New Toshiba Tecra M7 tablet PC

robrohr — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 18:21:55 GMT

Back in the spring of ought-three, the Business School bought a few early Motion Computing slate-style Tablet PCs to decide whether or not to switch the PC requirement to the tablet requirement, but the combination of the slight awkwardness of a keyboardless interface, and the pre-XP-SP2 wireless networking loveliness, we decided to stick with the laptop PC requirement for another year. In the mean time, there were a couple of slate tablets kicking around, and I got to dabble therewith for a bit, now and then. For one, I took a slate with me to TechEd that summer (Dallas) and the experience was enough to convince me of, a) the possibilities of the technology and, b) of the immaturity of the experience.

The next summer, ought-four, the School bought one of the Gateway M275 convertible Tablet PC's. It arrived one day before my departure for TechEd (San Diego), whereupon I wiped it of the factory installed software, and immediately loaded it up with all the Beta software that Microsoft had available at the time.

Windows XP SP2 BETA
Office Professional 2003 SP1 BETA
OneNote SP1 BETA

That May TechEd in San Diego convinced me that the Business School could and should take the risk and jump to a Tablet PC environment for our incoming students in the fall.

For the past few years, I've been using that first Gateway as my portable machine; for classes or bringing on the road. It's been my secondary dev box, hosting IIS, MCMS, Sharepoint, Reporting Services, Visual Studio 2003, etc. Not a very light load, and despite a RAM boost, it was starting to droop a bit about the edges.

Well, a couple weeks ago, I floated the idea of a new tablet by my boss, and she didn't bat an eyelid. Behold.

The Toshiba Tecra M7. This particular beasty boasts a Intel(R) Core(TM) Duo 2.33 GHz processor, 120 Gig HD, 2 Gig RAM, etc.

Naturally, I didn't wish to experience the complacency that comes with using the software build that comes from the factory with all its drivers and working applications. No, indeed. I needed to dump all that stable software and I installed MS Vista build 5536, followed almost immediatly by an install of Vista RC1 (build 5600). I also jettisoned Office 2003 in favor of Office 2007 Beta 2, followed this last week by an update to the Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR.)

I will post soon about some of the issues I have encountered, some of the problems I'm currently facing, as well as some of the solutions I have encountered.

Preliminary review: This tablet is smokin'. (Ed: I really don't talk like this.)

robrohr.org : Tablet PC

New Toshiba Tecra M7 tablet PC