I'm ready to throw in the towel and just decline any form of Windows Client application if the client has their mind set on creating the worlds greatest application and decide that they should have full control of the OS.

My search for the best tablet pc to write on continues, and this time the subject is the Asus T101MT

The T101MT is an 10 inch SVGA widescreen (1024x600) Intel Atom N450 powered Netbook class PC so it's basic performance parameters are pretty much the same as any of the recent N450 Netbooks such as the Lenovo S10-3T.

Inside it looks pretty plain and simple with not much in the sense of bells and whistles. You get a Chiclet style keyboard.

Which I can't tell you how well it works because I have been running an experiment to keep off the keyboard for as long as possible. As is typical for convertible Tablet PCs, the screen hinge rotates in only one direction.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term Tablet PC, that means the T101MT's screen can be folded 180 degrees and closed down on the keyboard to become a writing pad.

Unlike the Lenovo S10-3T though the Asus T101MT reaches the This feels quite a bit heavy region due partly to the higher capacity battery.

Depending on your usage and how you choose to throttle the CPU using Asus's Super Hybrid Engine app, you should be able to get around 3 ~ 4 hours of battery life.

The Asus T101MT does not have an accelerometer and thus doesn't do auto screen rotation (which I absolutely HATE!) Instead you press and hold on to a button beside the power button to rotate the screen.

As it is a full sized netbook, the Asus T101MT doesn't skimp on ports. You get all 3 USB ports in total, and the whole shebang of standard connectors at the back.

The main exhaust port is on the left side, along with the audio out and SD Card slot.

And now for the people who are interested in modding the T101MT, the bottom panel.

After I went through the shock of not seeing the usual regulatory stickers, Windows key stickers, serial number, etc. etc. (they're all under the battery) I noticed the lone panel on the back. That's the EXTRA memory slot. The Asus T101MT ships with 1GB of RAM... INSIDE the system underneath the keyboard, also known as the serious modders access only location. So you can add one extra GB of RAM while the additional slot, problem is that... because there's already one piece of RAM in the system, any other piece you get would have to work well with the preexisting one, so be sure to boot into Windows and crunch some numbers when buying additional RAM to ensure that the new RAM you bought works fine with the existing one.

Asus is not scared of Steve Jobs whole It's Wrong To Have A Stylus spew, and has a magnetic stylus silo on the right side of the screen.

Not just any cheap piece of plastic, it has a metal body giving it weight and feels like you're holding a real pen.

And it extends to a more reasonable pen like length.

And now let's talk about the touch screen, now we come to the one reason that I was willing to go through the wrath of my wife screaming "You bought ANOTHER ONE?!?!?!" to get the Asus T101MT. My whole purpose in getting Tablet PCs is to find that best machine to bring to meetings, write notes on, and brain storm on. And the Asus T101MT's touchscreen is almost close to being the perfect thing to write on.

First of all, it's a resistive screen instead of a capacitive one. Not as good as a real digitizer but a resistive screen is much better to write on than a capacitive one as I mentioned here.

Then it has 2 point multitouch so once app developers finally start making mutlitouch aware apps for Windows 7 you can use them properly.

But those reasons are not what tipped the scales in favor of risking the wrath of my wife vs living a calm peaceful life. What tipped the scales was that.

The Asus T101MT's touchscreen has PALM REJECTION.

I've seen palm rejection in resistive touchscreens before with my Fujitsu P1610 and U1010. They worked, but still left quite a bit to be desired.

After testing the Asus T101MT's palm rejection in the shop, I knew that I had to have it! While testing it in the shop I found that it could detect the palm and reject input from it 95% of the time! So I was elated when I found that out.

The main difference between the T101MT's palm rejection and the previous ones I used was that you have to specifically turn it on by running a program which Asus docks to the task bar. That's probably why it works so well, because in previous cases the touchscreen was basically trying to guess between what's valid input and what's not. Whereas for the T101MT the user specifically tells it that they ONLY want stylus points to be detected and nothing else.

As I was writing around in OneNote and in Journal I suddenly noticed something, my ink input looked different... it looked as if... the touchscreen was supplying Windows with PRESSURE INFORMATION!

Which means that not only did the touch screen do palm rejection, it was pressure sensitive as well! Which made it a very interesting touch screen indeed, and such an interesting touch screen deserves a video!

But... alas it is still not perfect, while the palm rejection works very well, it seems to falter at times, and fails to detect pen inputs. Not enough to call it a failure, but enough for me to get nit picky about. Still, it is by far the BEST Palm Rejection I've used outside of a digitizer! And that's saying a lot!

After using the T101MT, I sincerely wish that Asus is gonna put this same touchscreen (or an even better one!) on their Windows 7 powered slates in the future (hopefully something that's 10", anything bigger is too bulky to be called a pad).

So what's the verdict? If you're looking for an affordable tablet pc to write on NOW, I don't see why the Asus T101MT won't work for you. If you can wait, there should be better things come in the future, and of course if you have the money. You can go for one of the tablets which offer a hybrid digitizer for the BEST writing experience!

Toys are interesting things, and I like to buy toys which seem to have uses sort of funky technology application or systems design. Because it's always neat that sometimes you see some interesting application of tech and design on something that's designated as a toy. But I guess the things I've been working on for the past few weekends don't exactly count as toys. First of all there's this.

This is a Kamen Rider Double Cyclone Joker 1/8 SCALE MODEL. If you still don't get it.. it's a MODEL, as in cut from plastic frames and build up with your own bare hands type of scale model. But.. from a far it looks just like any other toy statue figure, on close inspection though.

You can see where I cut the parts from the frame, the flaws of the middle black line, the decals, etc. etc. So why did I get this? Quite simply I wanted to see why the heck is Bandai getting into this market, because I had one question in my head. Which was there're many many MANY MANY companies that make figures and other collectibles, and they pride themselves in making detailed figures. So why is Bandai making a line that's basically requires the customer to try and make a figure look as good as the others? Because unpainted and unfinished, a model will never be able to compete with a retail figure.

After completing this model though I guess I can see some of the appeal, first of all the figure is HUGE!!!! It is at 1/8th scale, which makes it stand at about 24CM high. It's actually quite posable given the fact that it's just a model. Secondly, If I had the proper equipment and skills to finish the model properly it's basically cheaper than a model that stands this high.

While there is value here if you are the type that builds models, if you're more of the I'd like to have to cool figure to put on display you should probably avoid this even if you really like the character.

And at the same time I got the Kamen Rider I also got this.

It's a GUNDAM! I never thought I'd get another Gundam in my life considering my previous experiences with them. Also I know I totally lack the skill to make a Gundam look decent. But... this is no ordinary Gundam model. This is a 1/144 REAL GRADE Gundam RX-78-2, it's a SMALL model, but the complexity, detail and posability of the model is very high!

You'll only feel astonished by the degree of posability if you're familiar with Gundam models in general. Detail wise, before painting the model already posses some nice detailing due to the use of different colored plastics.

And here's a Zoom.It version for people to see how detailed it is, and how crummy my decal job was.

It even comes with a CORE FIGHTER! (Again... only Gundam fans would appreciate this).

And it's a WORKING CORE FIGHTER! (Wheels have to removed though)

But.... the instructions to make the Core Fighter comes AFTER finishing the main model, and I couldn't for the heck of me remove the placeholder piece to insert the Core Fighter in, so I guess I'll just leave it outside.

Why did I get this? Was it for the detailing? No... I'm not a Gunpla enthusiast so I don't care about that. I was more interested in the fact that the joints, eg. knees, elbows, waist. are in COMPLETED form on the parts frame. You don't have to put the together, you just snap it off, trim off some places where they secured the movable bits and.. it's done! It's amazing to me since I'm still wondering how they manage to mold movable pieces of plastic together in the tree without increasing costs too much.

Even though it's small... or maybe because it's small, this was one HECK of a complicated model to make! Due to the misread of the instructions I accidentally broke an armour plating on the leg, and cut off something I should have pulled out! I haven't even stuck the stickers on yet! I'm no Gunpla enthusiast, but I guess if you want to get the gist of how complicated these things can get without having to shell out loads of money on a 1/60 PERFECT GRADE this would give you an idea of how much trouble the real enthusiast go through making their masterpieces. In total I think I spent half a day trying to put this thing together!

And.. quick size comparison picture

The Beam Saber is TALLER than the Gundam itself... does it have something to prove?

ps. I know... the lighting in these pics are HORRIBLE, I'm not used to either taking things that are this big and errr.. tall. And also things which are small and tiny. Come on.. look at my shooting setup? I guess I'd consider a lightbox if I actually make money off this site.

I've recently acquired what I must say is close to being the best affordable Windows 7 Tablet PC. And now I shall run an experiment, for the next 7 days, starting from yesterday I shall ONLY interface with the system using TOUCH ONLY, I will not type on the physical keyboard or track pad, by doing this I'll be able to then properly experience what's it like using a slate Windows 7 PC and how is the user experience.

This experience will definitely help add some weight to the statement which I've always been saying, that while the Windows 7 OS is quite Touch friendly and capable, the APPS aren't. So stop blaming the OS for not being touch friendly.

First thing I did yesterday after installing Windows 7 Ultimate on the thing (Cause I'm testing driver compatibility as well, so I'm booting from VHD) was to perform my touch optimization settings.

So let's see how long I can last without touching the physical keyboard!

I decided to go for a little test run to try and see how to best get 3D effect pictures with the Sony NEX, 3D effect here being that when you view the photos with a compatible viewer and glasses such as Stereo Photo Maker

http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stphmkr/index.html

For each pic below I'll also include the link to the MPO so you can view the thing in actual 3D.

Now instead of calling it 3D, I'm gonna be using the word POP, cause that's the effect I get when I see it. The images aren't really 3D, it's just an effect, and the effect is how the images POP out of the screen towards you.

First... remember that from the shooting tips on the camera :-

• Your subject should be at least 3M away from you, too close or too far means no 3D effect.
• Stationary subjects work the best.

My addition to the rule is

It's hard for the camera to seamlessly join a large long object when you do panoramic sweeps, such as a long sofa or a wall, move very slowly and keep your hand level if your subject is like that.

 
MPO : http://cid-9d81d8eb3fbbb0ea.photos.live.co...ts/DSC00331.MPO

The BEST way to get pictures that POP, is when you have things that overlap each other in different depth areas, when you view the picture above in 3D, notice that the slide on the left pops a little, where as if you look at the archway, and then the gate behind it, you can feel that one is in front of the other.

 
MPO : http://cid-9d81d8eb3fbbb0ea.photos.live.co...ts/DSC00332.MPO

This picture demonstrates 2 things, first being that because the dustbin has nothing close to it to make it pop, there's not much 3D effect there. But there's some if you look closely.

2nd is that, remember you can take 3D shots in 3 sizes, 16:9, Standard, Wide. In terms of angle and arc, Standard is about 180 degrees, Wide is about 270 degrees, 16:9 is errr... 45 degrees? Basically while you'd use standard and wide for scenary, if you needed to take a 3D photo of a SINGLE OBJECT, switch size to 16:9 focus lock on the subject, tilt the camera to the left abit then fully depress and start sweeping right. After practicing a few times you should be able to get your subject in the middle sweet spot for 3D pop.

MPO : http://cid-9d81d8eb3fbbb0ea.photos.live.co...ts/DSC00347.MPO

This is a good example of how when you take panorama pictures try to make sure your scene works well with a single exposure setting. half of the scene was in shade, half was not, since I started from the shade part, the unshaded parts are over exposed... But.. this is not a post about shooting tips, its about making POPing 3D pictures!

MPO : http://cid-9d81d8eb3fbbb0ea.photos.live.co...ts/DSC00349.MPO

When viewing in 3D you can see the proper depth difference between the front and rear chairs, so you get POP!

MPO : http://cid-9d81d8eb3fbbb0ea.photos.live.co...ts/DSC00357.MPO

Ok, last one, just a simple scene, but the stone markers and tree around the area give each other the POP feeling.
Hope my little experimental afternoon helps everyone understand how to make pictures with 3D POP effect, oh in case you're wondering I'm looking at them with RED/BLUE glasses since I dont have any 3D hardware.