Eric Mack On-Line

I seem to have become a magnet for feedback about the Toshiba Tecra M4. I wish that I had the time to respond individually to all of the email I receive each day either asking questions or sharing feedback on the productive benefits of Tablet PCs an d the Toshiba M4 in particular. I am grateful for the comments and suggestions from those who have sent tips and offered to help me with my issues.

Many people have blogged about their growing disappointment with the additional unsolicited software, gratuitously supplied with the US version of the Tecra M4.  I think this is a big issue and I believe it is to blame for at least some of my problems. For what I paid for my shiny new M4, I should not have to deal with this. Apparently, I'm not alone in this regard.

Note that it is not the M4 that people are complaining about so much as the preinstallation of unsolicited software. - I call it spamware (Listen to the Tablet PC podcast #16 for a good perspective from Marc Orchant and James Kendrick. At the least, be sure to read: this and this.)

A reader by the name of Gustavo posted this comment to my blog today:

I'm very very disappointed with how Toshiba US is handling this issue. My M4 is full of Spam and crap I never wanted. They even preloaded a full version of Office trial even thought when I so that on my email order confirmation I wrote therm and said I did not wanted that. I bought this laptop because of a technology advantage of having a full laptop system with tablet capabilities. By the time I need to upgrade other manufactures will have better tablets. Then I'll be happy to never buy a Toshiba product again.  This is also because their sales and support experience has been the poorest I've ever had.

Perhaps the folks at Toshiba don't read blogs or at least they choose not to comment. I hope that they are at least considering what people are saying. It would be great if someone from Toshiba would get back to Gustavo (or me) and offer to help solve the problems.

I know that I will need to reload my M4 from scratch. I hope that when I do, my experience will be better than it has been so far. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to reload any time soon. When I do, I'll go back and review Marc and Warner's narratives on their experience reloading their Tablet PCs.

Overall. I'm still enjoying my M4, though my move to the Tablet PC has not been as easy as I hoped it would be.

In fact, from a total productivity perspective, I'm still very much in the negative zone.  I believe in the potential of the Tablet PC as a productivity tool; however, I'm not there yet.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to press on, in the hope that I will someday become YABHTU