Timing and Spacing

Here's a few five minute life drawing sketches I did with the tablet.

I'm still having difficulty with my line widths and drawing too dark, but I have that problem with pencil and paper, so... there you are.

I'm also still getting my tools setup and accessible. I've got a custom palette with scripts that will create portrait and landscape paper and useful drawing tools, but saving is still a pain. I need to get some colors quickly selectable (and then figure out what the settings are to match conte crayons). I'd love an script that creates a directory with todays date and saves each drawing with a sequential number (if that's even possible).

Posted by David at 12:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've been installing Windows Live OneCare on the machines around the house. The tablet was one of the last, mainly because I was concerned about the performance cost. So far, the only major cost (and I do mean major) was a large increase in boot time.

As noted earlier, my boot time was 58 seconds. After installing OneCare, that's gone up to an almost unbelievable 95 seconds. Time to unhibernate was about the same (within a second or two) and application performance seems unchanged.

I'll probably leave it on for a while and see how it works out. I feel the need for virus and malware protection on all my machines (particularly one that will be hanging out in public wireless hotspots), but I'll have to see if that comes at too high a cost. So far, I think I can live with. I'll keep you posted.

Posted by David at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well, I've had the LE1600 for about a week now. Here are some of my first impressions in roughly the order I discovered them.

The handwriting recognition is pretty good. I was pleasantly surprised.

Update: There is a stylus holder in main unit, just underneath the battery. Awesome!

There is no screen protection. I should have realized this earlier, but with a convertible you get some screen protection when the unit is closed. I've stuffed plenty of laptops in my backpack and not worried about it. However, with the tablet I'm really leery of just putting it in my backpack. So now I have a sleeve to put the tablet in before I put it in my backpack. This really increases the bulk, but increases my peace of mind as well.

Out of the box, there's no pressure sensitivity in Corel Painter and Plastic Animation Paper. After an initial bit of panic and then some research, I discovered that you need Wacom drivers (but Wacom pens are not required). After I installed the Wacom drivers, these two apps worked great.

I picked up a Wacom pen with the dual button on the side in case I want to try to use Maya, but I have difficult time getting a dark enough line in PAP with the WACOM pen. The pen that ships with the LE1600 feels better and less "cheap" than the Wacom pen.

I didn't get the View Anywhere screen. I can't use the tablet at all in bright sunlight. It's usable in shade. This won't be a problem for me in general.

I thought I read someone complaining that the boot time was 70 seconds. It didn't seem like it was that long to me, so I did some measurements.

Surprisingly, the boot time was longer than I thought it would be, but I tend to just hibernate the unit most of the time anyway, so I really only see the 28 seconds. All in all, I think the performance is pretty good. For the apps I'm running (Corel Painter, OneNote, and Plastic Animation Paper), the performance is fine.

I've been carrying around the unit with the extended battery hooked up. I haven't measured the uptime for general usage, but I can believe the stated time of 8 hours. That would seem about right. For playing a DVD, I watched for 2 hrs 40 mins and had 25% power left. I was pretty pleased with that.

All in all, I'm really happy so far. Performance is good, battery life is good. Everything else is just minor quibbles. Maybe soon I'll post some sketches or animations. Gotta finish my demo reel for Siggraph first though.

Posted by David at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

After several years of wanting one and doing a lot of window shopping, I've finally bought a tablet PC. I primarily want it to take notes with (probably using OneNote), for art (probably using Corel Painter), and for animation (Plastic Animation Paper). Maya is a would-be-nice, but not a requirement. I also need to go all day without having to plug it in. Okay, I don't need to, but I prefer to leave the AC adapter at home.

I was considering two different models: a pure tablet from Motion Computing or a convertible from Gateway.

Jason really likes the Motion Computing tablet. Jason seems like a really smart guy. If he likes it, it's probably pretty good. It seems like it runs pretty much everything I need it to run. It appeals to me because it's light. I've been lugging around a seven pound laptop to Siggraph and other conferences for a number of years. It sucks. Seven pounds doesn't seem heavy, but it gets heavy fast.

The Gateway looks pretty powerful. A dual-core processer? Awesome, never had one of those. It probably rivals the least powerful of my two desktop machines (the desktop is has a faster CPU, but it's single-proc, single-core). But it weighs 7.6 pounds. More with the extended battery. However, I don't need a new primary machine; I've got two I use daily and they're plenty fast. I want something that I won't leave at home or in the hotel room because it's too much trouble to lug about. So, the Motion Computing looks like the winner. However, you're not getting much computing power for your dollar. And it's not just that it seems underpowered in general, it's also pretty expensive. By the time you get all the accessories you need (memory, DVD drive, keyboard, etc), the Motion Computing tablet is going to be twice as expensive as the Gateway. If it were the same price or just a little more, it would be an easy decision. But it's half as fast, twice as expensive.

However, I finally decided that if I get the cheap one and then leave it at home because it's too much trouble or too heavy, I may as well have not gotten anything at all. So, I went with the Motion Computing LE1600. I got the Centrino processor with 1Gb of memory and the 30 Gb harddrive. I also ordered the bump case, the DVD drive, the DVD cable, an extended battery and the battery charger with an additional standard battery. I really wanted the View Anywhere screen and the 60 Gb harddrive, but I'm already spending more than I can really afford.

Now, bits and pieces are arriving. I have the extended battery, the bump case, and the dvd drive with accessory cable. I'm still waiting on the unit itself, along with recharging station and additional standard battery. Unfortunately, the unit itself will probably be the last to arrive.

I'll post a review once I've played with it a while.

Posted by David at 04:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)