New to tablet PC.. Is Toshiba a good brand to get?

Thanks

Hi there,

This is a common question among new people to the Tablet PC market. It is asked many different ways but typically, is Brand X better than Brand Y?

Toshiba M200 is owned by many people who visit these forums. Some are very happy with their purchase while others have struggled with purchasing the correct external CDROM drive for booting up the recovery CD.

To cut to the chase, I have no reservations about the Toshiba M200.

Now, to extend the discussion, it's impossible for us to know if it is the best Tablet PC for you because we don't know what you want to do with the machine. So, please give us some ideas on how you'd use a Tablet PC and then we'll see if we can help match you up with the perfect system.

Major Brands
Acer C100 or C30x
Averatec C3500
Electrovaya
FIC SlateVision
Motion M1400
NEC LitePad
Sahara i213
Tatung
Toshiba M20x

and I bet I'm missing one or two major ones ...

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Hi. I have been reading up on the Tablet PC and it sounds like something that could serve my very different purposes: taking notes and keeping documentation on my patients; and as a tool for my art work. I draw, paint, and I often use photos for my models. Ideally for the medical purposes I would like to put in a template of the forms we use for our office notes and other forms and be able to hand write notes that I can put into the different sections of the form and then print them out later in legible text. The word seems to be that the hand writing recognition programs are getting better and better. Or even use voice recognition in the same way. For the art aspect, I have many saved images of say tropical flowers and palm trees etc that I have backed up on a disc to use if I need to see how the light reflects off a bunch of gree bananas, etc. I was also reading about an art program that would let you draw as with dry pastels. Anyway, I can not tell which tablet out there would serve my purposes best. I have appreciated the experience I read in the threads on this website and hope that you all can help me select. I am so anxious to buy one but want to feel confident about the purchase.
Thanks in advance for your suggestions and insights.
Sincerely,
ashawhan

For the forms stuff, definately take a look at Office 2003 InfoPath. With that tool you can easily create forms that look like paper forms, and those forms are then ink enabled, which means you can write into them with a Tablet PC Pen. You will however need to do some tweaking when building those forms to get the tablet to automatically recognised the weird and arcane terms you medical types use when filling in forms.

As for the tablet to get, for the stuff you are doing the world is your oyster, but I should think a Slate with a dock and keyboard would be a good idea. That way you could easily carry around the tablet in slate mode to take ink based notes and then later dock it to transform it into a desktop. The obvious vendor that springs to mind (and I'm not biased, because for the stuff I do, I don't like them) is Motion.

Toshiba do make good tablets, to the point that they are supplied as standard now to a lot of Microsoft's own consultants, and they are fast and powerful. i think for your uses though you will find them a little too big.

Acer are also a good brand, but their battery life is a little wanting and they are somewhat less than rugged (my screen casing broke after just 6 months, and that's not after a lot of heavy use).

Good luck in your quest

froogle,

Thanks. This is very useful information and just the kind of thing I hoped would come my way. Arcane terms? Lilke what? We do use alot of abbreviations. I use abbreviations so much in my notes that it is really hard to write a normal letter without realizing I am writing medicalese. and typing...well, there is no key on the keyboard for a triangle which is the chemical abbreviation for the word and action of change. So I am hoping I can teach my handwriting recognition software the common abbreviations used so I do not blow its mind trying to make a word out of some three letter abbreviation.

I had not been considering slates but now I will and I did read that they are using Motions in some Emergency Rooms because of there durability and ease of use. Good selling points.

Thanks again.

Ann Shawhan

And that I think is going to be the problem. By obscure terms I was of course joking, and meant your medicalese as you put it.

There have been a few posts recently on the newsgroups from people in a similar position to you (medical) wanting to find a way to get the tablet to recognize abbreviations, but failing. There's a real hole there in the market for someone to come up with an extension to Tablet PC 2005's recognizer dictionaries that will automatically expand abbreviations, and allow users to customize them.

As long as you stick to not converting ink to text though you'll still find the Tablet a great platform for your work. If conversion is what you need though I think you might have a problem, which is a shame as it's such a great platform.

I take it that handwriting recognition and conversion to text looks to recognize the letters as words and not just letters. Is that so? Do you think if I stick to words and not abbreviations conversion to text would work for me? Certainly if I use voice recognition I would be using the word and not the abbreviation or if I did I would spell it. Or would spelling something like CXR (short for chest Xray) cause voice recognition to express it like: see ex are?

froogle, you seem to understand this platform, (I am assuming you are referring to Tablet PC but would be interested in the exact meaning of platform is I am wrong) well. What type of Wi-Fi do you recommend? I am confused on this subject. What I am looking for is wireless mobility. I presume with an extra battery charging while one is in use battery life is not first priority. But wireless I think refers to ability to hook up to internet and maybe print remotely. Is this correct?
What is needed to do these things: i.e. walk around with computer without wires, go online wireless, and print remotely (like patient education handouts)?

I really appreciate your insightful comments. It is really what I am looking for to help in my decision making process.

The handwriting recognition on Tablet PC uses a neural net to feign intelligence. It specializes in recognizing cursive handwriting in context. So, for example, handwriting "HELLO, MY NAME IS BOB" usually has a slim chance of success. In addition, because of the way this works, you often find when handwriting a lot that the text recognition system gets words wrong until you complete the sentence. At that point the neural net kicks in and detects that certain words just don't work right in the context it initially thought you had. Of course it can still get things wrong. If your handwriting is really terrible (mine initially consisted of a heavy slant to the right with lots of letters bunched together) then you will get very strange results out. It's quite humorous though in that the results usually still make sense, almost, just not the sense you were trying to impart. It takes an hour or so of experimenting to get used to it.

In terms of your medical words, the recognizers rely on "dictionaries" to figure out context. While you can't train the system to recognize your specific handwriting better than anyone elses, you can add words to the dictionary. When using the Tablet Input Panel (the thing you write in that converts ink to text) you can highlight incorrectly guessed words, correct them and then add the corrections to the dictionary. This helps a great deal.

Speech recognition on a tablet is pretty good, but you would want to use a separate microphone in most cases so that the computer is not listening to the sound of it's own innards buzzing and whirring. The downside with speech recognition is that it requires training - you need to read it passages from books that Microsoft have provided as part of it's training program. The more training you give the machine, the better it gets at recognizing your voice, but you do still need to be careful to ensure that it has a clear signal, preferably one without a lot of background noise (which is where a separate noise cancelling microphone comes into play). Since the speech system works with the same Tablet Input Panel that you use to ink, you can also use this to add words to the dictionary, so this will be very useful for you to add some of the medical terms that you use that are undoubtedly not in there already.

As for your next question - Tablet PC Platform over Tablet PC - I tend to use the phrase Tablet PC PLatform to refer to the combination of the hardware and the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition operating system. Together they comprise the "platform".

Now, wireless networking. There is no "best" standard really. Currently the two most prevalent standards out there are 802.11b and 802.11g. g is faster but is compatible with a. What this means is that if you buy a machine which has 802.11b wireless network connectivity built in you can only connect to 802.11b networks. To reap the benefits of the faster speed etc of 802.11g you'll need a computer that supports that.

To get wireless network and internet connectivty working depends very much on the building (it's size mainly) and your current network. The way that most organizations go about it is that they have a standard network in place with internet connectivity and then buy a wireless access point (a box with antennas) and plug it into the network. The access point then provide access to the wired network for wireless computers.

Wireless has range issues though, so if you have a particularly large building I would strongly recommend doing some research into the area of "wireless repeaters". These are basically a collection a access points that set up zones within a building and talk to each other. This allows you to walk around moving from invisible wireless zone to invisible wireless zone seamlessly with the routers automatically handing control of your signal off to each other based on where you are. It's not an easy thing to set up though. If you building is so large that you feel this will be an issue you would be well advised to seek professional advice from a networking specialist.

In terms of printing remotely, assuming you have a wireless access point configured and you are connected to it, you will need either a printer that is "network aware", physically connected to the network, OR a printer connected to another PC on the network, and shared. If you go into Windows on your own machine currently for example, click on the Start Button, then click Printers and Faxes you'll find that you can right click on your print and see an option on the menu that says Sharing. This provides access to properties that let you set up the computer to share it's printer on the network for all to use. You would then just add that printer to your wireless Tablet PC as a network printer.

Hope that all helps :)

The next question you're probably going to have is software ;)

Froogle, you are the mother lode. I have been mining a long time for this kind of inside information.

Yes, the software questions are coming up soon. I still have questions about the wi-fi per your description of how large a building. I have a hallway that consists of three treatment rooms, a bathroom and two offices plus nurses station. I wish I could quantify that in square feet for you. I will venture to describe the length of the space I am concerned about as maybe 25 yards, as in a quick sprint. Do you think one antenna will do?

The other factor is that I am trying to create a system that I can use as an individual. The physician who owns the practice is proudly a ludite. Though we are hiring another NP and have a part time physician who I never see being we work opposite each other, the system I want to set up is pretty much for me, being purchased by me to aid me in my work. My fantasy about the mobile Tablet is that I can write on it like I am used to writing in a chart but I can print out tidier more legible notes, that I can bring up sometimes from the internet information for the patient either photos or instructions I can print out. I would love to be able to write in the diagnosis and have the corresponding ICD-9 codes, that the bill to the insurance company has to have on it, appear without my looking those codes up which often takes some time. (I know the Electronic Medical Record software has this capacity but most of what I have found is for total systems not for the Lone user). I also like the idea of being able to draw on the Tablet as I often do on paper when demonstrating to patients something I see or am trying to explain. (I can show more effectively than I can tell). Plus I am a closet artist and from what I read about the art software my Tablet could be a portable art toy as well.

I was talking a while back to the friend who first got me going with computers twelve years ago. And he saw no reason I should buy a Tablet since to use the handwriting recognition I would have to improve my handwriting and why would I need it if my handwriting improved. My collaborating ludite physician is of this same mind. Well, that does seem obvious but I do not think my handwriting is so bad except when I am in a hurry and I usually am when I am working so this is not likely to change. I could use the handwriting recognition program as a tool to improve my handwriting as rather than get an electric shock for unreadableness I just don't get the right words so to make it all worth it I will be forced to improve. And I will get plenty of laughs in the meantime.

I worry that the drawing aspect would be more like an etch a sketch then being able to make marks as I would with a pencil or pen or chalk, or brush.

Because what I am embarking on is an expensive sort of experiment I really want to be wise about it. So the reality therapy is really very much appreciated. Many thanks.
ashawhan

hehe - I've never been called a motherload. Thanks!

Ok, the Wi-Fi thing. Get a WiFi access point with external antennas and mount it in the middle of the building. I think from the dimensions you described you may be able to get away with just one, instead of multiple. If you find the speed dropping off too much though the further away you get then you will need to consider chaining multiple together. Don't forget as well that you will need to run a cable from your internet provider to the hub.


Onto the note taking stuff. First up, I have got to admit that while the Tablet doesn't easily recognize scrawl, it is actually quite tolerant with regard to handwriting, especially when writing in sentences. In terms of looking up stuff like your ICD-9 codes, then I'm afraid you are looking at some custom development there. You have a number of choices open to you. If you get Microsoft Office Professional then you could easily produce an Access database to hold the codes. Looking them up could then be achieved with an InfoPath form. Infopath is a tool that lets you design forms, much like paper forms, that can contain functionality for things like simple validation, lookups from databases and so on. It's not strictly a Tablet PC application, but like most of the office 2003 suite it is Pen-Enabled. This means that after designing your form you can "ink" into it and have the ink either stored as Ink or converted. Bear in mind though that this is not an Out-of-the-box solution. You will have to go through a learning curve on that one I'm afraid. Let me know if you do go that route and if I have any spare time (currently writing some books, running my own business and trying to raise my son) I'll see if I can help out.

This kind of leads me into the next concern I had reading your post. If you have a bunch of patients and a bunch of stuff you want to store about them, you are going to need some way to easily retrieve information. You can save Journal documents (which could use a scanned form as a background for you to write into), or Info Path forms straight to your hard disk and then search for them with either Windows Search, or with a tool like X1. Personally I'd got the X1 route. In fact, if you get X1 (it's a search tool incase you hadn't guesed) that may also solve your ICD lookup problem. Your best bet is to head over to www.x1.com and download the demo to see what you think.

A better alternative though would be to get a copy of windows server 2003 and Sharepoint Team Services. That way you can fire the InfoPath forms into Sharepoint and search them very easily, including your ICD-9 codes. Again, there's a learning curve attached to that one (quite a big one).

On the artistic front, the Tablet is a great art platform. Check out http://www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html. ArtRage is a completely free Tablet PC art program that simulates real canvases and painting tools, like paint, pens, pencils, crayons and chalk. Head to that page and check out the gallery link to see what I mean.

Now, in terms of expensive experiments, bear in mind that both HP and Averatec offer notebooks with tablet functionality, and pretty good prices. With their hardware you could try out the tablet way of life (you won't go back), and if you do find that it doesn't work for you then you have a full featured notebook at your disposal as well.

Ideally though you'd head to Toshiba and grab a Toshiba M200 which does everything you would ever want a computer to do, including a tablet one. I love mine and have gone from about 8 computers in my home/office, to just the one. It's that good.

Hope that helps some more.

Yep, you are the motherload. Thanks so very much for all of this. I really can see a way to do what I have in mind. No doubt I will fire more questions when I am up and running or trying to be but that may be a little while yet.
Once again many thanks.
ashawhan

No problem - good luck and let us know how you get on.

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(froogle) Pete Wright
www.petewright.org
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My Toshiba is one month new and does not turn on: I guess I will have to go to the trouble of taking it back to Best Buy I'm very upset as I have spent a lot of time putting my stuff on it Can anyone tell me what it could be or if this is a common problem?