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Specifications (M1200)

Summary: Gateway has licensed Motion Computing's Tablet PC, and they've scored a hit with this machine, boasting the largest display available and performance equal to any of its competitors. The decision to go with the keyboardless "slab" approach has it's pluses and minuses, since the handwriting recognition can be very, very frustrating, but the slim keyboard included makes this a well rounded machine.

Full Review:

"NOTE: It's important for you to keep in mind that as our first tablet review we're talking about both Microsoft's Tablet OS and the Gateway/Motion Tablet PC's functionality. It's hard to show where one stops and the other starts, and as with many MS products, the limitations of the OS become the limitations of the device."

Gateway has licensed Motion Computing's Tablet PC, which I saw at Comdex last November and was as impressed as they are by it. Motion opted for the high end of the market, using the Intel PIII chip, and giving it the biggest display yet offered, 12.1 inches (diagonal). That happens to be the exact size of my Sony Vaio R505 laptop, and like the Vaio it has pretty much everything I could ask for in a mobile device, except a keyboard, which I found, but only after really looking for it. The keyboard is so light and thin that I missed it in its box at the bottom of the carton and didn't find it for a few days...until I was looking at the specs for the unit and saw "keyboard with touchpad" included.

I'm glad I found it, because the handwriting recognition isn't as reliable as I'd like. Microsoft didn't choose to make us all learn some new writing style to use the tablet's input window, but used some sort of statistical algorithm to make sense of the way people write normally. It almost works, which is to say that it works well enough to want to try it and badly enough so that you can waste serious time trying to get anything done. Often I'm surprised at how well the handwriting recognition software works...and often I'm frustrated because no matter how carefully I try, it can't tell the difference between upper and lower case, or a capital F and a capital T, and I have no idea how to tell it the difference between zero and "O" This article is being typed on the keyboard, but reading it over I'll use the stylus to fix a word here or there, as it lets me go from place to place on the screen and select text better than a touchpad.

How it works: From a portable computer standpoint, the Gateway/Motion Tablet PC is a sure winner. It's fast, light, bright, has all the ports I need, including two USB, a Firewire (4pin), and 802.11b wireless (WiFi). It has a PC card slot at the top (we'll be calling the end with the stylus and all the buttons the top) and switches display modes easily by either pressing a button or by using the "Dashboard" which displays all the control settings at the press of the next button.

I love using it in portrait mode, like a piece of paper. When was the last time you turned an 8.5 x 11 sheet sideways to write on it? So why do we insist on working with landscape computer screens for text? Images on the other hand are often more natural in landscape, unless they're of people, which is why it's called landscape anyway. Tablets, especially ones this easy to change orientation on, are simple awesome when it comes to showing pictures, and the 866 GHZ processor that this one comes with does a great job handling the image processing.

A Really Big PDA - What Gateway didn't count on is that I see the Tablet as a convergence device between my laptop and my PDA, and I saw my PDA as a convergence device between my organizer and my mp3 player. As such, little things like speaker location mean more to me than they do to the designer.

In portrait mode, the two speakers are located on the bottom of the unit, which is really not a good place to put them. True, you can keep pressing the change orientation button until the bottom is the top, but then the stylus pulls out downward, awkward if it's in the desk stand, and even then the speakers do not point towards the user buy slightly away. The silver snap-on cover that comes with the unit completely covers the speakers as well as muffling the sound.

The included keyboard is slightly smaller than the tablet itself and though it has a fairly short stroke, it's not bad to work with at all. Since handwriting recognition really isn't there yet, that's important. The keyboard slips in my briefcase without adding noticeable weight and makes writing possible. Ironically, I almost went out and bought a keyboard to go with the tablet before I realized (by reading the side of the box) that it came with one. I had mistaken the top of its box for the bottom of the carton, since it's so light and thin. Thought the touchpad on the keyboard works fine, I'd really like to have the stylus more accessible while I type. All it would take is to add a hole in the corner of the keyboard to stick it into like an old quill pen.

You're not going to believe how I solved the problem of using Tablet and Keyboard while not at a desk. I hold it between my knees. It's fun, and it's good for your inner thighs. A rubber rim would be handy, since you really don't want a few grand worth of tablet shooting across the room, or slipping out of your hands. Until they figure out a better way to address the working with it in you lap and a keyboard, laptops and convertible tablets have the distinct advantage over the simple slab, but I like the portability the slab offers. I'm a hallway computing kind of guy, and you just can't use a laptop standing in the middle of the hall.

A Bluetooth keyboard would be a great addition to this package, along with integral clips on the back of the unit and a built in stand. I'd just as soon not have a convertible tablet like the ACER, but I would like to get rid of the keyboard cable. I installed a Belkin Bluetooth Card in the unit so it could talk to my Desktop PC, and it worked fine, though the brick walls in my house stopped it cold. I choose to see that as a feature rather than a flaw, since it makes my wireless use a whole lot more secure.

The flex dock is a bit too stiff. Several times I've put the tablet in the dock only to find out later that it didn't seat completely and it hasn't charged up its battery. My bad, mostly, but it could be prevented. Taking the unit out of the dock is less than perfect as well, as I have to hold down the dock to keep from yanking it off the desk. A release lever would be a good idea. The last thing I don't like about the dock is that there's no place on it for the DVD/CDRW drive. I tried balancing it on top, which almost works, but the surfaces are too slippery so it winds up sitting off to the side taking up more desk space.

Speaking of slippery, we come to my biggest complaint about tablets in general. The writing surface is a clear sheet of plastic and the stylus has a little plastic nib. I like the slight drag you get with paper and pen which helps control your motions...here it's a bit like walking on ice...you have to be very careful. I know Cross is working on a snazzy executive stylus for the tablet, and look forward to seeing if they address the drag issue, but I'm probably dreaming. Well, working on my penmanship is probably good for me.

Journal, The main included pen application, does work nicely. You can jot down notes on your choice of several paper backgrounds, including "small grid", my perennial favorite. You can't write as small as you can with real paper, though by setting the stylus down to fine, you can get close. It's possible to write faster than the tablet can keep up, but you can't write neatly that fast anyway. Journal allows you to do everything you can with a piece of paper, and some things you can't, like inserting blank space, cutting and pasting, and performing a conversion from handwriting to text. As you probably expect, this works only moderately well, and the word selection options could be a bit friendlier. In time, they will be.

The only OS you can get for these devices at the moment is Tablet XP, and like all the flavors of XP I've used, it works fine. The biggest hassle I have with laptops is that they never seem to undock and rarely want to hibernate without running into some problem, so the ""sudden undock"" requirement that MS made of this platform really turned me on. So far I've been unable to get it to so much as hiccup as I plug devices into it and yank them out, or as I push and pull it in and out of its docking station.

If I only had one PC, would it be a Tablet? I'd like to say yes, but I'd be fibbing.

The difficulty in working with it with keyboard undocked makes my laptop more useful as a writing tool. I am going to be taking this along as the only PC I use on writing and photo assignments for a while though to give it a fair shake, and becuase I like the small profile and big screen.In specialized applications where form filling is the main activity, then sure, it's a perfect fit...but I want more.

If I was a student, I'd seriously consider it. Journal is made for note taking, and it works really well for that. Of course, if I were a student, I'd carry a micro-thin VGA resolution digital camera with me and just take pictures of the board. Integrating a  VGA res cam in a tablet pc wouldn't be a bad idea anyway, if just for copying documents.

There are several things I like to do better on the tablet than on my desktop or laptop. 1) writing. It's a portrait thing 2) Showing pictures. The Tablet is like a high powered picture frame, and I'd be happy to use it for presentations too. 3) Maps. Yes maps. I use Microsoft's Street and Trips to find my way around the country, and the tablet pc is a great way to take it along. 4) e-book reader. Yes, I actually read e-Books, and my favorite format is Microsoft Reader, because it makes books conform to the page. Fortunately with the Tablet's portrait format, you should be able to read Adobe PDF files without having to scroll up and down the page to see what's next. Reading a full size magazine page can be a challenge as they won't quite fit on to the screen and get reduced to less than perfect clarity. Instead, I set my favorite web page news sources (see our TechRevu links page) to synchronize and read them offline.

For their first Tablet, I give Gateway a hearty thumbs up, despite some room for improvement. 

• Chassis: Magnesium Alloy
• Processor: Intel Mobile Pentium III-M ULV 866MHz processor
• Chipset: Intel 830MG
• Display: 12.1" XGA TFT LCD
• Graphics: Intel 830MG integrated UMA graphics card. Rotation 0°, 90°, 180°, 270°
• PC Card Controller: O21410 PCI Card bus controller
• Audio: AC 97 audio codec
• System Memory: Base RAM of 256MB or 512MB; One expansion SODiMM memory slot for PC133 module. Maximum 1GB (512MB x 2)
• System Storage: 2.5" hard disk drive; capacity up to 60GB PCI bus master enhanced IDE Supports Ultra DMA 66/100
• Communications: Integrated LAN controller PCTel soft modem V.92 interface V.92, 56.6Kbps 14.4Kbps transceiver fax IEEE 802.11b Wireless LAN via Mini PCI interface with integrated antennas
• Input Devices: Active digitizer pen (no battery required) Integrated microphone
• Speakers Integrated speakers
• I/O Ports: Microphone In Headphone Out DC Power In Two USB 1.1 Ports External VGA 1394 Firewire RJ-11 & RJ-45 Docking connector
• PCMCIA: Type II slot
• Dimensions: 11.65" x 9.45" x .87" (296mm x 240mm x 22mm)
• Weight: Less than 3 lbs. with 12.1" LCD/HDD/3-cell battery pack
• Operating System: Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
• Battery: 6-cell Prismatic Li-Ion battery. 40WHr capacity Optional lightweight 3-cell Prismatic Li-Ion battery
• Battery: Charging Time Approximate charging time of two hours (computer ON); 1.2 hours (computer OFF)
• System Status Indicators: Wireless On/Off, HDD activity, Power, Battery Status
• Control Buttons: Power Portrait/Landscape: orientation Four function buttons and one 5-way directional control button
• AC Adapter: 50W universal, 2-pin jack, 90~264V AC, 47~63Hz
• BIOS: 512KB Flash BIOS ROM Suspend to RAM, suspend to disk Password protection for system ACPI 1.1 compliant Pen/Button driven setup
• Environmental: Temperature: Operation 5 - 35 degrees Celsius Temperature: Storage (-20) - 65 degrees Celsius Humidity: 10 - 90% without condensation Altitude: Operation sea level 0 - 10K feet Altitude: Storage sea level 0 - 40K feet
• Standards: PC2001 compliant with PC2001 logo ACPI Revision 1.0b
• Regulatory: EMI: FCC-B Safety: Compliant to UL/CSA, CCEE PTT: FCC-part 68
• Warranty: 1 year warranty Extended warranty available