Questions for Tablet & Multi-Touch users

Last year, I took a course through the University of California Extension, and the primary instructor used an X-series Thinkpad with pen. It completely changed the quality of presentation because he could draw on the slides without needing to raise the screen and blind us with reflection off a glossy white board. Audiences tend to comprehend & retain presentations better if they have more interaction. His written notes during the presentation helped make the class superior. I have some questions related to using the tablets or multi-touch screens.

How easy is it to set up a Powerpoint type presentation that allows (real time) hand written notes to project on the display? He had a substitute engineer one night who could not get it to work.

When taking notes as a student, how does one take notes on some one else's Powerpoint presentation and save the slides with notes? Rather than printing up handouts, it would be much easier to take notes on the presentation materials themselves. By saving it electronically, I can search for a particular slide using keywords much faster than paging through a binder of print-outs.

Whenever I've tried to implement a personal policy of typing real time meeting minutes on a PC, I ran into the inherent limitation that some ideas are best described with a sketch, and formulas were beyond my ability to type. Many times, we gave up on taking notes and just wrote stuff on a white board that had a copy function and passed out hard copies. How well does the handwriting recognition work with embedded sketches? This could be an incredible boon to salesmen who hate writing sales reports and meeting minutes after they get to their office.

When traveling or giving presentations, I'd like to hook up the laptop to an HDTV, preferably with an HDMI output. I understand the Ultrabase has a DisplayPort output. Does the DP implementation on the X200T & X201T output sound when used with an HDMI adapter?

Mutlitouch display takes several hours off the expected battery life. What benefits do you get from Mutitouch over the pen in return for reduced battery operation times? The reviewers tend to be effusive in their praise of Multitouch, while I scratch my head wondering about its benefits.

How well does the Multitouch implementation on the T410s & W510 meet my usage expectations? Can you use the pen with them? I really like the additional screen size of the 410 and sheer kick-butt performance of the W510. The X201T has marginal graphics capabilities for many of my needs...

My imagination is taking off with all the compelling benefits of using a notebook that elegantly combines hand writing, drawing, typing & standard software. I hope you can help me align my expectations with real world usage patterns. Thanks!

 

Very easy. You just click on the 'powerpoint' button on the bottom left of the screen when the presentation is active, and select the pen tool. You can do this even without a tablet - you'll be drawing with your mouse instead.

In presentation mode, when you close the presentation, it gives you the option of saving the ink annotations.

Alternatively, and what I prefer, is to print the slides into OneNote, and annotate there. You get full OCR functionality (which I don't think you get in PowerPoint), plus all the other cool stuff OneNote offers.

OneNote has in-built tricks to determine if something you're drawing is a diagram or text, and if it gets it wrong, you can simply tell it otherwise. The sketches need to be somewhat separate though for it to work most effectively (or at least in different strokes).

Its a bit of a toy at the moment, although even with the basic gestures it makes using it as a tablet a lot easier. I'm not quite sure it sucks that much more power though.

 

Wow, thanks for your response!

Do you hold your in portrait mode while reading PDF documents? That would be much closer to reading off paper than just about any portable screen arrangement. I find it really irritating to read patents or other PDF documents with columns that require constant up/down adjustments within the single page.

If it switches to portrait while browsing the web, I bet news stories are easier to read in portrait mode too!

I expect the Multitouch may make it easier to read through documents. Do you find it helpful for much beyond launching applications? While the cost delta isn't much, the projected 2-1/2 hour loss of battery operation is a bit of a performance hit without a compelling advantage. Of course, we know how accurate battery life estimates are on product literature...

 

The touch makes it easier to navigate when you use it while standing. I have an x61t. and I hold it with two hands while standing, it's pain to use with the pen. If you have a 8cell you can leave the pen on the grip and navigate with your other hand. For me the only advantage for having touch is when you use it while standing.

 

I use my tablet in portrait mode for browsing the web, reading articles, and reading/annotating PDFs (check out Blubeam PDF Revu) all the time. It's much more natural than trying to do it on a traditional laptop.

Mine is NOT multitouch (285 nit LED frameless pen only). I really don't miss the added functionality of touch, but then again I'm not really sure how much I'd be missing (ignorance is bliss). When I bought mine the only option was single finger resistive touch rather than two finger capacitive touch. Additionally, the 2 finger Enhanced Multi-touch display is supposed to be true IPS rather than S-PVA (even higher quality than my display which is already leaps and bounds above 99% of other laptop displays). I've seen the higher power consumption numbers as well, but I'm not convinced that they're accurate (it shouldn't be that much worse).

 

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I notice a LOT of wasted horizontal space on web pages and documents using a 1200x800 display. Since documents are almost invariably in portrait mode, the 16:9 screens make it even worse. Reading patents and other documents with columns is particularly painful because I have to navigate up & down in the same page instead of just downward.

When setting a PDF document to display in "page width" while in portrait mode, do you find the text is large enough to read easily?

From what I can tell, there are no navigation buttons when working in tablet mode. Do you scroll up/down & left/right using pen control?