefer a touch sensitive system simply for the ease of use. Of course if you’d rather attach external components such as mouse, keyboard even a web cam or scanner the device does have two USB 2.0 ports which you simply attach your desired device to.

The keypad is fairly well-designed and is laid out in the familiar format but there is a downside to this feature; due to the compact size of this tablet pc the keyboard keys are put very close together and it is difficult to type fast under such a key configuration. The only improvement the manufacturers could make here would be to design the tablet PC with a widescreen which would allow for a wider keypad although this would require a complete redesign. Of course I would not expect to find this as easy to use as a regular keypad but I feel the design could be improved slightly, however it isn’t something that most people would have much difficulty getting used to unless they have little experience of using a computer.

>>>SPEAKERS<<<

A feature that has impressed me beyond my expectation is the speakers. Despite the fact that this PC is very compact it has two built in speakers positioned at the right side of the tablet screen something which most tablet PCs don’t have. The speakers aren’t too bad at all, of course if you play a lot of music you can’t expect to pump up the base on this device because they are very tiny and it simply wouldn’t have the power but if you attach headphones you can get a good sound quality.

>>>POWER CONSUMPTION AND CONNECTIVITY<<<

Most users find power consumption to be the most annoying aspect of these devices mainly because these days we want unlimited battery life which simply isn’t. During normal usage the battery lasted for about 2½ hours though of course if you were using it to play music the battery would be drained more quickly.

Power Specifications:

• 6-cell Lithium-Ion technology, bridge battery for fast battery swapping while in standby mode
• External 65W adapter
The Pentium M processor is Intel’s ultra low voltage processor which tends to run at less than 1 GHz when it needs to conserve power, it will not use all 1000 MHz until you push it to require that much for example by rendering higher resolution images.

On the connectivity front I have found this device extremely convenient. It has 2 USB 2.0 ports I mentioned earlier, as well as wireless support, an IR port, VGA output, and a Fast Ethernet port.
The wireless support that this tablet PC offers increases user convenience because it supports both Bluetooth and 802.11 a/b/g Wi-fi networks. This means that if you have a wireless router at home you can access that network easily with this Tablet PC. Or if you have a Bluetooth device then you can communicate or synchronize with it using the Tablet PC. This makes moving from the office to home a lot easier.

Wireless/Wired Support Specifications:

• Type III Mini PCI integrated WLAN - 802.11b WLAN and 802.11a/b/(g when available) WLAN options
• Integrated Bluetooth
• Two (2) USB 2.0, RJ-45 (NIC), RJ-11 (Modem), VGA, IR port
• Integrated 56K (V.92) modem and 10/100 NIC

>>>PC PERFORMANCE<<<

Overall I’ve been really impressed with the PCs performance. It is very compact and you might expect it to be slow but I’ve found that opening and loading all applications is a quick process and I’ve never been disappointed The only problem albeit a minor one is that on random occasions the system freezes for a second and then continues, this doesn’t seem to be affected by the number of applications you have open but just occurs randomly; only a small niggle really though.

PC Specifications:

• Ultra Low Voltage Intel® Pentium® M 1.0GHz processor with 400MHz front side bus and 1Mb cache
• Intel 855PM chipset
• 40GB (4200 rpm)
• Microsoft® Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition
• 333MHz (Pentium-M) SDRAM Standard, up to 2GB maximum

>>>OVERALL CONCLUSION<<<

This is the first tablet PC I’ve actually used but from what I’ve experienced it is convenient and easy to use it may not be as impressive as regular PCs but for a mobile worker it is ideal. Working from one environment to another is easy because it supports more then one type of network connection, next to that it also supports USB inputs and a VGA output also.

The speakers aren’t amazing but the very fact that they are there makes this more attractive to some buyers than other tablet PCs. The keyboard isn’t fantastic either but you’ll get by using it quite happily. A touch sensitive screen would be a definite improvement but again this is hardly an essential and you can get by without it. It would benefit from a bit more power to improve the brightness for games and other entertainment facilities and for outdoor usage.

You may think I’m not particularly keen on this machine but I am simply highlighting the areas I think could be improved as you can tell from the rest of the review this device is packed with excellent features and I would definitely recommend it.
 

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