advertisement

Ask CNET Asia

Find Products

  • Brand
  • Notebook type
  • Processor
  • Diagonal screen size
  • Weight w/battery
  • Dedicated GPU
  • Filter »

Price Guides

Buying Advice

Editors' Top 5s

CNET Features

 

Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 (Crusoe 1GHz, 256MB RAM)

 Print    Email     Bookmark     Share



List price as of Nov 7, 2002:
S$3999

First Take


Editors' note:
The Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 is now available in most parts of Asia-Pacific. The unit that CNETAsia previewed was an engineering sample with "raw" hardware. We will reserve comments about build quality, hardware glitches and software bugs and instead focus on features, which we assume will work in the shipping unit. We will bring you a review of a shipping unit once we receive a set.

...

Read first take of the Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 (Crusoe 1GHz; 256MB) »

 

Average User Rating


 

How would you rate this product?

 
 

First Take

By John Lui
Nov 7, 2002

Editors' note:
The Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 is now available in most parts of Asia-Pacific. The unit that CNETAsia previewed was an engineering sample with "raw" hardware. We will reserve comments about build quality, hardware glitches and software bugs and instead focus on features, which we assume will work in the shipping unit. We will bring you a review of a shipping unit once we receive a set.

Click here for a picture gallery of the new Compaq Tablet PC TC1000.

Of all the tablet PCs we've seen so far, the Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 covers the most bets. It's a Transformer-type gadget laden with latches, swivels and hinges that gives users the option of using it as a pure slate, an ultraportable notebook or a desktop PC, or a combo of the above.

Like the Acer tablet, it comes with a keyboard. But unlike the Acer, the keyboard can be snapped off should the user decide to use pen input only, turning the computer into a pure slate.

And like the Fujitsu tablet, it comes with an optional docking station that contains the optical drive, which the tablet itself lacks. Once the Compaq tablet is snapped into place, the swiveling arm that holds it can be lowered, so that the keyboard can rest flat on the table for typing. So there's no need to connect an external keyboard, as the Fujitsu requires users to do.

Jack-of-all-trades?
But it's the keyboard itself that can be considered the best, and also the weakest, feature of the Compaq tablet. By itself, the board is a thin, 0.5 cm thick slab that's only about 100 gm in weight, because all the major electronics--the processor, battery, hard drive--is located in the slate. When attached to the slate, the keyboard can be folded back for mobile use, or slid out for key input. It's truly a genius bit of origami engineering--it's designed so that it can still be used when the docking arm is hooked up.

But because it's designed to be so light and flexible, key travel is very shallow and the whole slab feels fragile. The latches that affix it to the slate are also a point of potential mechanical failure.

Power-saving Crusoe Chip
Unlike the other major tablet makers, Compaq has opted to use a Transmeta Crusoe 1GHz processor instead of a Pentium III mobile chip from Intel. The Crusoe is famous for not being power-hungry; this perhaps explains the rated 5 hour battery life claim from Compaq, compared with 3 or 4 hours from the other makers. Otherwise, the slate has the usual ports and quick buttons such as landscape-portrait orientation switching and tab (for traversing fields in online forms). The digitizing pen is a comfortably "fat" unit. However, there's no felt or rubber handgrip pad.

Compaq's tablet is an ambitious unit that breaks new ground, and is aimed at users who don't mind spending S$3,999 (US$2,221) for novel hardware.

 

Rate It Now

Rating guidelines

Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 (Crusoe 1GHz, 256MB RAM)
Rate this product:

Need help? Read our guidelines for what each number rating represents.

advertisement

Latest Downloads

  •   Automation Anywhere
  •   Absolute Uninstaller
  •   BackupFly
  •   Fresh Diagnose
  •   My Macros

More downloads »