PC Magazine has finally gotten around to reviewing the Toshiba M700 tablet PC. Cisco Cheng gives is a 4 out of 5 and says:

Bottom Line: This convertible tablet has the processing capability and an optical drive to maintain productivity at a high level.

Pros: Excellent performance scores. Built-in optical drive. Beefed-up hinges. Wacom and touch capabilities. Superb “green” attributes. Comfortable keyboard.

Cons: Needs 3G support. Plain and bulky-looking.

Awesome.

[Via GBM]

Every time I’ve written about tablet PCs on this blog it’s been about how that form factor will improve my productivity, efficiency, and will make my life a great deal easier.

What I haven’t mentioned is how I expect a tablet PC to improve my computer-based entertainment experience as well. Specifically, how I expect to use it for reading books, playing computer games, watching movies, recording and editing music, listening to music and podcasts, and so on. I’ll write about all that some other time but, meanwhile, James Kendrick has posted a video on how he uses his new Fujitsu P1620 for entertainment. It’s an excellent video and I suggest you check it out.

Both Gotta Be Mobile and Tablet PC Review have recently published their reviews of the Toshiba M700 tablet PC:

• GBM InkShow: Toshiba M700 Tablet PC Overview — Matt Faulkner
• Toshiba Portege M700 Tablet PC Review — Tiffany Boggs

Both are positive and both have reinforced my decision to buy the M700 as soon I can afford it. Things may, of course, change over the next few months but I doubt any manufacturer will come out with a machine that tops the power, versatility, and customisation options of the M700.

Naturally, Hinckley has a day #13 in his Twelve Days of InkSeine series of posts!

Ken Hinckley (The Alpine Inker) works at Microsoft Research and, over the last couple of weeks, he’s been running an awesome series of blog posts called Twelve Days of InkSeine.

InkSeine (pronounced ink-sane) is a really cool inking application that Hinckley is working on (which is not yet an official Microsoft product). It’s one of the only products around that has been designed for inking and not just a keyboard-and-mouse based product that has inking support. For example, a lot of its commands (like cut, copy, paste, search, etc.) are all pen-flick based and not menu-based.

It’s still in private beta but will released to the public in 15 February. To find out more about it, check GBM’s InkShow on it. Better yet, once it is available, download and try it. Assuming you have a tablet PC, of course.

It costs as much as a high-end tablet PC (AU$3,890) but the 21.3″ Wacom Cintiq is one heck of an LCD screen that also has on-screen pen input capabilities:

Of course, that model is designed specifically for creative uses. I’d probably end up getting the 17″ PC-720 instead (AU$2,195):

Or, at the very least, the 15″ DTI-520 (AU$1,760):

Or maybe I’d compromise and get the 20″ wide screen Cintiq 20WSX (US$1,999), though that’s not available in Australia yet:

Ah, choices, choices.

Of course, all this has to wait till I’ve made my millions.

Soon, soon…

Like me, other power users are finding that the Toshiba M700 has most of they’ve been looking for in a tablet PC. It is:

• Powerful — more so than the Lenovo X61t or the Fujitsu T4220
• Highly configurable — like the X61t but unlike the T4220
• Relatively inexpensive — costing less than an equivalent X61t or T4220
• Feature rich — with more features than the X61t or 4220

And though it suffers a little in the weight department (but only by a couple of hundred grams or so) and its screen resolution isn’t as high as some of us would like it to be (though that’s offset by the wide screen), its has lots of bonus features — like that wide screen, a touch screen, a webcam, and a built-in optical drive — that more than make up for its shortcomings.

Because of all this, we were very surprised when Tiffany Boggs from Tablet PC Review posted its benchmark scores and, strangely, they came out very low. It’s PCMark05 score, for example, was 3,399 while an equally spec-ed t4220 scored 4,171 and a lower spec-ed X61t scored 3,473. Most of us had expected the M700 to score somewhere in the mid-4,000s. Curious and concerned, a number of M700 owners ran the same test and came up with similar, low-3,000 PCMark scores.

Quickly the Tablet PC Review forum participants realized that this wasn’t a hardware issue but a software one. That, fortunately, was when GBM’s Matt Faulkner stepped in. First, he did a clean install of Vista and, lo and behold, the M700’s PCMark05 score jumped to a whopping 4,528. Then, he went a step further and installed each system driver in turn, re-running the PCMark test after each reboot. After doing this for about four hours — and working late into the night since he had to return his review unit the next morning — he found the main culprit.

It turns out that the Intel Robson Technology Driver for Windows Vista — a driver used to run the Turbo Memory that wasn’t even in that machine to begin with — was messing the system up. In fact, with the cleanest possible working install, one of the forum participants managed to get a PCMark05 score of 4,737!

What does all this mean? It means that the Toshiba M700 rocks and that, if you want to squeeze the most out of your machine, it is best to do a clean install. Importantly, it reinforces the fact that we have an awesome tablet PC community. If any of you read this post: thanks a million!

I’ve written previously on this blog about annotating PowerPoint slides and how you can use tablet PCs to take notes. Earlier today, Dennis O’Reilly wrote a similar article about the joys of marking-up Word documents in ink and of sending longhand e-mail messages. It makes an interesting read and, as expected, continues to make me jealous of the people who already have tablet PCs. Soon, soon…

Earlier today, GBM’s Matt Faulkner did a live un-boxing of the Toshiba M700 tablet PC (via Ustream). What was really cool, though, was that I took part in it by asking Matt some questions which he then answered. And though that’s not quite as cool as having access to the M700 myself, it was certainly better than nothing. (Matt: if you read this, thanks a million.)

I’m now almost a hundred percent certain that this’ll be the tablet PC that I buy for myself a few months from now. The question I now need to answer is: what hardware configuration do I go for? Unfortunately, that doesn’t have an easy answer.

As Faulkner mentioned in his video, for example, going from the 2.4Ghz to the 2.6Ghz processor actually increases the price of the tablet by about US$300. On the other hand, when you went from the 2.2Ghz to the 2.4Ghz, that was only a US$100 price increase. I wonder, then, how much of a difference that additional 0.2GHz (to get to 2.6GHz) actually makes. This is something I need to investigate.

I also need to investigate Turbo Memory some more (the current consensus seems to be that it’s not worth it) and I wonder whether it’s worth it to get 4GB or RAM (or 3GB, or should I just stick with 3GB?). Fortunately, those questions — and their answers — don’t need to be addressed for another six months or so. And by then, things might be different (and someone may already have answered them).

Meanwhile, Aaron Hall just got his hands on the M700 and he’s posted a review of it on his blog.

The Toshiba M700 — currently my first choice tablet PC — is now available in Australia from various Toshiba Resellers. Unfortunately, that’s an off-the-shelf unit that is less powerful, non-configurable (except for a RAM upgrade), and higher priced than the models available in the US.

Fortunately, you don’t have to order it from there. Thanks to the good folk at Tablet PC Review forums, I’ve discovered that you can order a higher spec-ed machine from the US and have it shipped to Australia for a considerably lower price from Portable One.

Also on those forums is a good hands-on comparison between the Fujitsu T4220 and the Toshiba M700 — one in which the Toshiba comes out in front. Mostly covered in that comparison are the five reasons why the Toshiba has recently trumped the Fujitsu as my first choice tablet PC: the M700 has (1) a faster processor, (2) a wide-screen display, (3) a backlit LCD display, (4) a touch screen, and (5) the option to upgrade to a 7,200 RPM hard drive. The inclusion of a webcam is a bonus.