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Mobile worker – Real World Experiences

March 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

What are your experiences of using Tablets and Slates on a day to day basis?

We are aware of many trusts and organisations evaluating tablet and slate devices and we are very keen to share experiences of devices like our own SL8 Windows slate, ‘traditional’ tablet computers (laptops with rotatable touchscreens, iPads and Android slates.

We are primarily interested in experiences in the business context – running MS Office-type applications, line of business applications, accessing corporate information, inputting data into electronic forms etc,

If you are using a tablet or slate please add your thoughts and comments here, covering aspects of use including: [Read more...]

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Cloud2 and the Zoostorm SL8 in the news

March 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

We’ve been hitting the headlines (almost) again!

The Yorkshire Post have posted a full write-up of the article they printed last Tuesday 23/02/11 in which Simon was quizzed about how useful Tablet computers could be to the NHS and healthcare sectors.

In it, Simon said: “There is an awful lot of interest around iPads but there is limited ability to deliver them into the NHS because of the software they use. Instead, we are selling Windows tablets, which use all the existing applications you find on a normal PC.”

Read the full article here: Yorkshire Post

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Slate computing – real world experiences part 1

January 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Over the weekend I had to go through a stack of CVs and covering letters from some applicants to a marketing position we are offering.

SL8 for reading docs

Usually this would mean opening our review and feedback list on one screen of my 2 monitor main workstation and reading the CVs on the other monitor (we have our recruitment stuff all managed from the HR area in our SharePoint intranet, so we have a library of all the CVs etc. and a second list where we rate them and make a decision on who to invite for interview|), while also running Skype etc. ontop of one of these while talking to my co-director.

This time I opened the review list on the workstation as usual, but opened the document library on my SL8 slate instead, in portrait orientation. This was a masterstroke! A simple touch of the finger and each CV in turn opened (using Office web apps directly in the browser – very fast!) and let me rapidly read the document, scrolling up and down with a swish of the finger while making notes and rating choices the other PC. [Read more...]

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Tablets Will Rock the Enterprise This Year

January 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A recent Deloitte prediction suggests that organisations will buy on the order of 10 million tablets this year, with the healthcare and retail sectors alone accounting for 5 million of these.

Deloitte also points out that half of all computing device sold around the world in 2011 will not be personal computers. PC sales are predicted to be around 400 million units, but the combined sale of smartphones, tablets and netbooks are set to be greater still.

We are moving away from a (often shared) general purpose computer to multiple devices per person each witha specific function, largely based on form factor.

It’s a new world out there; get ready…

Links:

Windows Slates

Source news article

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Windows Slates – the good, the bad and the ugly

January 10, 2011 By 16 Comments

With stocks of the Zoostorm SL8 properly in the UK (but not the docking station yet – hmmm), we are gaining an appreciation of the good and bad points of these devices.

We will add to these as we go along and include comments from customers as we hear them.

What we like about the Windows slate

Super portable – it slips nicely inside an A4 zip folder and weight is about the same as a decent pad of paper. It’s also very unobtrusive – lovely for taking notes and reading information while talking to people and as good as a pad of paper in terms of not getting between you and the other person. [Read more...]
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SharePoint on mobile devices

January 6, 2011 By 3 Comments

As the world becomes increasingly mobile we note that there are now options for accessing SharePoint using a variety of mobile devices.

The most obvious is to simply use a browser. Most Smartphone browsers are now very capable of opening SharePoint sites. However some struggle with showing a Windows login, so often a forms log in option needs to be provided by the site administrator. [Read more...]

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First experiences with the SL8 slate

December 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Having used a SL8 Slate extensively while stuck on various trains yesterday, first impressions are:

Thin, light and with proper connectivity

  • Great for accessing content
    • Ability to rotate between portrait and landscape is really useful
  • Better performance than expected
  • Light enough to carry and use
  • Slips easily inside an A4 folder
  • Runs all the standard apps fine
  • Some weaknesses around data input
    • The onscreen keyboard is weaker than the ones with iPad or Android
    • We are planning to evaluate pen input further, but the handwriting recognition using a fingertip is impressive
    • Some Windows application check boxes etc need to be bigger to aid entry
  • Wireless tethering to an Android phone works very well and may negate the need for the 3G option in many cases

[Read more...]

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