Atomic Testing

So, I’m currently typing this blog post on the first test machine that we’ve actually spent money on (as opposed to getting a temporary eval. model from a reseller).

It’s a Samsung Ativ Smart PC.  The entry-level Windows 8 tablet from Samsung running on a Clover-Trail Intel Atom platform, with a 64Gb eMMC (more on that later) and 2Gb RAM.  The dual-core Atom immediately felt like it was in a totally different league to the old Atom-based HP Mini netbook I used to have.

[caption id="attachment_259" align="aligncenter" width="567"] Samsung's Ativ and Intel's Roadmap for the Atom.[/caption]

It’s probably a testament to Microsoft’s work on keeping the system requirements for Windows from getting ridiculous like they had in the days of Windows Vista.  The overhead for Windows 7 and 8 isn’t really that different, which has allowed the lower-level hardware to catch up a bit.

There's a very tiny jitter in the start-screen when scrolling back and forth, probably due to the lower-power integrated graphics chip.  But said jitter is occasional, and so hard to notice that you have to point it out to people, and even then you can blink and miss it.  So no big deal there.

I’ve typed a few pages on this device and I' have to say, for a small machine the keyboard is fantastic, I’m able to type at the same speed as I would on my expensive desktop PC keyboard (sadly, it can’t help my poor spelling though).

It’s actually not shy on connectivity options either.  For those of us who don’t share the iPad’s “less-is-more” design ethic, there's welcome inclusion of one full-size USB port on the tablet and two on the keyboard.  Real work requires USB, so that’s great.  The tablet also sports a micro HDMI port and a MicroSD slot.  The other bonus feature is the S-Pen, a proper active stylus that’s pressure-sensitive and as accurate as a Wacom digitiser.  It lacks the eraser found on some, which is a small shame.

It’s got some bad that comes with the good though.  The buttons on the touchpad have nothing to indicate where the left button and right button meet.  The charger is tiny, which is great, except so is the connector, it’s one tiny pin isn’t very kid-friendly, and is likely to get bent.  The biggest disappointment though, is the way the tablet docks to the keyboard, the bizarre clip mechanism fails a lot on this test machine.  More often than not, you’ll pick up the tablet and the keyboard will fall off.  You have to be quite forceful to be sure it clips securely.

But this test machine wasn’t as much about the individual features of the Ativ as it was about giving one of these new Atom-based tablets a thorough test.  Which isn’t going so bad at the time of writing.  Nothing I’ve tried to do has made the device seem horribly underpowered, although it’s mostly been simple content creation and web surfing so far.  I don’t think it’s going to be quite so pretty when I try Photoshop on it, or try to edit a video.  But I’m happy to be proven wrong.

UPDATE: - Actually, I might be at least partly wrong, editing in Photoshop is doable with Web-sized images, and short video editing in Movie Maker can also be done.

Either way, I’m feeling positive about these little tablets.  We’d prefer our chosen machine to be an Intel Core i based unit, but if economic realities force us to look at the little-brother (or sister) from Intel, I don’t think it’ll be so bad.

Some doors close, some more open (but not enough)!

So the search for a Windows 8 based computer continues.  The OS launch has been and gone, and it’s now early November.  I’ve had some small wins, like making a contact at Samsung, who was quite positive about the likelihood of them being able to provide enterprise-grade local support for their upcoming products.

We’ve also been let down on a few occasions though.  The most recent being that I’ve received confirmation that the Lenovo X230T will not be supported running Windows 8.  So that’s off the table.  Also off the table are the offerings from Fujitsu and Toshiba, for reasons I’m about to cover.  The result of this though, is that the field is much more narrow than it was.  With Lenovo, Fujitsu and Toshiba out, that leaves Dell, Acer, HP and Samsung.  Acer don’t really have anything suitable and neither do HP, so it remains to be seen whether Dell or Samsung can produce something.  I’ll be meeting with Dell in a couple of days to find out about their two possible machines, and Samsung are showing some promise, although I have my reservations about their Ativ Pro running a ludicrous 1080p resolution on an 11” display.

That’s enough looking forward, lets look back at what went wrong with the Toshiba and Fujitsu machines.  I’ll start with the Toshiba, it’s problems are basically self-explanatory.

The tablet we received was the M930, which comes with a multi-touch display, a stylus, a core i5 and a range of connectivity options.  On paper this unit looks good, but as soon as you take it out of the box it begs the question “WTF?”

[gallery ids="37,38,39"]

then your lead balloon is going down like it was filled with Sulphur Hexafluoride.

Probably the most bizarre aspect of this device is the lack of a mouse.  Oh wait, there is a mouse, it's just that it's possibly the most pointless token effort imaginable.  In my experience, users aren't so keen on ye olde pointing stick, a technology that some manufacturers still persist with for various misguided reasons.  I could only assume that if users don't care for the pointing stick, then having it built into the right-hand bezel of the keyboard with sideways mouse buttons is going to go down like a lead balloon.  Then if you concede that those sideways mouse buttons are what most would consider upside-down (that is, most of our users initially, and wrongly assumed the top button is left-click and the bottom is right-click), then your lead balloon is going down like it was filled with Sulphur Hexafluoride.

That's not the only problem either.  The device converts from tablet to pseudo-laptop using a hinged slider mechanism.  The mechanism is not only quite stiff and difficult to use, it also makes the most awful noise you've ever heard.  When I first used the hinge to convert the device everyone else in the office turned to look at what I was doing, with looks on their faces that said "what are you doing to that poor computer?"

Other than that, the machine was fine, it was quite speedy, the touchscreen was responsive and the keyboard was decent, but none of that mattered.  After seeing the two flaws mentioned above we spent some time laughing about this clownputer, put it back in the box and returned it.

Okay, so what was wrong with the Fujitsu then?  The Q702 (pictured below) also looked good on paper, and even had a proper touchpad.  It's core i5 was fast enough, and with the dockable keyboard containing a second battery it got great battery life.  It even looks as neat in person as it does in the promotional material.

The big issue with this machine was the touchscreen.  It's multi-point screen felt strange to begin with, not as smooth as the gorilla-glass coated tablets we're used to.  It felt like the resistive screen on an oldschool Tablet-PC.  None of that would matter normally, we don't think our users would be bothered by the feel of the screen (and if they were, we wouldn't be).  What they would be bothered by would be the lack of responsiveness the touchscreen exhibited.  Sure it worked well enough that normal touch and swipe operations worked perfectly, as did multi-touch gestures.  The problem was evident when swiping rapidly and repetitively to scroll through a long document, or sometimes even a heavily loaded Start Screen.  The screen would miss one in every few swipes.  This meant you couldn't flip neatly through your start screen and you couldn't get the fast scroll going down a page like you could with an iPad.  To anyone that was used to that on their phone or tablet, it felt like something was broken.  We therefore couldn't put this in front of our users and say "here, this is your wonderful new machine with Windows 8" knowing that the experience would be less than ideal because of the touchscreen problem.

So, after trying and failing to communicate the problem to Fujitsu and get a fix, we've struck the Q702 off our list as well.  I might add that the price-point for the Q702 was such that you'd expect it to be flawless.  It's not cheap, so we felt this made it even harder to justify the machine.

Now, on we go, the list is ever shorter, as it our timeframe.  With only a few weeks until I absolutely must order something new for our staff, we've not got a lot of options remaining.

Eek!

More potential devices?

I've made a few more contacts with regard to devices for staff and/or students.  Dell are in the process of finding me an XT3 (the basis of a Hobart schools 1:1 program), and Toshiba seem to think they can send me a demo of one of their M930.  So at the moment it looks like I might have up to four candidates, with more to be released in a month or two.

I also have a meeting arranged with Samsung.  I have to travel a couple of hours for the privilege, but they seem keen to approach schools with the promise of longer warranties supported by local service centres (that are yet to be esablished).  Interesting!