RM Slate 100 - Initial Review

[Dos_Box]

You can view the page at http://www.edugeek.net/content.php?r=221-RM-Slate-100-Initial-Review

[Dos_Box]

Seeing those pictures of the screen in the article I have to stress that the image quality is far, far better than that shown there. For some reason the display looks all 'speckly' in the pictures. Let me assure you that is it not. It is bright vibrant and a joy to look at.

[matt40k]

Go on, install SIMS on it

[jpaterson]

Does it have a hardware button to bring up the OSK?

[Dos_Box]

I forgot to add, it has only one button. The power\standby switch. The OSK is a permanent on-screen shortcut that lives on the LHS of the screen (for some reason it's not visable in the pics I took). It can be 'flicked out when required, or, rather helpfully when you 'prod' on a text field a shortcut to the OSK appears. Edited December 13, 2010 by Dos_Box

[Duane_Dibbley]

i've got an ACER 1825ptz which is a capacitive touchscreen laptop. I agree with you - Win 7 just isn't up to scratch compared to other OS's but like you say you get used to it. battery doesn't sound great tho with the latest laptop offerings from ACER (including mine) and others doing 8hrs+

[simpsonj]

I'm probably going to sound a bit negative, and I don't mean to be, but a few points surprise me. I should also point out that I'm looking at slates as being carried around by the students, and taken home, rather than being in a classroom with a laptop trolley, which colours my judgement somewhat!

 

1, The 3-4 hour battery life - The iPad can last at least 10 hours watching full video before the battery becomes an issue. For the RM slate to be viable, surely it needs to last a school day (ie 6 hours)? Maybe its Windows 7 being power hungry rather than the hardware itself?

 

2, Fans - Not sure I like the idea of movable parts in a slate, but that could just be me. There again, the iPad tends to overheat if left in sunlight, so if it prevents that problem...

 

3, Windows 7 as a touch screen OS - How viable is it as an alternative to a laptop? Could you invisage writing coursework on it, or using it to do basic graphic work, or spreadsheets? One of the main flaws with the iPad is that its close, but not quite comfortable enough, to be used in a serious "office" way.

 

4, And finally, could you envisage rolling these out onto a network?

 

As I said, I don't want to be negative, I'm really looking for a viable slate that kids can use for everyday schooling, and if any company could pull that off, I think it could be RM.

 

But thank you for writing up the review though! Really useful to me

[DrummerBoy]

Bro I might want to borrow this off you for a future gig to run my remote control mixing desk software on!!!

[Dos_Box]

@Simsonj. Just address you points.

 

1. When I say I've got 3-4 hours, that has been hammering it, multi-tasking, constant browsing and software installs, and given that the battery is quite small it's not too bad at all. In fact. I've been using it occasionally, putting it on standby and using it again with the same charge over a 24 hour period. I will do time tests when I can, but it will have to wait ATM.

 

2. The fan is very quiet and none of the chassis gets hot when in use. Warm, yes, but not overly so.

 

3. It takes a little getting used to. The on-screen-keyboard take a little learning (in getting it to appear\hide when you want it too) and no haptic feedback leaves it feeling cold sometimes, however it is a full Windows 7 computer, and as long as the processor meets the software spec should run pretty much anything. I'm going to try Photoshop Elements 9 soon. My guess is that with a stylus, graphic work will be a doddle. If you want to get the best out of it then a bluetooth KB\mouse will be in order, but so far I've been doing fine with my fingers.

 

4. Yes. It will run W7 Pro\Ultimate etc. fine. There is no physical ethernet though, only wireless, so I'd ensure you have a USB CD\DVD drive and the appropriate imaging software for OS deployements.

 

All things said, it IS a good slate, but considering it is the first W7 slate with the level of hardware I'd expect to find to use it successfully, there are no other pieces of kit to compare it too. We shall have it on the stand at BETT for you all to have a good look at and running real world apps, not specially selcted pieces of software

[Dos_Box]

@Drummer_Boy. I'll pop around with it when I can to give you a play. Just as soon as I've got rid of the lurgy! You really don't want this for Christamas.

[teejay]

Does it blend?

[ZeroHour]

@Simsonj: one thing, I can tell you 100% that the ipad does not last 12 hours playing video non stop as I have never seen it last that long yet.

[matt40k]

Rather disappointed with the Slate, screen is terrible. It's that horrible high gloss that shows all the finger marks, and the touch part is poor.

 

Got SIMS on it, but SIMS really does need touch screen support before it useful - well for SIMS stuff anyway

[creese]

Got SIMS on it, but SIMS really does need touch screen support before it useful - well for SIMS stuff anyway

 

It's on the way, starting with Discovery.

[Dos_Box]

Rather disappointed with the Slate, screen is terrible. It's that horrible high gloss that shows all the finger marks, and the touch part is poor.

 

Got SIMS on it, but SIMS really does need touch screen support before it useful - well for SIMS stuff anyway

 

Have you adjusted the icon and text size yet? It was in my earlier report that it was hard to use with defualt settings and you had to make adjustments. As for the touch part. How do you mean? In what way poorer. Mine was very responsive and the image quality great. The 'high gloss' you refer to is simply the screen cover\casing itself, and it is widely accepted that any large screen tablet device would show up fingerprints, regardless of the tinting of the screen.

Edited December 14, 2010 by Dos_Box

[matt40k]

Have you adjusted teh icon and text size yet? It was in my earlier report that it was hard to use with defualt settings and you had to make adjustments. As for the touch part. How do you mean? In what way poorer. Mine was very responsive and the image quality great. The 'high gloss' you refer to is simply the screen cover\casing itself, and it is widely accepted that any large screen tablet device would show up fingerprints, regardless of the tinting of the screen.

 

Yup and it's still not great and then the screen space becomes a bit problem. I guess you could get a screen protector, but it's yet another thing to buy - assuming they exist. Having said that it's loads cheaper then a iPad.

[simpsonj]

Thanks for your replies @Dos_box and @ZeroHour. I fear imaging slates could be a royal pain, but I'm not closed to the idea if prices go down, and the money becomes available.

 

I wonder how similar the experience is to using an iPad with Remote Desktop software, which can definately be a bit fiddly. As regards to battery life, I charge my iPad once every three days, although I haven't really tried a stress test yet.

 

I'll see if I can find you at BETT to have a proper look

[simpsonj]

@matt40k at £399 ex VAT, if it doesn't have 3G, surely that makes it the same price as an iPad, indeed more expensive than the 16gb model, and roughly on par with the 32gb non 3G models. If the slate does have 3G, then it will be cheaper than the iPad equivalent.

 

However, throw in the price of Office, Windows and CAL licencing if you're planning to network them and it would be interesting to see a price comparison after that. Mind you, with the new licensing announcement by Microsoft, maybe that wouldn't be so much of an issue.

 

I'm hoping that there will now be a drive for touch screen friendly, educational, apps for Windows 7 and Android, to make slates a true alternative to netbooks.

[Alis_Klar]

are these jpeg's corrupted? I can see the top few rows but the rest display partially as grey pixels, like the jpeg has been corrupted?!? Tried CTRL+F5 and different browser

[matt40k]

@matt40k at £399 ex VAT, if it doesn't have 3G, surely that makes it the same price as an iPad, indeed more expensive than the 16gb model, and roughly on par with the 32gb non 3G models. If the slate does have 3G, then it will be cheaper than the iPad equivalent.

 

However, throw in the price of Office, Windows and CAL licencing if you're planning to network them and it would be interesting to see a price comparison after that. Mind you, with the new licensing announcement by Microsoft, maybe that wouldn't be so much of an issue.

 

I'm hoping that there will now be a drive for touch screen friendly, educational, apps for Windows 7 and Android, to make slates a true alternative to netbooks.

 

It's 32gb, so the iPad 32GB at £499 is more expensive. Desktop upgrade package is about £30 which includes an Windows Upgrade, Office, and a CAL (or it did last time I checked). You've then got the bonus that you can use Flash and all that stuff.

 

Plus I'd rather manage 125x Slates then 100x iPads

 

DosBox, did you see, sorry don't know how to describe it, the back of the tft, looks like a solar panel (think that's the best way I can describe it!). Also did the webcam work for you?

[Dos_Box]

Yes, the webcam was fine. There is a copper foil sheet on the back of the screen. I think it's to prevent heat from the motherboard going forwards.

[Dos_Box]

are these jpeg's corrupted? I can see the top few rows but the rest display partially as grey pixels, like the jpeg has been corrupted?!? Tried CTRL+F5 and different browser

 

The pictures are fine. Try clearing your temporary internet files.

[john]

I'll see if I can find you at BETT to have a proper look

 

Were on stand G89 every day so do come and visit us

[simpsonj]

@matt40k I'm not sure I would like to manage 125 slates. Just building them seems a complete pain without an ethernet connection, unless you can build an image using WDS and wireless? Otherwise building them one by one with a DVD would not be a fun task, not that the iPad would be a picnic either! Perhaps RM would be prepared to do the donkey work if you provided them with an image? Or at the very least, be made CC4 ready?

 

Just checking my maths though £399 + VAT (£468.83) + £30 for licences = £498, albeit with Office, so you'd need to add an extra £30 to the iPad (at least). I guess my point is that I don't think this slate is a much cheaper option, only an alternative. If I were to be pendantic, I would point out that you're likely to lose out on around 7-10gig of disk space on the slate just because of the Windows 7 footprint.However, I strongly suspect that students wouldn't use up much disk space, as files would be stored on a cloud, so the size of the hard drive becomes largely irrelevant.

 

Still, any Android tablets we can compare this to?

[Squiffy101]

I have to say that I can't agree with the review above. I had one on trial in January for an agreed month. I sent it back after 4 days. It's completely under powered being an Atom and all and constantly froze for upto 30 seconds every couple of minutes. Intially I thought that here was something cost affective in the classroom but at least with an iPad, it works out of the box. In fact we have an iPad2 arriving shortly from Western Digital which will be really interesting considering the app that's being produced by Capita.

 

What I'd really like to see is one of the new Android tablets. Cost and ability in one!