Dell Latitude XT review from first time Tablet user
Wallace Lau just dropped $3,112 on a Dell Latitude XT Tablet PC and has his user review posted up at Tablet PC Review today. Before you read the review, let me level-set your expectation: Wallace has never used a pen-based Tablet PC in past. That’s not a slight, but something you should keep in mind when reading his impressions as he’s not in a position to compare the XT to other Tablet PCs. Wallace also mentions he’s a “90% notebook user / 10% tablet user”, so if you’re looking for the impressions of someone looking at the XT as their first foray into Tablets, this one’s for you.It concerns me a little with some of the Vista issues and crashes Wallace saw, but I’m hoping they’re one-off problems or related to any drivers for the device. I also figured Wallace would be more jazzed about the capacitive touch, since that’s the key differentiator here, but he says it needed more “touch” than he would have thought. I’d like to get my hands on one and test it in comparison to the capacitive touch on my iPhone. Could be interesting!
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Wow, $3000 for a 40 GB hard drive and only 1 GB of memory! Talk about ludicrous! I too would be very leery of how he describes the crashing that the XT was doing the first week he had it. This computer is brand new so should have been optimized for Vista from the get-go, unlike older devices released with XT that have been upgraded.
I must admit I also don’t understand the bit about the Dual Mode digitizer which has both of them active at once. He claimed that N-Trig said it has good palm rejection technology for when the touch digitizer is active. Other dual digitizer machines just disable the touch when the pen gets close to the screen. This sounds confusing to me.
We have an eval unit here at work. I used it for a while. It had a gig of ram, SSD drive, LED screen, and XP tablet edition.
It’s a really nice device. I like it. It’s too expensive for me to buy though. I didn’t use it for an extended period of time by any means.
It was in a “dual mode” when I used it. I had to double tap the screen with my finger to get it into touch mode. Each time I used the stylus, I had to double tap to activate touch. I think you have to press hard though. I would like it to be more sensitive, but it’s possible it is a setting somewhere (I might grab it later to see).
If it was 1500-1800 I would buy one today. Until then I’m going to stick with my hand me down TC1100 (best hand me down in history in my mind).
I don’t know, but surely this sounds pretty expensive. I am a bit confused about the capacitive multitouch “not being enabled” in the XT. Either you have it or you don’t… this seems to be the only clear reason people would spend that much money on this tablet.
Does anyone know what is the true status of the capacitive multitouch?
There isn’t a driver for it. It’s rumored to be one last March (correct me if off on the date). That’s what I read anyways.
No comparison, Kevin… the touch on the iPhone is far better than on the XT. My experience using an XT was very disappointing in terms of touch. I was told the XT’s sensitivity is adjustable via software; hopefully it was a driver issue, as my use was with a preproduction demo unit about three months ago.
I’ve been using a pre-production unit for a while, and now a release unit – the capacitive touch is very smooth and works great! It doesn’t require any pressure at all.
I’ve got to agree with James. I just had a look at the price on Dells UK website and the base unit comes to over £1500. That’s more than my P1610 which has better specs. And I though Fujitsu charged a lot!!!
It really seems as if Dell’s prices have gone up quite a bit since Michael Dell took over recently. It’s almost as if Dell are trying to compete with Apple on price without the accompanying improvement in build or design. Personally, I’d rather pay reasonable prices for HP’s stuff which looks to be good quality.