Just a brief (for me) update today, summarizing items for this week.
MWC is going on in Barcelona - this is the show where most small mobile stuff is announced/shown/hyped (vs. CES in January, where the focus is a broad range of "Consumer Electronics - gadgets to Appliances to Cars, etc.) We will see a few more items announced/shown and some interesting details given out. Perhaps the most interesting to this particular thread is the announcement of the HP Spectre x360 which was previously covered by NDA. I do not have one of these myself, and I am relying on (now) published articles and some private conversations with trusted individuals who DO have one. This device is primarily "a Laptop than can handle some Tablet activities" - the converse to something like the SP3 - "a Tablet than can handle some Laptop activities." Like the Sp3, this devices features superb build quality and will come essentially Bloatware-free. HP worked behind the scenes directly with MS and Intel (among others) to populate the device with only what is needed - drivers that are tested to work best with the hardware, and just a few HP-branded apps. You'd think that this is how all PCs are done, but that simply isn't so, leading to many (most) machines being hamstrung by crapware, etc. Anyway, this device is so nice that even MacBook-toting "journalists" are finding it difficult to nopt admit that it is most (very) superior to the MacBook in the ways that matter to US (and even them.) I'm sure you can (and will?) read more by various reviewer types once you Bing/Google the device. I have a couple ordered and we should see them within the next two weeks. They are a Best Buy exclusive (plus HP-web direct) and the lack of Bloatware thing will be interesting to watch - we'll see how Best Buy reacts... FWIW, I ordered mine directly from HP to be safe, but folks may want to go by a BB sometime around mid-March to fondle...
So if it is such a great laptop (UltraBook, actually), why mention it here? Well, it is being advertised to be able to take advantage of a specific Active Pen made by HP, and thus could be considered by some here whom find this form factor attractive. The problem right now is that nobody I know actually HAS the pen and is testing it, so unless one of my sources is more adroit than I am in getting a shipping device, we'll have to wait until mine comes in for testing this particular feature. I have high hopes but as usual, we'll see...
This week I am also testing the Lenovo "AnyPen" tech to tally the pro and con items. So far, it is mostly "pro" with a few caveats - mainly stuff that one should already know/realize... That is, "AnyPen" means you can use virtually anything to interact with the screen - a graphite pencil (my favorite so far), finger, even a knife blade or scissors - but it is not the same as using an actual Active Pen. Hence, there are things that you can do with Active Pen that you simply cannot do with a "dumb" stylus-type device, but this confuses some people. Anyway, they are different and I'm finding it interesting to work with both after using Active Pen for so long. To date, it is only available on an 8" device (one of my faves. despite the paltry 2 GB RAM - why, oh why, Lenovo!?!) but if successful, I see no reason this tech cannot be offered on larger (and smaller) devices. I'm hoping it is, despite the predictable confusion by some...
Hope this helps for now. More to follow if desired. The past 10 days has been hectic for me - too many items on my plate - but I foresee a few of them dropping off by this weekend, so I should be less bandwidth challenged soon ;-)
-Randall Garrett-
+Apex Software+
/end/
that's very tempting and I don't even need a 7" tablet, but it might make a good gift for a friend.....You should get a commission from them 
