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Preparing few posts about tablets - let me know your interests
  • I am very long time tablets fan (long before iPad even existed as idea). And own bunch of different ones.

    I'll be making few posts concerning REAL usage of tablets for different REAL needs (sorry, no 3D shooters performance charts or SSD speed tests).

    Let me know things you are most interested to see.

  • 29 Replies sorted by
  • How about telling about possible video playback issues? High bitrate videos. MP4. MKV.

  • @MikeLinn

    Sure.

    Anything else?

  • I'm interested in tablets to VK, I would like to see more use for them as storage/media review devices and which ones have best/fastest in/out connections for transferring of files.

  • I would like to see more use for them as storage/media review devices and which ones have best/fastest in/out connections for transferring of files

    What do you mean under "storage/media review devices" ? Checking videos?

    Usually most tablets users prefer to use Wi-Fi instead of file transfer via USB and such.

  • Checking videos yes.

    Yes USB or other connections, wifi is usually very slow on tablets to transfer files.

  • wifi is usually very slow on tablets to transfer files.

    On good tablets with 2x2 MIMO wireless is much faster.

    As for usual transfer it is more complicated, as you really need USB 3.0 coupled with fast flash storage for this. But most tablets are lacking USB 3.0 (some lack OTG even) and most use cheap and slow eMMC for storage.

  • My principle interest is in using a tablet as a wi-fi camera monitor. So retina like screen and good wi-fi please..

  • My principle interest is in using a tablet as a wi-fi camera monitor. So retina like screen and good wi-fi please..

    Do you know any camera that translates FullHD video via Wi-Fi to tablet?

  • Would be interesting to know performance of different models and technologies for drawing with stylus and working without a mouse. Things like input lag, precision, pressure sensitivity, usability problems, whether special compatibility or drivers are required for some programs. For example, is it convenient to draw notes and automation in DAW programs, and can video editing be done efficiently with stylus.

    Also, information about reliability in demanding usage, like many hours per day at very high CPU utilization.

  • Would be interesting to know performance of different models and technologies for drawing with stylus and working without a mouse.

    I'll focus in real work, so not much performance comparisons in numbers and benchmarks.
    As for stylus, I use stylus on TP2 only for now. Stylus for Venue Pro is on the way. I mean real stylus here, not capacitive ones. Also note that I do not do video editing on tablets :-).

    Also, information about reliability in demanding usage, like many hours per day at very high CPU utilization.

    Almost all tablets are wrong tool for this. They start throttle CPU after quite short time of CPU/GPU of very high usage. Only good ones are that use very good active cooling.

  • By performance I meant how different stylus input technologies work in real life use. No benchmarks, just your experience :)

    I have planned to someday use a tablet for DAW. But most of my current projects demand at least a four-core i7 to run in real time, and CPU is often maxed out. I suppose Surface is the only option with decent cooling so far?

  • By performance I meant how different stylus input technologies work in real life use. No benchmarks, just your experience :)

    OK, this one I can do.

    I suppose Surface is the only option with decent cooling so far?

    i7 is Surface is not 4 core. We have topic about Surface one - you can check all used CPUs. To normally work with even mobile four core i7 you need good thick note with good cooling.

  • 'Do you know any camera that translates FullHD video via Wi-Fi to tablet?'

    No, I'd just like a nice screen..

  • I am dreaming of a affordable windows 7 tablet with USB 3 to connect my BM capture device. It could be used to monitor HDMI in native 1080p (possibly over cheap hdmi radio transmitter) and you could control remote heads/gymbals/remote FF from it. Tablets are much better suited than notebooks for this since you can put them into a rugged, waterproof case.

  • I am dreaming of a affordable windows 7 tablet with USB 3 to connect my BM capture device

    Tablets with USB 3.0 exist. But forget about Windows 7. I know some people have some kind of nostangia :-)

  • One past issue I have had with tablets is bootup time, some seem to take forever. I believe fast eMMC flash is an important feature.

  • One past issue I have had with tablets is bootup time, some seem to take forever. I believe fast eMMC flash is an important feature.

    You mean that you like to turn them off completely? Even in such case modern tablets boot quite fast, I think Windows 8 ones are fastest :-)

  • About pens

    There are 3 main types of pen digitizer technologies:
    Electromagnetic, passive capacitive (those conductive rubber tipped pens that trick the digitizer into looking like a finger), and active capacitive.

    Electromagnetic works by putting a printed circuit board across the entire device, typically situated underneath the display and its backlight. This is a completely separate system from the touch digitizer that typically goes in front of the display. The circuit board has a bunch of planar coils that emit an electromagnetic field (like one side of a transformer). The Other side of the transformer is located in the pen itself. As the pen approaches these fields and coils it couples the EM signal and adds a load. This load is picked up across multiple coils and the position of the stylus is then interpolated. These field lines can emit 15mm or so above the display, and thus the mechanism for hover. Data is transmitted from the pen to the device (pressure and button data), by modifying the frequency content of the load. To get orientation there is typically a secondary coil/circuit.. and simple trig can extrapolate the orientation of the pen.. this is important for later to remove mechanical parallax. Among the three this technique has been around the longest.

    1. Precision: This can be very good for electromagnetics but it is highly dependent on implementation. To get the corners working well, and avoid non-linearity, the digitizer sitting behind the display must extend slightly beyond the display. Also metal objects or magnetics objects near the digitizer or in front of even in the device greatly effect noise and performance. This highly constraints the device maker from having a certain boarder size, and also the types of materials they use on the device and in the pen. Because magnetic fields shift with the environment, you will see drift and offsets… The device maker must do a really good job of calibrating the device.. and if the user puts something infront of the device (say a case that has metal in it), then they must be able to do the same level of calibration. Outside of these constraints, EM pen can give very good results.
    2. Visual Parallax: this just depends on thickness the cover glass is… and none of the technologies really have an advantage of disadvantage here.
    3. Electronic parallax: because the EM digitizer is buried behind the display and the coils are not located the tip of the pen, the digitizer must calculate the orientation of the pen and translate position from that… this is really never perfect and will often be dependent on where you are on the display.. so it is not a single mathematical transform for all points on the display.. it can be highly complex.. most of the time, the simple route is what is taken.
    4. Digitizer precision and linearity across the entire screen: best way to test this.. is take ruler and draw straight diagonal lines across the display. Note how the lines are never really straight… this is very hard to do.
    5. Feel and sound: Typically today we work with various materials to change the coefficient of static and dynamic friction of the tip on glass.. but there are other techniques we are working on to make this even better no matter what pen technology is used.
    6. Pen weight, feel, and ergonomics. Because it is magnetic based the pen cannot be made out of metal. EM stylus has all kinds of shapes and sizes… from really thin and uncomfortable (but can be docked) to ones that feel like a pen. The pro here is that the pen does not need batteries.
    7. Consistent and accurate pressure sensitivity: generally known to do a great job. This is much more about how the pressure curve looks like than the number of bits… .
    8. Buttons for switching modes (erase, selection, and other commands): because the pen and modify the signals actively (powered by the coils).. it can communicate buttons and pressure information.
    9. Latency: the lag of ink behind the pen tip (highly app dependent)… good developers can keep this number to a minimum.
    10. Palm detection so the computer can reject false touches: does not really have advantage of active capacitive.. but over passive stylus it does.
    11. Device Integration: how it fits, and the industrial design requirements: because the pen digitizer is a separate digitizer from the touch, this solution will add anywhere between 0.4-1mm in thickness, a few mm around the bezel of the device, and a few 10’s of grams of weight. It is a bit harder ti integrate into the device cause of the constraints around materials and mechanics.

    Passive stylus, works by simply acting as an extension of your finger, by being a conductor to passively couple with the electrostatic signal from the transmit and receive rows and columns of the digitizer. This technique uses the same transparent conductive lines in front of the display to do both the finger and “fake” finger/stylus.

    Active capacitive solutions started coming into fruition in the early 2000s. Their mode of operation is to use the same transparent conductive lines as passive stylus does above, but rather the pen tip injects an electrostatic signal which is picked up by these touch capacitive lines. Think of the pen is a mini radio and the sensing lines in front of the display the device are little antennas. The junction(s) (where the rows and columns of the transparent conducting lines cross) which receives the strongest signal is correlated to the position of the pen. To do this, the pen typically needs a battery, but the pen can emit all kinds of signals from buttons, pressure, and other. We purchased a really fantastic active capacitive pen and touch technology a couple years ago: you may remember the company that did the CNN election boards.. Perceptive Pixel. This is no doubt the most fantastic pen technology around for large non-mobile screens. Active capacitive field is defiantly showing a lot of activity by a number of different touch makers.. cause it is a natural extension of touch technology and its integration with the touch solution.

    1. Precision: in the past we seen some not so good implementations here, but I am so pumped to see our current results in Pro3. We really did move the mark here. The Pen is really much more precise, linear, and linear across the entire device. The first comment I hear from artists when they use the device, is how precise the pen is.
    2. Visual Parallax: this just depends on thickness the cover glass is… and none of the technologies really have an advantage of disadvantage here. In Pro 3 we have dropped the optical parallax to .75mm.. this one of the lowest parallax I have seen anywhere for inking tablets. This means as you move your head around your pen tip, the pen tip stays closer to the ink.
    3. Electronic parallax: because the antenna lines are just behind the cover glass (for us that is .55mm thick!) the electronic parallax is further reduced.. and this is one of the reasons our pen feels more accurate.
    4. Digitizer precision and linearity across the entire screen: do the ruler test!
    5. Feel and sound: We are using new materials to change the dynamic and static friction of the pen tip. The result is a more paper like feel. As an industry we can do better.. but it is going to have to go to a different mechanism.. more on that later 
    6. Pen weight, feel, and ergonomics. Because the signal emits from the tip of the pen, metal objects in the body do not effect performance.. this is why we were able to do a beautiful anodized aluminum pen, that feels like a high quality pen in hand. Now we do need a battery, but the advantage of a battery is that one can emit a more powerful signal for other functions.. like click note: click the top of the pen once and OneNote automatically gets pulled open (even over the lock screen [secured]).. and double click and you get the acetate layer for clipping out portions of the screen into OneNote… pretty neat!.. and you can hold the pen about 3-5 feet away to do that… and you cannot do such an experience if you did not have a battery.
    7. Consistent and accurate pressure sensitivity: just as good as our previous implementations.. as good as they come in my opinion. More on that below.
    8. Buttons for switching modes (erase, selection, and other commands): because the pen is powered it can emit all kinds of commands via its emitted signals (buttons, pressure information, click note).
    9. Latency: the lag of ink behind the pen tip (highly app dependent)… good developers can keep this number to a minimum. We have one caveat during hover.. while our latency is still best in class when you are inking, you may notice a bit of a lag during hover.. but only during hover mode..
    10. Palm detection so the computer can reject false touches: about the same as EM.
    11. Device Integration: Active capacitive digitizer are integrated into the touch controller, and use the same touch sensing lines. This is a fantastic form of integration, which makes for a thinner and lighter device. Also there are less restriction on materials.. for example our Type Keyboard clicks into the bottom portion of the device bezels via magnetics.. this would really be a bad thing for an EM digitizer.

    Via http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/26m9cu/we_are_panos_panay_and_the_surface_team_at/chsdt8t

  • Comparison video

    Microsoft switched from Wacom to N-trig
    Dell uses Synaptics

    Microsoft separately

  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev Thanks for the links!

  • I'd like to use a tablet as GH4 remote and for taking fieldnotes and for photo/video view. For the Panasonic app I tried my LG P990 android phone and an ipad2. The lg has better touch response when rack focus between 2 steady objects through wifi app. I now work with my phone until a suitable tablet arrives. And an android version of the adobe prelude live logger app would be nice.

    Desired tablet features - 8.9" - 10.1"

    • IPS with accurate colors and retina would be nice

    • competitive price

    • good touch responsiveness on Panasonic app

    • less screen reflection

    • good battery life 5h or more

    • optional: able to run a custom build tweaked and clean rom like cyanogenmod

    • optional: splash water proof for reading ebooks while taking a bath (it won't fall into the water)

  • I'm on the road with a Nexus 7. Here's a few thoughts.

    The screen on this is great--so good I left the kindle at home for books. For reading, you want dark black, high density and also a non glare, true white.

    Color accuracy a must. Calibration with the built in camera would be good.

    Screen reflections.....yikes

    Pen for Photoshop etc would be handy with pressure levels

    Long battery life

    Otg USB 3 please,why slow? USB should allow midi keyboardetc

    Sim slot for storage

    4K video with Real frame rates and bit rates

    I'm (sing this for remote on the gm1 which is pretty cool, but I would prefer HDMI in!

    Power save mode like Samsung with b&w

    Thin bezels. Why the big bezels?

    Interchangeable lenses.

  • @DrDave

    It is more like wishlist for tablet manufacturer. :-)

    How about post things I asked in title of the topic?

  • OK , I want a tablet that will beep when I misunderstand the post.

  • For a tabletless person like me, the prospect of owning a tablet is like owning a dog:

    The joy of owning one has to compete with the freedom of being without one.

    • It would have to fit into my 4 devices with a size somewhere in-between my smartphone and netbook;
    • It would display those half-dozen apps which need more space than my smartphone provides;
    • It would let me log purchases and send invoices from my browser while on the road using my sql-ledger accountancy package;
    • It would play movies to me on my rare plane flights - without interruptions by flight crew;
    • It would display e-books.

    -On the other hand, it would be another thing to carry, another delicate thing to protect from desert dust and for the klutz I am, another item to immobilise while driving, a battery to charge, data to sync, a portable Wi-Fi modem to carry, all with their respective chargers and packing materials:

    image

    Sunrise on Warranties (GH2/Pana 14mm Pancake+Pana .79 Wide Adapter)

    Each time a new tablet permutation comes out I examine its pros and cons and groan as I compare its new-puppy joys to being able to stroll freely without it.

    So make me a tablet packed with a little more joy or a bit less stuff and probably my nightly glass of red + a product launch + eBay + credit card will result in another acquisition, another "Congratulations on your purchase" card, warranty and manual and a New Toy.

    (If it could somehow also improve the airline coffee or food that might do the trick ;-) )