Motion Computing le1700 versus hp 2730p (or other options)

[Steve B]

Oh, what's the story on buttons? One of the nice "who would have guessed?" features of the 1700 is that it has an assortment of reprogrammable buttons. This is really great when I want to make shortcuts when using art programs. I basically don't need a keyboard at all. Can zoom and readjust pen size and undo all from the buttons. It seemed like the 2730p had a few buttons (for volume control and whatnot), but are they reprogrammable? I'm not sure if you really would know that.... ?? Since you're not using the tablet for art.

[Michelle Mastin]

The only buttons on the 2730p that are available in slate mode are screen rotate, esc, and the jog dial. I don't think any of them are reprogrammable. There's also an i button the side that I had forgotten about, but it only brings up the HP info center. I bet you could reprogram that one, but there's no quick and easy central interface for it like there is with Motion's dashboard thingy. Then again, I'm running a clean install of Windows 7 on mine and may be missing HP utilities that I didn't get around to installing.

Which reminds me, after using only Windows 7 on tablets, I'm now trying to use XP on the le1600 and it's awful. Stick with Windows 7. It's not just the better handwriting, it's just all around better. I'll try to get some screen comparison shots now, but the more you talk about what you want, the more I think the 2730p may not be the best for your needs. I think the Asus EP121 would have been a great choice except for the battery life. It's got a great screen, Wacom digitizer, core i5, 4GB RAM, but reports are coming in at barely 3 hours of battery.

[Michelle Mastin]

I just realized the EP 121 has no buttons, so maybe that's not a better option. Anyway, here are some screen comparisons. This is indoors with natural lighting only, a good bit of sun coming in, but no direct light on the screens. The 2730p is brighter head on, but the le1600 stays more readable farther off angle. I very much prefer the glass coating of the 2730p (and my TC1100 too for that matter) to whatever it is that covers the motion's screen. HP's glass is flush past the screen, while the Motion's screen is recessed in the bezel. The Motion shows fingerprints way worse than the HP.

[Steve B]

Yeah, I noticed the fingerprint issue as well, with my 1600. The 1700 has a matte finish, and that has been indispensable to using it regularly- fingerprints are no longer an issue. I have a new View Anywhere screen 1700 running XP that I just bought, so I'll be testing that out. I figure I can sell the 1700's if I don't like them, but I might as well give the real try with the best models I can find before I move on to a different form factor. We'll see what the comparison's like when I get them, but it shouldn't take more than a few days to figure out the difference.

Your comments re: running XP after having gone to Win7 is also interesting. I'll soon be doing that myself. My major desire was battery life. I figured that, hey, if they were advertising this thing with 3 hours of battery life back when they were marketing it, then it must have been able to get something close to it under the original conditions- i.e. running XP. Who knows though?
What was it that made XP seem so clunky? Is it slower? etc.? More lag when opening programs or booting up? etc.

It's a bummer about the lack of real, programmable buttons on the 2730p. It's not a deal-killer to me, but it's an issue to be weighed, particularly for what I'm using it for. You do get used to certain functionalities, once you find something that has them.

Oh, I've been reading about some major issues with pen calibration on the 2740p. Is this an issue with the 2730 as well? People talk about issues when you change orientation or when you come out of hibernation-- both things I do regularly. It seemed like there was some kind of update back around Thanksgiving. What's been your experience?

[Michelle Mastin]

My 2730 does have some issues with calibration in portrait mode. There's a lot of drift at the corners, that no amount of recalibrating will fix. But, as I'm mostly just using it for writing, it's not a big issue. I don't use hibernation, only standby, so I don't know of any extra issues caused by that.

About Windows 7, I guess part of it is that I've gotten used to it. The TIP keyboard is so much better in Windows 7. I tried to demonstrate Journal's ability to search handwriting, and it didn't find things because it didn't recognize my words correctly. I like the hover previews of windows from the taskbar. I like being able to pin programs to the taskbar and use the jump lists. Those are some things I miss when I'm working with XP.

[rastafett]

I'm a digital artist and have owned a number of tablets and convertibles. More recently I have had an LE1600 and loved it, sold it for an HP 2730p because it had 8gb of ram and was Wacom active. Well, I sold the HP three weeks into owning because the digitizer and the pointer icon have too much distance between each other and is a bit off kilter. I tried every way to Sunday to get it to line up but it comes down to the thickness of the LCD screen being wider than the Motion tablets, therefore making it impossible to completely line up if you drawing naturally. I now have my lovely Motion LE1700 dual core and it is nothing short of amazing! It really does everything that a digital artist could want with portability, speed and great screen real estate. Dont get me wrong, the HP 2730P is awesome, and runs Photoshop brilliantly, it's just not for a digital artist drawing direct. I own a Cintique and the LE1700 is by far the closet thing Ive come across.

[Steve B]

In the end, the real issue for me over the last year has been that I'd like a computer that I can use at work, outdoors, and that I'd like to use that same computer at home for art. That's been a difficult task to meet. I've decided I might be able to give up a keyboard if I could get used to using Dragon Naturally Speaking to dictate to my computer, but I still need a good outdoor-viewable screen, an ergonomic in-the-hand experience, a good button array for art programs, and atleast 3-4 hrs of battery life. So far, perhaps it's the Motion F5 (or its more expensive update) that's the only real option.

Besides that, I've wondered about a) modifying 1600 with LED versus CCFL bulbs, OR b) an le1700 Ultraview Anywhere, but with one core turned off so I could hypothetically get battery life more consistent with a 1600. Does that even work though?

As for the F5's, I discovered after some research that, at the end of their run, the F5's were upgraded to the very very good AFFS+ Gorilla Glass View Anywhere screens that are in Motion's current top-of-the-line F5v/C5v and j3400/3500's. They also got a slightly better 1.06 ghz core2duo, the ability to run 4GB of ram if you open them up, and have a very good array of hardware buttons (like all the Motion slates do). They're going for the price of a le1700 (500$ on ebay), and may be what I'll be trying out next. They're also all sealed up, and so can be used in wet and dusty conditions, which has some value to me as I've looked at stuff like the Asus ep121 and Samsun S7 slates, and have seen reports of how easily they break when dropped, etc. Their downside? A 10.4" 4:3 screen, instead of the very roomy 12.1" 4:3 screens on the 1600/1700's, and a bit thicker build.

The real issues I had with the 1700's that weren't answerable were that 1) it ran really pretty hot for me, 2) it got terrible battery life, and 3) it didn't have very good viewing angles. I think all of these problems are largely answered if you're using it as a mini-Cintiq, where, for example, you might be using it at a desk, plugged in, at the appropriate angle for ergonomic drawing. For that, I think it's a dream. It's powerful enough, has good res, is thin, has a good array of buttons in secondary landscape.

But I was never able to really use it in the field. It wasn't really bright enough for me to use outside in my job, and it's 1.5 hr battery life was just terrible terrible. And it did run really hot for me (and I owned three over the course of last year)- always in high 50's and into the low to high 60's. I tried to undervolt it, but the lower settings were disabled in RM Clock. I did, at one point, actually have an Ultraview Anywhere, which had the viewing angles of a 1600 mixed with the res of normal 1700's. It was a very nice screen. But I found it over priced, and I was still unable to use it for very long in the field, and it still ran hot.

I actually have been using a Lenovo x200t Superbright Outdoor for the last 9 months, which has been very nice in some ways, and not so good in others. Gorgeous bright screen that's very usable outdoors, powerful, and runs silent and cool with some mild tweaks (a SSD and using ThinkPad Fan Control). However, it's never really compared to the 1600/1700 as an art tablet. I guess in the end the ergonomics of thickness do actually matter when holding something in the hand mobilely. It also doesn't have a very good button array, nor does it have that very mild (yet wonderful) texture that the 1600/1700 screens have. The Motion slates are also rock hard, and make for a very nice writing surface. The Lenovos and Fujitsus that I've had all have had a bit more "give", and that's always made them not as nice to write on. Finally, the polarizing sheen (used to calm down outdoor reflections) the x200t produces is very unwieldy in portrait mode, and basically makes it non-usable in that mode. I love working in portrait orientation on my 4:3 le1600, and missed that.

I then tried a t5010 (too big), and have recently been playing around once again with an le1600. I would have picked the 1600 as my new main computer, but it's not really particularly usable outdoors. Yeah, you can sort of get by, not it's not that great. I've been spoiled by the x200t Superbright Outdoor. But the le1600 runs cool and quiet, and gets a reasonably consistent 3 hours of battery life running low power usage stuff at its Max Brightness. It's light and thin. Has great viewing angles. I don't need much in the way of processing power, so that's largely been ok. Outdoor viewability has been a problem though, and I really need that for work. I've thought of trying to mod it by installing one of these CCFL to LED kits, but am a little concerned, as I've seen no one do it yet. But that might answer some of the outdoor brightness issues it has.

And that's why, in the end, I'll be trying out an F5 next. What I've been wanting is essentially a 1600 with an Outdoor Viewable screen, and the F5's with the AFFS+ screens seem like the best fit, even with the smaller screen. We'll see though.