18 Meter Touchwand auf der IFA – 18 meter touch wall

ENGLISH

Sometimes it’s not the big articles that hide great stuff. On Heise newsticker Ulrike Kuhlmann wrote a short notice about “technology to touch”, saying that T-Mobile shows a big, big touchscreen wall screen in Berlin at the IFA fair (consumer electronics show). Great toy for public places, fairs, company halls etc.

After the blogger panel with Robert Scoble I walked to the T-Mobile hall and had the opportunity to talk to Hans-Joachim Stolzmann, the head behind the touch wall screen from the “Mediafaktur” q-bus. They use publicly available software, setup infrared cameras behind the nine 2 meter wide and 1.5 meter high glasses, several beamer and a Mac Pro for computing.

Watch the small video (wmv file) here. Note that we talk in German. Sorry for the lousy sound, shot with Canon Ixus 80, no background noise cancellation configured.

Send an e-mail to sn(at)tablet-profi.com to get in touch with the Hans-Joachim.

DEUTSCH

Manchmal sind es die kleinen Nachrichten, hinter denen sich Großes verbirgt, Ulrike Kuhlmann, Monitor-Expertin der c’t, hat am Freitag in einer Ein-Absatz-Meldung auf dem Heise-Newsticker auf eine 15 Meter breite Touchscreen-Wand hingewiesen. Da ich am Samstag ja zum Blogger-Plenum mit Robert Scoble, Robert Basic und Thomas Knüwer wollte, passte das hervorragend in meinen Besuchsplan.

Zum Glück war gerade Hans-Joachim Stolzmann von der “Mediafaktur” q-bus vor Ort, der mir ein wenig zu der Technologie und dem Aufbau erzählen konnte. Ich habe das Video hier zusammengefasst (wmv-Datei).

In Kürze: Mehrere Infrarotkameras hinter den neun 2 Meter breiten und eineinhalb Meter hohen Glasscheiben, Tracking-Software, Rendering, Beamer und ein Mac Pro.

Wer mit Hans-Joachim in Kontakt treten möchte, schickt mir einfach eine E-Mail an sn(at)tablet-profi.com

18 Meter Touchscreen Wall

Scoble: “iPhone took sexyness away from the Tablet PC”

Robert Scoble attended a blogger talk at IFA fair in Berlin yesterday (leading consumer electronicx fair) and I talked with him for some mintes after the panel. From the conversation:

Do you expect a Mac Tablet (or iTablet or whatever) later this year? There have been these patent filing news

“Yeah, there are rumors again and again, they have the technology, they have multi touch but it is not easy to bring ink to each application.” When saying that he didn’t look like “Hey I’m not gonna tell you that I have seen something but cannot tell anyone.”

Why isn’t Tablet yet mainstream?

“It’s the developers, they do all their stuff with the keyboard, many of them even don’t touch the mouse at all, they don’t think ink, even at Microsoft. And with the iPhone Apple took away a lot of the sexyness of the Tablet PC – multi touch and so on.”

The rest of the conversation wasn’t Tablet related.

Here a picture from the panel:

Scoble in Berlin at IFA blogger discussion

HP TX2500 jetzt in Deutschland lieferbar – als TX2550eg

Das bereits im Juni auf einer Pressekonferenz vorgestellte TX 2500-Tablet mit Dual-Touchscreen ist endlich in Deutschland erhältlich, allerdings nur in einer einzigen Variante mit dem Prozessor Turion X2 Ultra ZM-82 (2 x 2,20GHz). Die Modellbezeichnung lautet TX 2550eg. Der “Straßenpreis” der Online-Händler, die es als verfügbar markiert haben, liegt bei erfreulichen 940 bis 1000 Euro. Im HP-Shop liegt der Preis bei  999,- Euro. Damit bietet sich Käufern, die nicht mehr als 1000 Euro für einen Tablet PC ausgeben wollen, endlich eine Alternative zum Clevo-Tablet TN120R und dem HP-Vorgängermodell. Das Vista-SP1-Performance-Rating bei Vorführmodell im Juni (mit dem nicht bei AMD erhältlichen ZM-83 mit 2×2,3 GHz) lag bei 4.0 Punkten.

Etwas verwirrend für alle, die etwas genauer hinschauen: Es gibt eine riesige Anzahl von Modellvarianten (siehe hier), zudem hat HP in der Produktübersicht der Pavillon-Notebooks zwei Modelle gelistet, das TX2500 und das TX2600. Und in den Shops findet man derzeit aber nur ein TX2550 (siehe die Geihhals-Suche)

Weitere Informationen und Downloads

Produkthomepage Deutsch

Download Treiber (Modell TX2550eg) Deutsch

HP 2730p coming early September – First Montevina Tablet – HP 2370p stabiles 12-Zoll-Tablet für 1400 Euro ab Oktober auch in Deutschland (U)

(Updated with German launch date and price)

[English]

Just a day ago HP has announced (press release) the launch of the first Montevina based Tablet PC, named 2730p, a 12 inch display Convertible (1.280 x 800 Pixel),  “coming early September”. HP Germany will deliver in October. The first? Well, Fujitsu Siemens has already announced its new 13 inch Montevina convertibles Lifebook T1010 (in white, to compete with HP TX2500 as it will cost around the same, touchscreen) and Lifebook T5010 (active digitizer, integrated 3G, US PDF spec sheet here), weighing around 2 kilo, 300 gramm more than the 2730p – but they are not yet available. Not sure for how long the 44 WHr 6-zell-battery lasts.

Attractive Pricing (U)

The price should be around 1670 US-$, depending on your configuration. NICE: Other than e.g. Toshiba normally does with its European customers, the EURO price will not be significantly higher compare to US-Dollar. We will see very, very affordable 1.399 Euro in Germany (incl. tax), as HP tells today in the new German press release. I’ll write a seperate article on Tablet pricing soon (yes, really soon).

Specs

As you knew from my news report back in June, HP had to wait for availability of the Montevina (ultra) light version processors. Indeed, in the US you have three (Ultra) Low Voltage CPU choices: the ULV SU9300 (1.2 GHz ULV CPU, TDP 10 Watt) and the more powerful and more power consuming SL9300 and SL9400 running at 1.60 resp. 1.83 GHz, TDP 17 Watt). Display is an "Illumi-Lite LED" anti-glare 12-inch. , n-WLAN (optional) and Bluetooth on board. An integrated 2 Megapixel web cam is optional. Downside: only two USB 2.0 ports. Specs here (PDF).

At least the SL9400 support support VT-x features which significantly improves speed of virtual machines.

Notebooks.com has already posted a video which shows the 2730p in action.

“Toughbook light”

You will see a lot of reports saying that the 2730p would be kind of "ruggedized" and fullfill the military standard MIL-STD 810F. Well, HP puts their Elitebook series (the 2730p belongs to that family) into a "full magnesium alloy chassis". Also, the chassis and keyboard should resist water splashes and dust. Unfortunatly there is no official certification for that standard, only guidelines. So, until we see a review testing the dust, humidity and shock resistence, we simply have to believe HP, which, of course, we do :-). Or, to put it into HP’s words: The 2730p "has been tested and meets the military standard MIL-STD 810F for tests including dust, altitude and high temperature. Testing was not intended to demonstrate fitness for DOD contracts requirements or for military use" (from the spec sheet). All in all it seems like a Toughbook light or midi.

Benefits

- Accessories from previous model 2710p are compatible (no need to buy a new docking station if you want to upgrade);

- up to 8 Gig of RAM officially supported by the Montevina chipset, though HP does not officially support 64-Bit Windows, according to the spec sheed.;

- free to downgrade from Vista Business to XP Tablet 2005 if you need it for compatibility reasons. Not sure if the XP Tablet CD is delivered together (FSC does that with P1620 so that you can freely choose and later change your mind and switch to the other OS);

- SSD as a choice, or faster hard drive with 5.400 instead of 4200 rpm with a capacity of 120 or 80 GB (SATA).

Downloads

Specsheet (PDF) US and German

Drivers for Vista 32bit, Vista x64 bit, XP 32bit (to be added when available)

Will be back in August

Hi readers, I’ll be back here with several To-Dos in August: review Fujitsu Siemens P1620, review Dell Latitude XT, interview with ritePen on new version 3 and other stuff. I’m also on the wait list for the HP TX2500 and the 2730p, I’ll also try to get the Gigabyte mini Tablet, so a lot stuff to come later this year :).

Happy holidays, Stefen