Notebookzilla vs Tiny Tablet
I’m the guy in the airplane trying to lift a 40 pound laptop bag into the compartment over your head. I’m really doing this for your peace of mind.
I’m the guy walking from the hotel to the conference center at SolidWorks World who looks like one shoulder is about 8 inches lower than the other.
I’m the guy who has to grunt like John Holmes when pulling my laptop out the bag. It’s so…big. I get comments about it all the time. People want to touch it to see if its real.
Actually my buddy Wes Cobb, the user group leader in Asheville, NC (one of the most beautiful locations on earth!) has one just like it, but a different brand. I know he feels my pain.
It’s gotta be 15 pounds with a 4 pound power brick (it’s literally the size and weight of a brick). The great thing is that I never have to compromise when it comes to running SolidWorks. This thing will do it. It’s a great machine, and I’ve used it constantly for the last year and a half. Here’s a comparison shot showing the huge power block for Notebookzilla, and the tablet’s power block next to it.
But the thing kills me on trips. In airports like Charlotte where my connection is inevitably 3 miles away through the terminal, the bag seems to get heavier with every step. This past spring I traveled too much, and always had this thing with me. Should have a bag with wheels. The shoulder strap is actually beginning to come apart on the bag.
Anyway, enter the new guy:
It’s small to be sure. Feels like a toy almost. In this pic, it is sitting on top of Notebookzilla to give you a feeling for the size comparison. Knowing me, I’ll feel guilty on the plane now, I’m not doing my pennance for my bad attitude with that heavy bag. This one is 4.5 lbs, and yes, it runs SolidWorks. It runs in Software OpenGL mode, but it is respectable for something so small. This is actually fine for user group presentations, which is mostly what I got it for.
(Yeah, I’m the guy lecturing Mac users about using crap video cards…at least I’m not trying to do real work on this thing.) 
This is an HP tc4400 convertible tablet, so you can work with it open like a regular laptop or spin the display and flatten it into a slate. You can use the digitizer pen that comes with it, the mouse pad, the nub or use a regular old mouse.
The OS is XP Tablet, Core 2 Duo T7200, 2 GHz, 3 GB RAM 667 MHz bus, and a 80 GB hdd, built in wireless network, Bluetooth and a SD card reader, which works great with my camera. It even has an infrared wireless link that automatically communicated with Notebookzilla in a way I’ve never seen happen before. That’s a 12″ screen/digitizer. You can sit much closer to it because it doesn’t throw enough heat to cook an egg like Notebookzilla. Actually, you can work with it unplugged and on your lap, like I am right now.
The tablet functions actually work well with SolidWorks, especially the sketching. To me, the pen interface is so much better than a mouse. I don’t know why I didn’t have one of these years ago. I’m trying to work with it open, so I can use both the pen and the keyboard. Some things are a little awkward, such as right clicking and ctrl-clicking, but I think I can work out something that will work for that.
I can’t use RealView, which isn’t too much of a loss. The rest of the compute power looks pretty good. It’s snappy and responsive.
The one thing I wish were a little different is the screen resolution. At 12″, it only gives you 1024 x 768. That’s about right for matching up with projectors, but if you’ve done it recently, running SolidWorks at that resolution is a little miserable. The Tools, Options dialog is just slightly too large to fit into the screen, you can barely access the Close button at the bottom, and you are constantly scrolling the PropertyManager.
(Yeah, I’m the guy yelling at SW because user’s monitors are getting bigger and bigger – now using a 12″ screen… sheesh! some people will scream about anything.)\n\nUsing a different method to select things (pen instead of mouse) makes you think about the interface a little differently. The shortcut bars still get in the way of stuff on the screen, but I find that I actually liked the Heads Up View toolbar with the pen. Maybe that’s because in tablet mode you can’t use hotkeys, and rotating with the MMB is gone too. I’m trying to use the default out-of-the-box interface for a while with this arrangement. I find that I really prefer to have the Sketch toolbar separate from the CommandManager, regardless of the other shortcomings of the CM. Putting the sketch toolbar in there just makes for too much clicking, and doesn’t reduce mouse travel at all.
Anyway, this little toy will work great for what it was intended for, traveling, and doing writing in remote locations, like my boat. It also has a power adapter that works in my car. My car can’t provide enough power to run Notebookzilla, which at best has about a 45 minute battery life.
How much was it? I got it on the refurbished HP site for about $1100, including a 3 year warrantee.