In this part of the series, I’m going to talk to you about some of the front-end enhancement that Lenovo made to the ThinkPad Tablet,  and I’ll be steering away from digital inking until the next part of the series. One of the main reasons I am doing this is because I knowingly go ga-ga for digital inking, and when it is done even moderately well, I tend to give a device a pass on other areas where it falls short. To try to avoid this, I’ll kind of go through this as if the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet is almost two different devices; today we will cover all of the software topics outside of the inking experience. Before we get started, here’s a recap in case you missed the prior series:

• ThinkPad Tablet — Part I, Hardware
• ThinkPad Tablet — Part II, Connections and Ports

Now then, the first things I want to cover are the additional embellishments to the OS’ front end. Lenovo has added some degree of functionality to the homescreens and the pop-up settings menu in the lower right-hand corner above and beyond what is in stock Honeycomb. Along the top edge of the ThinkPad Tablet’s homescreens, Lenovo placed five indicators (I call them meatballs) that indicate which homescreen you are on. Because there are only five homescreens available on a stock Honeycomb device, I do not think that this enhancement adds that much value, and I rarely need them. However, if the number of homescreens in Honeycomb ever increases, this might be a welcome addition. I will admit that when I am working on a Gingerbread device with seven or more homescreens configured, I can sometimes get lost as to where I am, so maybe I can understand what Lenovo was trying to address when it tacked this on.

The more valuable additions for most people are likely the ones present in the pop-up settings menu. On my other Honeycomb devices, the only controls that surface from this menu are selections for Airplane Mode, Wi-Fi, Screen Brightness, Notifications, and a selection to launch into the full Settings menu. Lenovo has provided some additional selection options on the ThinkPad Tablet to more fully surface the configuration settings that users might want available at their fingertips. In addition to the options mentioned above, the following settings are also available in the ThinkPad Tablet’s pop-up menu:

• Auto-Rotate Screen
• GPS
• Bluetooth
• Email Sync
• Attached Display

This is not a bevy of additional controls, however, the addition of these five settings are enough to keep me from diving into the full settings app as frequently as I might with another Honeycomb device. Speaking of the Settings app, there are a number of additional configuration options present in that area as well. I will not go into the details of every single one, as the rabbit-hole of setting on the ThinkPad Tablet can go quite deep. Here are the big ticket items:

• You can configure use and access to the Microphone and Cameras (I believe that when the ThinkPad Tablet is managed through an Exchange Server, these components can be disabled by IT admins)
• Data encryption selections are available for both the device and removable SD Cards; on other Honeycomb devices I have only seen encryption available for the device itself
• Absolute Software provides a LOJACK style security app. The app’s persistence can be enabled or disabled through the settings app
• The MicroUSB port has discrete permissions settings for various uses, including Charge only, Mount SD Card, Media Transfer Protocol, and Ask on Connection
• Access to SD Cards can be allowed or disallowed.

I do not use a lot of these. Specifically, I do use the option to disable my ThinkPad Tablet’s microphone and camera when I am in the office in order to ensure that there are no apps that access those components without my express permission. I am sure that corporate users will want to take advantage of the device-level and SD Card encryption. Unfortunately, I have the Absolute Software disabled as it is under suspicion of being one of the apps that never releases the Wi-Fi connection when the device is in standby as discussed in my previous installment in this series.

I will give you the quick run-down on the pre-installed apps. Let me say that just about any pre-installed app that I have received on any Android tablet has gone immediately to the unused apps category. Because I use Android all of the time, I pretty much have a list of apps that I want installed and will use. Pre-installed apps serve to pretty much just get in the way of me getting down to business. That all being said, sometimes I will get around to trying one of these apps out and will discover a gem that actually adds value. I have not hit that point with the ThinkPad Tablet yet, primarily because testing out all of the various ink apps and getting to a point of having a sustainable level of productivity is taking up any time that I could devote to experimenting with some of the ThinkPad Tablet’s pre-installs. So here is the list of pre-installed apps (to the best of my knowledge), although most of these I have never even run before:

• Absolute
• Lenovo App Shop
• ArcSync
• McAfee Security Suite for Business
• Citrix
• eBuddy
• eReader
• Mobility Manager
• mSpot Movies
• mSpot Music
• Notes Mobile
• ooVoo
• Pocketalk
• PrinterShare
• Social Touch
• USB File Copy

The Citrix client is probably the only one out of this list that I see offering some long-term value to me. The rest of it, as far as I can tell, either mimics an app that is available in the Market and already meets my needs, or is an app that I have not found a need for. I should perhaps be a tad more fair. Absolute, if it is not one of the apps keeping the WiFi antenna on, will be a welcome addition to other often-used apps on my ThinkPad Tablet. I have still not found anything that I am comfortable trying out on my Honeycomb devices to take the place of  Lookout Mobile Security. Unfortunately, that app is only available for Gingerbread devices the last time I checked. So having a security app that provides some ability to reach out and touch a lost device remotely would be a welcome capability. I have not launched McAfee. I went away from using any product from that company and Symantec for security features a long time ago, and I have a staunch that once I launch the app, it will take over certain functions and not allow me to disable it.

This brings me to one of my largest issues with pre-installed apps on Android devices. I understand that, in order to appeal to corporate users, Lenovo felt the need to bake in apps and capability to the ThinkPad Tablet that otherwise might cost an organization to buy on their own. However, I despise the fact that when company’s put these additions on the device, they concurrently remove the ability to uninstall them. This is an issue on all Android devices as just about every manufacturer approaches this area in the same manner, on both tablets and smartphones.

There are a handful of other apps above that I can also see a student or business user taking advantage of. EBuddy if they are still into IM. EReader if, for some reason, they have not already become steeped in the Kindle store or B&N Nook. MSpot Music might be valuable for a user to try out if if they have not already uploaded their music library to Google Music. PrinterShare and USB File Copy might be of use to business users who are not already using other apps to meet the functions those two apps provide. I have found Notes Mobile to be one of my principle go-to apps, but I want to  hold off on that discussions until the inking session.

I guess what I can say, is that the pre-installed apps never get in the way. I cannot recall being forced to use them, or having one of them launch unexpectedly when I called a process from within the browser. In contrast, HTC Sense, for instance, launches HTC’s custom-rolled apps for certain functions when what I want to use is a stock Android app. So, in that vein it could definitely be a worse situation on the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet.

I want to add a few notes on stability and responsiveness of the ThinkPad Tablet’s OS. While the device performed well in the first week or so of use, I have noticed what appears to be a performance hit that has creeped in over the last couple of weeks. The biggest issue is that I have seen more instances of the launcher crashing when I am going back and forth between apps that can only orient in portrait mode and one that I have in landscape. On a tablet that is focused on inking, you can imagine that this is a frequent use-case. It’s annoying, but I cannot say that it slows me down that much. It causes other conerns, though, with regards to inking apps and I will cover that some more during the final post on the ThinkPad Tablet.

The other major performance hit I have experienced is numerous issues when using the Google Music App; this is the version that you update to to enable access to your Google Music Beta account. When using this app on the ThinkPad Tablet, I have experienced multiple lock-ups. The app will move to the next song in a playlist and will lock. I will have no control over the app at that point. I can get back to the homescreen, and I can go in and Force Close the app, fortunately. I am completely reliant on music as background noise whenever I am working on anything, both in the office and at home. In fact, this crash impacts me more than the launcher crash, because it is not just a matter of clearing the alert and getting back to the homescreen again. So, I have taken to using WinAmp for Android, which is meeting my needs well. It is just aggravating that an app that I perceive as being core to working in an Android environment is not available on the device that is becoming my primary business companion device.

That is it for this installment. Stay tuned for the final chapter, which will be devoted to inking apps, inking performance, and practical, real-world use. I do apologize for the fact that I am not a user of Lenovo’s suite of pre-installed apps. If there is one that someone wants me to test, please let me know in the comments. Below, you will find a video where I cover some of the topics covered here.

One of the most annoying things about using iOS or Android for me is that I never really know which IM networks I’m signed into because there’s no global place to set my availability. Today we’ve got Skype, AIM, Facebook, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Chat, and plenty more. It’s not that we want to be spread across so many instant messaging protocols, but the reality is that we want to talk to our friends and they’re not always on the same network.

Between my time with Nokia’s beautiful N810 and the N900, I got to spend more time than most with the open-source Maemo OS (which eventually merged into Meego {which as now merged into something else…}). While I hated the fact that Maemo 4 (found on the N810) couldn’t decide whether or not it was to be used with a finger or with a stylus, both Maemo 4 and 5 had an excellent feature which iOS nor Android offer — the ability to easily change your IM network presence.

Half the time, an iOS or Android phone is telling my friends that I’m “online” on one of my various IM networks even when I don’t want to be. I’ll pull my phone out, after having not checked it for an hour or so, to find a few IMs that my friends sent 30 or 40 minutes ago because my phone made them think I was available to have a conversation; I didn’t respond and it ends up looking like I was just ignoring them.

In Maemo 4 and 5, setting instant messaging availability was dead simple. From one place on the home screen, you could set your IM availability for every account that you were signed into. A little icon changed colors to let you know exactly what your friends saw as your availability across various IM networks: online (green), away (yellow), or offline (red). This is something that I dearly miss in iOS and Android, where my mobile IM use has declined greatly over the years as a result of not being able to globally set my presence, and having it be completely unclear whether or not my phone is telling people that I’m available for an IM conversation.

Facebook seems to be the worst perpetrator with their half-baked IM/Messaging system which tries to be both IM and Email at the same time. I constantly receive messages in my Facebook inbox that were sent as IMs when my friends saw me as “online”.

I have the same issue on the other end as well. I’ll see friends as “online” through some IM network and start up a conversation, only to receive an apology text later that they were on their phone and didn’t get the message.

Though Maemo didn’t come anywhere close to the success of iOS or Android, it still has some good lessons to teach the big guys.

No doubt you’ve already heard of Siri, the voice control software that Apple is launching with the iPhone 4S. If you are late to the part, recap here.

Apple is billing Siri not as “voice-control” but as a personal assistant that will perform tasks for you. The press is already lauding its impressive functionality. But how has Apple managed to make such a big splash over a feature that Android has had for some time now?

To start, marketing has a lot to do with it. While Android bills voice-control (VC)l as just that — a way to control your phone with your voice — Apple promotes Siri as an entity that will help you get things done. Apple has given their iOS voice control a person’s name. Simply by calling it “Siri” (notice how Apple — and thus the press — always spell it as though it’s a proper noun), Apple has immediately made it more personal and more human — you’ll see the word ‘assistant’ thrown around a lot in stories about Siri (not excluding this one). Even if the abilities of Siri and Android’s VC were identical, Siri would become the colloquialism for voice-control on a phone, the same way that mainstreamers, who don’t know the difference, call any digital audio player an iPod.

That’s if the abilities of Siri and Android’s VC were the same. At a base level, there’s no fundamental difference between Siri and Android VC, both convert sound into meaning and perform some function based on what you’ve said. But Siri feels more human because of the breadth of its understanding. [See there I go, talking about Siri as if it were an entity and not a thing. Touché, Apple]. Siri will see high usage because the user doesn’t need to look through a list of things they are allowed to say, or pay attention to the order that they need to be said. Apple has ensured that Siri can understand such a range of input that there’s no need to think first about what you are asking it. Again, this makes Siri far more human than Android VC; you speak to Siri like a person, with no need to pause to formulate your question in a special computer-readable way. This means that there is a highly likelyhood that anyone who hasn’t used Siri before could ask it a question and get a good response, making it inherently more intuitive than Android VC. That’s the goal anyway.

Once Apple frees Siri from it’s iPhone 4S jail (either on to older, or newer devices), expect it to become a household name, and expect lots of existing voice-control software to be ‘reborn’ with human names.

The ThinkPad Tablet is not going to be for everyone. I mention that now because, over the next few days, my postings on the Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet may make it sound like the coming of the Holy Grail of gadgets. I am a particular type of user and, for me, this device mates very well with many of my use-cases. in fact, in many ways, this is the device that I have been waiting for for years. So much so that, with three other tablets in the house, I am hard pressed to figure out if I am willing to spend days using the other tablets and letting the Thinkpad sit. I may just have to go to using the Thinkpad Tablet all of the time.

The Thinkpad Tablet arrives on the back-end of a week of tablet troubles. I originally purchased an Acer Iconia Tab A100 to fill the space of a 7″ device in my kit, and replace my Dell Streak 7. The A100 functioned for a few days and then failed, areas of its display no longer accepting input. I RMAed it for a Toshiba Thrive, hoping to leverage the added connectivity of the full-sized ports. Despite applying all Toshiba updates, the device was unusable after a full night of testing and configuration. It would sometimes not wake up from sleep, or it would wake up, but the WiFi antenna would not power back up, or it would not go to standby when I pressed the power button. That device I sent back as an RMA as well.

So, I will admit that my impressions of the Thinkpad may also be colored by this rash of poor tablet quality that I have been recently exposed to. And that is one reason why this is not titled as a review. I have been working on the Thinkpad Tablet for about four days total. These are my first days’ impressions of the device, which I hope to provide updates to after a month or so of use, as well as follow-on long-term reports.

The Thinkpad Tablet is not a lithe device. It will not be winning any awards for svelteness. That being said, while its understandable that people are enamored with the 11mm thickness of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, I consider that device flimsy and not something I personally want to throw in my bag every day. I do like the feel of the Xoom and the Acer Iconia Tab A500, and the Thinkpad has some similarities to both of those devices. Throughout this part of the first impressions series, by the way, we will be doing a lot of comparisons between the Thinkpad Tablet, the Xoom, and the A500, as I have used all of these.

The entire back of the Thinkpad Tablet is rubberized, much like the majority of the back of the Xoom. The back provides a small degree of additional grip, which I always like in a device. It gives me more confidence that the device will not wind up on the floor. The Thinkpad Tablet feels like it is a little lighter than the Iconia Tab A500 to me, despite the fact that the Iconia’s list weight is about 0.05 pounds less than the Thinkpad’s. The Xoom supposedly weighs in at the same weight as the Iconia Tab, and also feels heavier than the Thinkpad to me. I believe this has a lot to do with weight distribution and the ergonmics of the designs. Regardless, when you get down to it, with a 0.05 pound weight difference between the Thinkpad and the other two devices, it should not make a big difference to anyone.

I know that a lot of people don’t like the Xoom’s placement of the lock/power button, but having used several Android tablets, it is my favorite placement for a power button because it limits the frequency with which a user accidently hits the button and wakes the device up or sends it to standby. This is especially true when inserting or removing a tablet from a case. I routinely hit the power button on the Thinkpad taking it in and out of bags. The Iconia A500’s power button is on the side and has a very small surface area, so hitting it accidently is pretty unlikely. The Thinkpad Tablet’s sits on the top left-hand corner. Not a show-stopper, obviously, but occasionally annoying when you also have a Xoom that has a comparatively better design.

The left-side of the Thinkpad Tablet is populated with just the two nubs for Volume Up and Down. The right-hand side has the majority of the ports: Headphones, MicroUSB, HDMI, and the dock connector. Hidden underneath a pop-out port cover are the slots for the SD Card and the SIM Card. As far as I have been able to ascertain, the SIM Card slot on my model does not do anything and will not allow 3G communications. While I like the full-size SD Card slot, I would have preferred another slot dedicated for MicroSD; as it is now, you have to use a MicroSD-to-SD adapter if you have MicroSD cards laying around that you want to use. Initially, this feels like an inconvenience to me because I cannot simply grab a spare microSD card and insert it into the Thinkpad Tablet sans adapter. I may come to see this as a convenience later, as this setup does mean that I just pull out the card-in-a-card and insert it directly into one of my laptop’s card reader port if I want to swap files between the two.

The bottom edge of the tablet has a sliding port cover, which reveals a full-sized USB port. Accompanying the USB port is the device’s single speaker. There is a cubby in the lower-left-hand corner of the back panel for the stylus (yes it’s an active digitizer). The cubby is notched for retention, but it does not have the more secure feel that a spring-tension retention mechanism does. Of course, with no mechanical, moving parts, it also means not having to worry about something else to break. So far, the stylus has remained securely snug in the cubby when I have had it placed there.

For the chassis design, I would give the ThinkPad Tablet an average to above-average rating. I would have preferred stereo speakers, like my other two Android tablets have. I understand this is a business device, but I would still have preferred better audio for watching presentations or iTunes University lectures. I previously mentioned my on-the-fence perspective of the SD card slot. And I would have preferred the Power Button to be located elsewhere. But I love the feel of the back of the device, its weight and overall size. The Thinkpad Tablet is thicker than the Xoom, but the Xoom concentrates a lot of its weight in the center, which sometimes causes a strain when holding that tablet one-handed at the outside edges for a long period of time. The ThinkPad Tablet distributes all of its weight evenly. It also has a lot of bezel, which normally would be undesirable. However, for inking, it is nice to have ample area to hold the tablet without coming into contact with the screen. The shape of the ThinkPad Tablet makes it the one device that has some closest to feeling like writing or working on a paper notepad for me, and that makes a difference when we get to talking about inking later on.

In side-by-side comparisons, I give the nod to the Thinkpad Tablet’s display. The A500, however, has the brightest display. I tested this by pulling up a wallpaper of a riff on the Atari logo, which shows 5 bands of different colors on a black background. I then took the ThinkPad Tablet, Xoom, and A500 and laid them side-by-side with this image on their screens, and the Honeycomb pop-up menu surfaced, as well, so I could some some contrast. I compared the image across the displays. I then zoomed in until the screen was primarily taken up by a very large area of black and the yellow stripe of the logo. While observing the images, I had the display brightness set at maximum and Auto off. As mentioned, in terms of sheer brightness, the A500 seemed to come out on top. When it came to looking at the zoomed image, the ThinkPad Tablet had the best color saturation of the yellow stripe, the deepest blacks, and the best contrast. The display also features Corning Gorilla Glass. This technology is now so prevalent, that I am starting to look askance at any device that does not come with it.

There are four hardware buttons on the right edge of the Thinkpad Tablet’s front panel. I use these buttons infrequently, but I also do not find them intrusive. Kudos to Lenovo for putting in a button that locks the auto-rotation, instead of having to do the normal two-step drill-down to access the lock-screen rotation option.

I have a feeling that I’ll be writing quite a few of these types of articles. The HP Dm1 is a superb laptop but it isn’t an Ultrabook.

For a starting price of $399 you get a lot for your money. Great graphics performance, good battery life and 1080p video hardware. The problem is that the CPU is relatively weak; actually as powerful as a dual-core netbook so when it comess to pushing the Dm1 like a desktop, it disappoints. Unpacking large zip files, batch processing images can be a slow process. Editing and rendering 720p videos even slower. Value for money is what it is.

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On Friday (isn’t that when all big tech news comes out these days?), TechCrunch’s MG Siegler detailed the now long-rumored Amazon tablet that is due to launch this fall. Despite it being a Friday afternoon leak on a three-day weekend, many of the tech media streams picked it up, including James Kendrick, founder of jkontherun and now a blogger for ZDnet, who compared his own earlier predictions with MG’s “leak”. My own personal take-away is that this is an ecosystem move by Amazon, and could therefore have less of a direct impact on the tablet market-proper as many of us may think of it. If the Amazon tablet takes off, it may be another case, much like the iPad, where a new vertical market is created where there is a demand for the Kindle Tablet, but not necessarily increased demand for tablets in general.

Amazon will have some obvious apps pre-installed on the device, and, when looked at holistically, they pretty much cover most basic functions that I would think most tablet users want/need:

• A version of the Kindle App for reading ebooks
• The Amazon Cloud Player for music and other audio content playback
• Amazon Instant Video for video content
• Amazon’s Android Appstore for apps

For content, these four apps cover everything that Google includes as part of the Android base-install for content consumption. Despite the fact that Damian has found a tablet useful as a productivity outlet, and the fact that I insist that any tablet I own be used for some productivity applications, the fact is that the average user applies a tablet for media consumption. Amazon is planning on putting several hooks in place to encourage buyer’s of its Kindle Tablet (the popular name the media is applying to this device; not officially announced or endorsed by Amazon) to use the four apps mentioned above and others to consume their fair share or more.

MG claims that the device will come with free access to Amazon Prime. Which, to me, it is a lot like Playstation Plus; you subscribe, and for your trouble, you get some free perks, and several deals on a continuous, rolling basis. So will all of this work? Yes, and here are some pretty obvious possible reasons why:

• I do not think that the average consumer “gets” tablets as a product category. Very few consider picking up a tablet from the productivity standpoint, increased connectivity and awareness, or leveraging the advantage of a third screen in their mobile/IT setup. For most, they decide that they want an “iPad”. Not “I want a tablet so which one should I get?”
• My own link to Amazon does not take me to the homepage, so it is not that often that I get reminded of how the front-page can visually mug you with a Kindle assault. “Flagship device” is a term that does not do justice to what the Kindle represents to Amazon. At the expected pricing (supposedly to be $250), there will be a chunk of consumers in the market for the high-end Kindle 3G, currently selling for $189, who will see it making more sense to get the more capable device for $250
• People like bundles. The average consumer may not be as technology averse to gadgets as they were 10 years ago, but the wall that keeps a lot of them from going over is the threat of having to monkey with a device to get the stuff on it that they are supposed to use it for. The concept of a device that basically has everything on it that they want to use it for, and a pre-configured means for getting more of it, will be a factor that brings a lot of the stay-aways over the wall
• Why will Amazon’s bundling hook people who have not taken the iPad plunge yet? Because some of the stay-aways still see iOS devices as luxury items at their current price points. Also, despite the relative ease that most of “us” handle an iOS device or other tablet, a part of the non-techcentric consumer population of America still does not get the tablet paradigm.
• Why will Amazon’s bundling be any more effective than Google’s that comes stock with Android? Because you have to be invested in the Android ecosystem already before you understand what is available. Google’s services are not a storefront. Unless you are already an Android user, you do not go to the Android Market website on your laptop or desktop to window-shop. You only get there because you already have a device and you are using a desktop environment to manage it. Ditto for iTunes and the AppStore; places you do not normally go unless you already have an iOS device. Even if you use iTunes, I do not think people go to the AppStore section just to see what might be available on an iPad if they had one already. But millions of people go to Amazon everyday, and the Kindle Tablet and its bundles services will be front and center.

There has been some discussion among the technoratti as to whether or not the Kindle Tablet will be a premium device that will compete with the iPad and other, higher-end tablets. But I also do not know how much that matters. The fact is that most people who have iPads do not need them. And when I say “need”, I am saying that from the perspective of someone who has already decided to buy a tablet and buys an iPad. I mean that if they are only using the tablet to surf the web, read email, and take in an occasional eBook, they could have purchased a less expensive device and been ok. But a lot of people are averse to devices that are not from a big-name brand, and do not market themselves based on simplicity. Most of the Android devices on the market are being marketed on the basis of their power, and the average consumer doesn’t have a good understanding of what a more ‘powerful’ device really means, or how it benefits them directly.

The Kindle Tablet will reportedly run a forked and skinned version of Android 2.2. And that is skinned to the point where the average user will not be aware that they are running Android, and therefore may potentially not get turned off to the device on that factor. Most consumers will likely buy this because it is an Amazon tablet, not because it is an Android device. The presentation layer will be in-your-face Amazon, and its services will be the hub around which the user-experience revolves.

Who will not want this device? Those of us who want/need the other Google Services (Gmail, the Android Market, Gcal) that will not be natively on the Kindle Tablet. Also those of us who want the stock Android GUI, or an ability to load our own chosen launchers, as the Kindle Tablet will only run the Amazon Appstore. Of course, I am sure someone will hack the device eventually, but we are talking about the device running its stock install.

The point is, whether or not the Amazon Tablet is a premium device may not matter. I am not convinced that there is a defined tablet market for strata of devices based on price anyway. My own feeling is that there is an iPad market and a very limited premium Android market. I am saying that there are not strata within the market in North America because there is not a lot of consumption of budget-Android devices here. People are either buying an iPad or an Android device that is in the $499 MSRP range (sometimes as low as $349 with some of the recent sales).

The current tablets are being positioned as an alternative to the laptop with a minimum comparative savings for increased portability. In other words the strategy is “You don’t need a laptop, you can use a tablet that will accomplish most of what you need and comes in a little cheaper than a capable laptop”. I am simplifying this part of the assessment in order to not get entangled in the minutia (the value of cheap laptops at less than $499  in comparison to their capability compared to laptops that are only a skosh more and their reduced portability in comparison to a tablet).

The Amazon approach is positioning the tablet has an outgrowth of the eReader. The “in other words” here is “For a skosh more than our 3G eReader, you can get this device that does a ton more, comes with a free Amazon Prime account, and, incidentally, does everything that eReader you were going to buy does anyway”. I think this is a story that the average consumer is more likely to buy into, and will start pulling buyers away from the iPad potential buyer population. When Amazon presents a device that costs half-as much, does everything that most potential iPad buyers want to do, and will be supported by an ecosystem that is manageable from a desktop browser and that many of them are familiar with, it will be clear that Amazon does not need to deploy a premium device to compete with the iPad. If the Kindle Tablet goes over well, we will have an example where the value of the service infrastructure that a tablet product plugs into might be more than important than the tablet hardware itself.

Amazon is also attempting to put deals in place similar to the 3G service that is available on their high-end eReaders now. If Amazon locks this in, and if, while seemingly impossible, they are able to lock this service in as either part of the Amazon Prime subscription, or at a very reduced rate and the buyer never has to interface with a carrier — that could be the factor that allows the Kindle Tablet to eat every other tablets’ lunch.

Right now, the Kindle Tablet will reportedly only launch with a WiFi version, so the 3G advantage may not come into play until later. Linked below is to the original TechCrunch article. Join the conversation below, as I am sure there are plenty of opposing views to the ones I voiced here. As always, this assessment is just my own opinion based on my own experiences. Feel free to present a differing perspective; that is kind of the whole point in us posting this stuff anyway!

TechCrunch

Lenovo gave us the U300S, Asus gave us the UX21 and UX31, Toshiba gave us the Z830 and Acer gave us  the Series 3 this week at IFA. Samsung launched the Series 7 tablet too. They all have one thing in common. No, its not the word ‘Ultrabook’, it’s the word ‘tablet.’

We’ll get this weeks new Ultrabook details into the database as soon as possible but before that, let me give you my current analysis based on knowledge so far.

The tablet is truly eating into the PC space.

That’s no surprise. In the developed world, home netbooks are going to be hit first. I doubt many of the millions of netbook owners will update to another netbook. Why would they? There’s little difference today than there was 3 years ago. A dynamic, touch and app-enabled product is a much more likely choice.

It’s happening in the office space too where iPad experimentation is revealing some efficiencies.

What it means is that while Intel tries to push into the mobile space, they are also putting huge effort into re-architechting their notebook business to pick-up where the tablet can’t reach. Re-positioning is required. They’re building a second attack strategy. Or possibly a safe fall-back position.

To stay at a safe distance from Tablets requires leading edge silicon to create desktop-class power in a feature-rich laptop that does things that a $500 tablet won’t be able to do for a long long time. Graphics, wireless video, high-end connectivity, advanced security, sensors and even better battery life than tablets. Style and portability mean they become every bit as personal as the tablet. As end-users look to swap-out the low-end laptop and upgrade the desktop, it could mean a complete change to Tablet and Ultrabook for many. The total cost of ownership there is similar but the flexibility is way higher.

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Today at IFA, Samsung announced the Galaxy Note, a new phone with a ridiculously large 5.3 inch screen and a stylus.

You may have seen my speculation the other day that the Galaxy Note might have actually been something exciting, like a sliding smartbook, but it seems I may be the only person who realizes that bigger isn’t better when it comes to Android smartphone screens.

We’ll get to being critical about the device in just a moment, have no doubt. For the time being though, let’s get some specs out there:

• Android 2.3
• 1.4GHz dual-core CPU
• 5.3 inch Super AMOLED display @ 1280×800
• Front and rear cameras @ 2MP and 8MP respectively
• HSPA+ connectivity
• 1080p recording and playback
• GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, and WiFi a/b/g/n
• 16/32GB built-in memory and a MicroSD slot for storage expansion
• 2500 mAh batter

The stylus is active which should make for smooth and natural feeling digital writing.

It seems like Samsung designed this device to straddle the line between tablet and phone, but I find that to be a flawed concept from the start, tantamount to UMPCs that came in at a thumb-board-sized keyboards but with keys designed for touch-typing!

To me, the 5.3 inch size of the Galaxy Note’s screen means that the device is too big to be an ergonomically designed phone, but smaller than someone would want for a tablet.

As for handwriting input, the Galaxy Note isn’t going to be a useful device if it tries to pull an HTC Flyer and launch a product that has the technology to write on the screen, but no proven usage scenarios.

Don’t get me wrong, in my day-to-day activities, I use an HP Tablet PC and I love the touchscreen for digital inking. The difference is that, in Windows, the digital inking experience is built-in at an OS level (and even then it is still criticized). The Galaxy Note, on the other hand, comes with an OS (Android 2.3) which has no core support for digital inking input everything having to do with handwriting at this point is either proprietary or third-party. I mean, come on! Look at the press shot at the top of this post. Is this really how Samsung things people would use something like this… to draw constellations on a picture on their homescreen and annotate it with some stupid text? There are far more useful ways to use written input, but it looks like no one has figured them out yet on Android.

Naturally, Samsung says that they’ll be including some apps specific for pen use, but it’s yet to be seen if they include any truly useful functionality, or just silly proof-of-concept apps like the ability to annotate screenshots. I’ll be happily wrong if Samsung built some really useful functionality out of the digital inking ability of the Galaxy Note, but I don’t see it happening.

The only points the Galaxy Note will see from me is that the device actually has a built-in stylus silo, so you won’t have to carry it around separately in your pocket. Oh and the Super AMOLED display is likely to look really good!

That’s my take anyway. What do you think, would the Galaxy Note be useful in your life?

Pricing and carrier availability have yet to be announced, but we’ll update as we hear more.

Update: Hands-on video!