I’ve been working pretty hard on a few projects as of late, and that generally results in my taking mini-breaks by wandering around my room and tidying things up. It’s started to seem pretty ridiculous to me that I have so many papers. When writing, it’s just easier to brainstorm and work out outlines with a notepad and a piece of paper. It might not be as fast and the result is quite a bit harder to read, but it’s just easier for some reason.

But now I have filing cabinets full of papers. I’d like to throw them all away, but I’m certain they all contain valuable information. I’ll probably end up scanning them over time and putting them into pdfs. If I just had a tablet that handled handwriting decently that would be awesome.

As most regular readers know, I’ve recently bought the awesome Nokia N900. What many of you may not know it that I’ve been internally debating buying a N900 or an Asus T91. The decision was made for me when I heard of the Viliv S10, which looks like it’ll be cooler than the T91 and cheaper than the Toshiba Touchnote. Problem is, the damned thing was supposed to come out last year.

Like the Asus Eee T91 and the Toshiba Gigabyte, the Viliv S10 is a tablet netbook which has a screen that can fold like a standard laptop or netbook, but can also be rotated around. When folded “shut” the touchscreen is facing up, so that it can be used like a slate.

A resurgence of news announcing it’s impending release circulated the internet in early January, with specs that seem a little better than what was boasted for Q4 2009, so the delay might have been serendipitous.

I know I’m notorious for a secret hatred of any netbook over 9″. The fact that 12″ laptops are sometimes considered netbooks just rubs me the wrong way. My Eee 901 is the perfect size, I just need a rotating tablet screen and some more power in there and I’d be content. Actually, I don’t even need more power, it’d just be nice.

For me, the perfect netvertible would have a removable battery, an active digitizer (for inking), and one of those awesome new panels where the pixels can enter a reflective mode for using in direct sunlight (like Pixel Qi’s) and would have a 9″ screen. Seeing that no netvertible that I’m aware of has an active digitizer, and 9″ form factors as well as removable batteries are going the way of the dinosaur, I suppose I shouldn’t hold my breath. We’ll see how prevalent dual-colorscale reflective screens get.

Of course, there’s the best possible device, then there’s the best device available, and the Viliv S10 looks to be the best device available if and when it’s released. The iPad isn’t really an option, because I’d like a full keyboard. I can type 80wpm on a netbook, I don’t really want to give that up.

So I’ve finally found an excuse to use the service Google Alerts. Basically you give them a search term, and if they run across that term during their standard web-crawlings they give you a link either by email or through a custom feed.

I’ve had an alert set for the S10 for a few days. I’ve gotten a handful of results, mostly from sites that are either poaching information or just late to the S10 party, so no new information. Hey, I was late to the party too, I just found out about this device a few weeks ago.

All in all the service is pretty much exactly what I expected. I’m sent a link and an excerpt that is seemingly identical to Google’s own search results. It’s just a real-time Google search that tells you as soon as anything new comes up, after all. Pretty cool, when you think about it, though I pity any poor bastard that has an alert set for “iPad” right now. Talk about flooded.

Google Alerts are also great for ego surfing, so I’m told. Come to think of it, won’t this site now appear in my alerts? Cool.

Now hopefully when a release date is set for the S10, I’ll be among the first to know.

Lark

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 6:57 pm and is filed under Multimedia, Personal, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.