One little question…what is your opinion on the Fujitsu Screen Protection Plan? Would you buy 1 or 3 years?

Thanks.

Hi James,
I’m hoping to save some money by doing my own memory upgrade. Is the memory slot on P1620 easily accessible for upgrade? Thanks.

James, Thanks for all the info on the 1620. I took the plunge yesterday and Fujitsu states I should have it within a month. Anything worthwhile is worth waiting for. Glad to read that you are feeling better and look forward to reading/viewing your reviews for many years to come. Pace yourself, as you well know, this stuff is too interesting and very addictive.

Great news, Terry. It’s good to know someone who speaks Cantonese. :)

JK – Your comment on this being the 3rd generation P16XX series and that no WWAN are to be expected in the future got me thinking. When I bought my P1610 late last year, soon after they introduced the P1610 3G version, and a few months later, the P1620 is out. I rang several sales call centre, Australia (local), Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong – all to no avail. The salesperson either never heard of it, or it won’t be available. So I got a friend that speak Cantonese and got him to call the HK sales call centre again – lo’ and behold, yes the Fujitsu will sell 2 models of the P1620, the 3G version will be out in 1-2 mths time. The P1620 surprisingly is not even out in HK and its scheduled for end of this month. Quoted retail price is HKD 16,000 (USD 2,050) for the standard P1620 and HKD 20,000 (USD 2,570) for the 3G version. I know I will be waiting for this latter model before upgrading my P1610 :-)

JK (my real initials too BTW), perhaps I’ve been using the term “multi-touch” imprecisely. This term seems to be used 2 ways.

One meaning is the ability to use both an active digitizer and my finger. That I want. With my LS800, it would be convenient to be able to use touch sometimes rather than my stylus to open applications, choose files and menu items, etc. With my wife’s P1510, the inking experience just isn’t as good as it would be with an active digitizer. To be able to use both would be the best of both worlds.

The other meaning is the ability to use more than one finger for gestures, like the i-Phone and as in the N-trig advertisements. It looks neat (like for zooming), but yes, it really isn’t that big a deal.

The reason I want capacitive touch is I’ve heard with resistive touch the touch experience is not as good.

Sorry for the long answer, but I thought it was necessary to explain my thinking, however erroneous it may be.

Genghis, what uses do you anticipate using multi-touch for on a 12″ screen? For the life of me I can’t envision the utility. I’m not being critical, I just can’t see it.

Hi jc aka Quest. I’m GenghisKhent on GBM (clever disguise from Genghis Khent here). I’m impressed with JK’s reviews of the 2710p. But I’m holding out for a multi-touch, capacative touch 12″ device. Dell already has one, there will be others soon. I’ll bug you on GBM with questions re your new P1620 toy. Post on GBM when you get it!

Thanks. I have been following that thread. I post as Quest over there. I have agonized over this decision for months. Should I get the 2710p or wait for a refresh. I really respect JK’s decisions and he and Sierra had me going for the 2710p. When the P1620 came out, I wasn’t interested at first. Then I took a trip last week and all I could think was, if this thing was just smaller and lighter this would be so much easier. I’ve been reading all the threads on the 1620 and it appears JK has made this his goto tpc now. I have 15 days to return it if I just can’t read the font or hate it for other reasons. I think I’m really going to like it though. If you still haven’t decided and I have mine, ask me anything you like and I’ll try to help.
Take care,

Jc, I guess great minds think alike. I don’t mind the lack of a built in WWAN; using the PC Card actually gives you more flexibility. FWIW, there’s a great thread on the GBM forum on the P1620 that you might find helpful if you didn’t already see it: http://www.gottabemobile.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5130. Good luck with your P1620 while I continue agonizing :-)

Genghis that is exactly what I am going to do. I feel and share your pain but I don’t want to wait. I ordered this machine last night with the 100g hard drive and when i can find a 64 SSD I’ll swap it out. I think the benefits of the form factor will out weigh the hard drive option. I also wanted built in WWAN but I can live with using my Verizon Rev A PC card. Good luck with your decision. It’s agonizing isn’t it?

How much did you spend in total on this sweet device?

James, I appreciate that the tablet bits on Vista are better than XP. The problem I want an SSD rather than a regular HDD. However, the the maximum (and only) size of the SSD currently available for the P1620 is 32 GB. I guess there’s vLite. Does that affect the tablet functionality of Vista adversely? I really don’t want to wait (and wait) for a 64 GB SSD to be an available option, and buying a regular HDD and later swapping it out for a larger SSD seems wasteful. Any advice?

The Tablet bits in Vista are so much better than those in XP that I prefer Vista if at all possible.

james,

Thanks for a good review. I am now going to buy one of these machines rather than a dell xps. Just one question I have steered clear of Vista so far just wondered your thoughts on whether it was worth paying for the extra RAM to use Vista rather than stick to XP and the standard 1gb of ram.