Eric Mack On-Line

Several people have written to share that, as a result of my blog, they have purchased a Tecra M4. A friend even surprised me by showing me his new M4 that he purchased after reading my blog. (More on that later.) This past week, I've demonstrated the M4 to numerous clients as well as people who come up and say "that's really neat; what is it?" As far as I know, I've apparently helped sell another ten M4's for Toshiba and at least as many licenses of MindManager, OneNote, and other Tablet PC applications.  Still, I've probably discouraged an equal number of folks from buying an M4 or a Tablet PC, too. To these folks: please understand that I push my systems to their limits and I'm quite harsh in my expectations of what a productive system should be like.

I continue to work with document management on the Tablet PC. Scanning books and documents to read and review on the Tablet seems to be working well and, despite the weight and size of the unit, I really enjoy the large screen. (I would not switch back.) As I explained to someone today: my screen is large enough to allow me to display a page in a window on the left and run MindManager or OneNote in a page on the right, I'm quite content to carry around a large Tablet. MindManager and Windows Journal remain my current favorite Tablet PC apps, however, OneNote is growing in favor. I've got GoBinder and a few other apps, however I've not had the time yet to explore their features.

I continue to enjoy the Tablet PC and the M4, well mostly. To be fair, four  items remain on my persistent tablet problems list.

1. Wireless conflicts - It seems there's disagreement between Windows XP Tablet Edition, the Intel PROSet Wireless Client, and the Toshiba Config-Free drivers as to who should get control of the wireless card. If I leave things alone for ten minutes the drivers seem to sort things out. Still, a big inconvenience. Ultimately, only the Intel PROSet application works.

2. M4 Goes into a standby or hibernate and I cannot get out of it except to power cycle. I still cannot explain this one.

3. At times, tablet goes into snail mode. I still suspect a power management or Intel Speed-step issue, particularly with pen mode. (The fixes I've tried don't seem to help.) Unfortunately, I have no time to reload until the end of June, so I'll continue to limp along. (For now, I only operate in high-power mode, which means that battery life is terrible.)

4. Most of my attempts to hibernate result in a windows error indicating that insufficient system resources exist to complete the operation.

[M4 owners, have you experienced any of the above?]

These seem like issues with the Tablet OS, or perhaps they are due to hardware conflicts, or both. I realize that problems 2-4 may also be due to software that I've installed; we'll see. Hopefully, my experiences are unique. I certainly hope so.  

My friend, Michael Sampson, who's here with me, thinks this is hilarious and reminds me that I could have bought a Mac.

I know that many of my clients read this blog and are following my Tablet PC pursuits. I want to work through all of the issues to determine my ideal Tablet PC configuration so that I can fully recommend Tablet PC Hardware, Software, and applications as possible eProductivity tools.

One last point: I don't want to make it sound like I'm down on the Tablet PC or Toshiba; I'm not. I have no plans to go back to a regular laptop. Still, since people seem to be relying on my blog for product information, I want to be honest about my experience thus far -- good and bad. I still see sufficient potential and promise in this technology, so I plan to stick with it.

Until I get these problems sorted out, I cannot consider whether or not I'm YABHTU; however, I remain very optimistic.