The Fujitsu Lifebook P1510d: a TabletPC Lover's Perspective - Page 2

Audio
The device uses RealTek™ AC'97. I didn’t spend a lot of time with audio, but I and some others listened to a song on it, and we agreed that it had a very nice sound for such a tiny device.

Input
Being that the device is small, the keyboard is, too. At 5’3” tall, my hands are proportionate for my frame, which means they are small, and I found that I had to swing my wrists outward to place both my hands on the keyboard with the fingers on their proper home keys. I used to have a wonderful working relationship with StickPoints, but I haven’t had one for a while (my TabletPC does not have one), and I found it much more difficult to use than a touchpad.

I found the pen to be a bit strange and a bit too small for comfort. Since the P1510 uses a touch screen, rather than the active digitizer, one is not limited to using that pen, so I’d recommend heading out to the nearest high-tech office supply store and grabbing a bigger stylus, maybe even one of those 3-in-1 or 4-in-1 types. Or, if you’re like me and have several older Fujitsu tablets, rob one of those of its stylus.

For the most part, the screen did not register when my palm rested against it; a few times a day, however, my bent pinkie would graze the screen, and any input I was involved in would be affected. Interestingly enough, a rather large technician found that the screen completely ignored his forefinger, so normal-sized individuals might not find this as much of a problem as I did.

One thing the touch screen means for the average user is that there is no cursor tracking, much like on a PDA. Dragging/dropping and resizing of items sometimes had to be attempted more than once, since I could not see where the cursor was until after the pen touched the screen. I was thrilled, however, to see that the calibration utility uses six points, rather than the four I normally see. Right-clicking is achieved by enabling it within a Fujitsu utility and tapping the resulting icon on the taskbar; this works well in, say, explorer or a program, however, I often use right-clicking within the Start Menu to re-arrange items or pin them, and for these tasks, I had to revert to the keyboard.

It was announced last month that these devices will ship with the TabletPC Edition of Windows XP, and that means that they will have the Tablet Input Panel, so owners of the P1510d will not have the same text input concerns I did. However, the unit I received came with Windows XP Pro installed, so input with a pen involved using the On-Screen Keyboard, which a TabletPC aficionado really can’t abide. Although I’m quite happy with EverNote’s RitePen, and I did eventually discover that RitePen came on a CD that shipped with the device, I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to take another look at PenOffice. Other than some issues with alignment when using the pen as a mouse (I had to turn recognition off to select items or navigate though the Start Menu), I wasn’t disappointed. Though RitePen and PenOffice are similar, I still prefer the handwriting recognition and correction method of RitePen, but I love PenOffice’s lite version of PenCommander.

Article Author: MiniMage

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