Inspiron%u2122 duo | Dell. If you are a football fan, you remember that Deion Sanders was able to play two professional sports at one time. His skills were such that he commanded paychecks from both football and baseball. In fact, he could even play both offense and defense. I thought of Deion when I received my new Tablet computer, the Dell Inspiron Duo, which is an update of the convertible class. It runs Windows 7, so it can also run all of my law office productivity software; but, when you flip the screen to tablet form, it has a touch screen interface that is a thicker version of all of the new tablets out there. This little guy is awesome. It has a 320 Gig hard drive, running at 7200 RPM and a dual core Atom processor. And, best of all, at $549, it is cheaper than the iPad or the Galaxy Tab. It has built-in WiFi and BlueTooth, and you can get a SIM card for 3G access. Its principal disadavantages are the lack of a video out port and no removable battery. But, battery life is okay at 4 hours, and I connect it to a charger when I am not using it. For in court video projection, I will still use my small notebook by Acer. All in all, this is a winner, and you owe it to yourself to check it out before you buy a tablet. So, when somebody asks me whether I prefer the tablet or netbook format for mobile computing, I say "Both". Here is the original Pizza Hut commercial that Deion did with Dallas Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones. I particularly liked the "show me the money" moment at the end.
Does the Dell Duo do handwriting recognition? Does it do it well? Either Windows Journal or Ms OneNote or EverNote?
The capacitive screens on my tablets make you wait a fraction of a second before you dare start writing. The ones with the waacomm (sp?) & magnetic stylus allow you to write instantly and are usually more accurate when you point.
Posted by: TomStirewalt | January 01, 2011 at 10:12 AM
The Duo does do Windows 7 style handwriting recognition, which gives you the option of a pad to write on or the virtual keyboard.However, you are right that the capacitive keyboard is designed for fingers, and handwriting recognition on glass is better done with a stylus. So, I wouldn't recommend it for handwriting input. However, the point of the Duo is that you switch to netbook format when you want to enter text by using the keyboard.
Posted by: Rick Georges | January 01, 2011 at 12:40 PM