Author Topic: tc1100 tablet pc dies before i've even set it up (Read 42232 times)

nudone · « **Reply #50 on:** September 08, 2010, 02:19 AM »

call me insane but...

i've just bought another tc1100 on eBay. only £80 !!! (that's £100 less than the one i blew up).

okay, it's not a perfect machine this time: pen missing, 512 meg, nipple doesn't work on the keyboard - possible light scratches on the screen. BUT, it works.

i'll use the ram from the old machine (an extra 512) and the keyboard. then i'm back to what i had before the fatal "pop" sound.

i just thought £80 for a tc1100 couldn't be ignored - i mean, i'd enquired about having the broken machine repaired and that was going to cost, at least, £80. so, i've saved money, haven't i... right?

i'm still waiting for the other tablet (motion) to arrive - i've no idea what i'm going to do with two tablets (and a wacom cintiq). maybe the motion one will get sold???

tomos · « **Reply #51 on:** September 08, 2010, 02:40 AM »

> i just thought £80 for a tc1100 couldn't be ignored - i mean, i'd enquired about having the broken
> machine repaired and that was going to cost, at least, £80. so, i've saved money, haven't i... right?
lol,
you're sounding like my mum now

> i'm still waiting for the other tablet (motion) to arrive ... maybe the motion one will get sold???

from the looks of the motion one it might be hard to let go of it - keep us updated...

nudone · « **Reply #52 on:** September 08, 2010, 03:19 AM »

will do.

hopefully, i'll be able to do a decent comparison between the machines. i only went for the motion tablet because i'd seen a review saying it was the natural replacement for the tc1100. so, it will be interesting to see how they compare - ignoring their hardware age difference i suppose.

nudone · « **Reply #53 on:** September 13, 2010, 04:18 AM »

still waiting for the motion le1700 to arrive - starting to get a little concerned over that (not heard from the selller, yet).

the cheap tc1100 has arrived. i can now see why it was so cheap. it looks like someone has built it out of scraps bits of hardware lying around - or they've never once put it inside a padded case. it works but it's pretty useless - the power socket is too temperamental and for some strange reason it doesn't work with the keyboard from the previous (dead) tc1100. also the case is very battered and the screen has a few lengthy scratches.

so, it looks like i'm going to have to dismantle both tc1100s and try and build a "good" machine out of them. i'm not looking forward to it so i think it will be a project i'll just forget about for a few months - or years.

hopefully the motion le1700 will be so amazing i won't even care about the money wasted on the tc1000s.

nudone · « **Reply #54 on:** September 13, 2010, 06:02 AM »

i spoke too soon. the motion le1700 has just arrived.

i'll try to do a proper review/comparison this week - but, so far, i'm pleased with what i've seen (not too sure about the brightness of the screen - a bit dull). it feels quite light for its size, quiet and the pen accuracy appears to be better then my wacom cintiq (i always thought my wacom cintiq had lousy pen accuracy - for a specialist machine it is downright pathetic).

anyway, i'll try not to blow it up with an external dvd drive and then i'll report back in a few days.

nudone · « **Reply #55 on:** September 15, 2010, 07:22 AM »

right. i'm very unsatisfied with with the Motion LE1700.

i said the pen accuracy of the machine was better than my Wacom Cintiq. well, i obviously jinxed myself by saying that - the motion's pen accuracy is rubbish. who designs these pen and screen devices? people that write with super fat marker pens all day so they believe "accurate" is within a 5mm radius?

TOTALLY PATHETIC.

Anyone that uses these pen and built in screen devices needs a reward for putting up with how rubbish they are. this is the 21st Century and my pencil and paper is still about a thousand times better than these cutting edge machines. Rubbish, total rubbish.

i'm that wound-up, i think i'm just going to flog the lot of them.

wraith808 · « **Reply #56 on:** September 15, 2010, 08:50 AM »

The accuracy on my tc1100 is pretty darned good, to tell the truth. The lag and extra ink flow is very minimal. Did you try to calibrate?

Darwin · « **Reply #57 on:** September 15, 2010, 09:02 AM »

nudone - I've never used/calibrated a touchscreen device before, but are there not controls for this? I'm assuming there's a control panel applet that will allow you to adjust everything to your liking, just as you can do with your mouse and pointer?

nudone · « **Reply #58 on:** September 15, 2010, 09:04 AM »

yeah, i've done the calibrate, calibrate, calibrate routine over and over; even trying different ways of offsetting the pen to the marker to try and counteract the awful inaccuracy.

the tc1100 is okay, not perfect, but bearable - plus i don't expect much from that device.

the wacom cintiq is crap towards the edges. well, i thought it was crap until i used the LE1700.

the LE1700 is okay in the middle and towards one side. the opposite side/edge it's, at least, 3mm out. which i can't really adjust as that then makes the rest of the screen "out".

don't get me wrong, this is probably okay if all you want to do is click on buttons and scribble a bit of text. but i don't. i want something that replaces a pencil and paper - something that provides absolute pin sharp accuracy between pen tip and cursor.

when you draw with these devices and they are out it makes anything other than "doodling" a horrible experience. it's not far off trying to draw something with your eyes shut and just guessing at where the tip is.

you know what. i can see why tablet (requiring pens) devices never took off now. it's because they are rubbish to draw with. Apple made a very smart choice in making their ipad work with big fat fingers - it completely removes the need to be accurate with a pen tip. what a stroke of genius.

nudone · « **Reply #59 on:** September 15, 2010, 09:14 AM »

perhaps, i should just add that i'm using Alias Sketchbook for drawing with. this program only shows a very small dot where the cursor is (within the drawing area). that's a dot that looks like a single pixel (and a very faded one against a white background at that).

so, you see, if the pen and cursor are not perfectly aligned you can't draw accurately - it's too late seeing how misaligned the ink is after you've made a stroke.

i'll try using something like Photoshop that displays a brush where the cursor is - but it's still going to be out by a few pixels, so incredibly annoying.

other annoyances about the Motion LE1700: the screen isn't very bright. it's very hot underneath. and it's early days - i'm sure i can find a lot more problems yet.

wraith808 · « **Reply #60 on:** September 15, 2010, 11:18 AM »

I don't have that problem with my tc1100 for some reason... I'm using ArtRage Starter Edition, and I don't have any problems when I'm drawing.

nudone · « **Reply #61 on:** September 15, 2010, 11:43 AM »

well, i might have exagerated slightly. the offset between cursor and pen tip is about 2mm (maybe 3mm in places). i don't believe there is a tablet and pen combination that is pin-point accurate as i've now seen four different screens and none have been perfect - so, i guess, i'm just asking for too much. i've read about other people not being happy with wacom cintiqs but they are in the minority.

it's all down to drawing style i suppose. if your style is loose, then there's no need for high accuracy and it will probably never even be noticeable. or, if you stay away from the edges of the screen, then that will help.

one thing now seems clear. i've no reason to keep the LE1700 as it perform worse than the tc1100 - and it certainly isn't worth several hundred pounds more just for a few pixels of extra screen space.

it just seems like i've spent a lot of money (and time) to simply find that a pencil and paper is better than all these electronic miracle devices.

nudone · « **Reply #62 on:** October 05, 2010, 06:43 AM »

SHOCKING NEWS...

The Motion LE1700 tablet isn't an absolute total piece of garbage after all. It's actually a good tablet.

I'd given up with the device almost immediately and decided that I'd stick it back on eBay when I could be bothered. Before doing that, I thought I'd try once more to calibrate the pen - even though every previous attempt resulted in making it rubbish.

It appears that you can get almost millimetre accuracy between pen and cursor if you simply "Reset" the tablet settings in Control Panel. So, manually calibrating the pen makes it useless - no matter what you try, it's always out by a few millimetres somewhere on the screen; but Resetting the machine will give you the best calibration there is - just with a single click.

I'll use the Motion now, it feels like a different machine, I'm keeping it. But the question remains: what is the point of providing calibration options that don't work. And an obvious built-in default configuration that works near perfectly.

Stoic Joker · « **Reply #63 on:** October 05, 2010, 07:05 AM »

Perhaps to assist end users that hold the tablet at an angle to contend with the parallax created?

(Screen thickness + angle of view create a perceived shift in the true point of contact)

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #64 on:** October 05, 2010, 07:19 AM »

Just skimmed through this lot and you have my heartfelt sympathy!

Am I correct that you now have a Cintiq, Motion and 2 HP thingies and yet you still don't actually have anything that works properly

Ah the joys of eBay - someone should cut up your credit cards and nuke your PayPal account ...

nudone · « **Reply #65 on:** October 05, 2010, 07:28 AM »

Perhaps to assist end users that hold the tablet at an angle to contend with the parallax created?

(Screen thickness + angle of view create a perceived shift in the true point of contact)
-Stoic Joker (October 05, 2010, 07:05 AM)

good point, you'd think that would be the case but from my experiments (trying to be clever by offsetting and changing the angle of the pen) the only way the parallax idea might work is, if your eyes were about 3 inches away from the screen, i.e. closer than the top of the pen.

i'm being facetious, of course, but looking around the web it appears that other people have come to the same conclusion. the calibration routine on the device only makes matters worse - even when using a method of using a 16 point grid rather than the 4 corner grid, it's all worse that a simple click of the Reset button.

the calibration system is so wrong it just doesn't provide a consistent "offset" between pen and cursor. a single corner area might be off, or all corners are off in different directions. honestly, it's a total joke.

judging by some of the other comments i've found about the bad calibration it seems that some users are happy to forgive the machine. instead they'll enlarge the scroll bars or gui buttons, or simply say that watching the cursor and not the pen tip is the important part, i.e. they don't care that in some places of the screen, cursor and pen are off by a few millimetres. they obviously need to just hit the Reset button and everything will be fine instead of just lying to themselves that everything is acceptable.

nudone · « **Reply #66 on:** October 05, 2010, 07:37 AM »

yes, Carol, you are correct - on all points. eBay is a dangerous place for me to visit, i can't help buying those kinds of things though. it's the only way i'll discover if they are brilliant machine(s) i hope them to be.

the Motion LE1700 tablet may still turn out to be something i hate - the screen brightness, when on maximum is still darker than any monitor i've encountered (even running from the mains adaptor). and the manufacturer's claim that the screen is "UltraView", i.e. viewable from wide angles and in bright light - total rubbish. like, who believes this kind of sh*t when they turn the machine on.

anyway, i'm going to be putting the machine through some "sketching" tests whilst creating the graphic for this years NANY/Cody image. if that seems fine then i'll accept the machine for what it is.

what happens to the other tablets i'm not sure yet. the Cintiq is a lot better than the Motion for brightness but it's not portable - so i don't use it. i ought to get rid of it.

superboyac · « **Reply #67 on:** October 05, 2010, 09:20 AM »

nudone, I'm closely following your tablet saga. I hear that from a lot of tablet owners: the screen is not bright enough. i think most of the consumer models suffer from that. They figure, we'll give you a touchscreen, but at the expense of a good screen. I've heard the higher, business end models are better, like the newer Motion tablets, the HP 2470p, and the new Panasonic Tougbook CF-C1. I think my favorite of them so far is the Toughbook.
I'm really hoping these tablets take off in the next year or two.

cranioscopical · « **Reply #68 on:** October 05, 2010, 09:24 AM »

I'll use the Motion now, it feels like a different machine
-nudone

Glad to see this.
If anyone deserves a prize for persistence it's you

Possibly I can help you with future forays. If you want to cut out eBay I'll send you a list of the electronic detritus that half-fills my basement

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #69 on:** October 05, 2010, 10:42 AM »

If you want to cut out eBay I'll send you a list of the electronic detritus that half-fills my basement
-cranioscopical (October 05, 2010, 09:24 AM)

I'll bet his list is longer than yours judging by his obsession with eBay!

Maybe we should organise a crap swap system - that way all the unwanted rubbish can circulate the globe until someone finds a use for it.

cranioscopical · « **Reply #70 on:** October 05, 2010, 11:42 AM »

I'll bet his list is longer than yours judging by his obsession with eBay!
-Carol Haynes (October 05, 2010, 10:42 AM)

Ah yes, but has he one of these?

Spoiler

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #71 on:** October 05, 2010, 12:24 PM »

LOL - probably but a bit will have gone pop and another bit will have dropped off!

4wd · « **Reply #72 on:** October 06, 2010, 12:04 AM »

And then he'll buy another on ebay to try and make a complete working one.

nudone · « **Reply #73 on:** October 06, 2010, 02:24 AM »

And then put them all back in their boxes and pretend I never bought them.

Target · « **Reply #74 on:** October 06, 2010, 06:02 PM »

in the meantime, I'll just distract him with this Rat 7