October 2005
FinePoint's new digitizer in three new Tablet PCs
One of the sore points in Tablet PCs is the active digitizer where Wacom holds a virtual monopoly. At some point Mutoh America was a player in active digitizers thanks to having taken over tablet maker Kurta (founded in 1979). Mutoh sold the Kurta line in 1996, but retained the engineering staff and the electromagnetic pen technology. In 2000, the digitizer business spun off Mutoh America and formed FinePoint Innovations. The FinePoint digitizer managed to get a few design wins in Tablet PCs, most notably the initial Compaq tc1000 Tablet PC, but lost ground to Wacom. One of the problems was that the FinePoint pen needed a battery and was thus thicker than Wacom's slender pens. Well, in September 2005, FinePoint was purchased by InPlay Technologies in a roughly $3 million stock transaction. InPlay is in the business of marketing and licensing emerging technologies. InPlay was interested because FinePoint had developed a new digitizer technology and had orders for over $1 million in the bag. FinePoint now announced that its new digitizer technology is used in "a major computer manufacturer's new product line of convertible notebooks" and that FinePoint now has a total of $3.1 million in orders. The company wasn't named, but FinePoint hinted it had an established 20-year history. FinePoint also states that its new digital technology means very low power consumption of the notebook battery and superior performance, accuracy, and a true pen-on-paper look and feel. -- Posted Friday, October 28, 2005 by chb
Gateway officially launches their new Tablet PC convertible
Known in insider circles for quite some time, Gateway now officially launched its new convertible notebook Tablet PC (see product page). Officially named the CX2600 Series Convertible Notebook, it is the first convertible notebook available at retail with a 14-inch widescreen display. It is also nicely priced at less than $1,400.00. We hope to bring you a review soon. -- Posted Thursday, October 6, 2005 by chb
Toshiba adds goodies to the Satellite R15 Tablet PC convertible
In a press release that could easily be misread as the announcement of a new Tablet PC platform, Toshiba alerted of the availability of new options for its Satellite R15 Tablet PC notebook convertible released in early 2005. The R15-S829 model offers features new to the line, including a DVD SuperMulti Double Layer drive that reads and writes in up to 10 formats and can nearly double a recordable DVD's storage capacity in DVD+R double layer format, and a 5400rpm 80GB hard drive for quicker access to files. The S829 comes with 512MB (expandable to 2GB), a more powerful Intel Pentium M735 processor(5), and, of course, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005. -- Posted Tuesday, October 4, 2005 by chb