Tabletology reviews Electrovaya Scribbler SC 3100, Part 2: pen and paper

Okay, now the pressure is on.

People (aka Warner Crocker at gottabemobile.com) expect us to produce a serious review. Enough of the glamour shots. No more Scribbler with flowers and sunsets and ravines.

We were struck in reviewing the Scribbler how tough it must be to be a Tablet PC designer. Just because everything comes together in one neat little package in a Tablet PC (see perfect egg, here), so customer preference speaks at a hundred different points.  

In regular life, I have a computer; then if I want a thick pen or a thin pen, a heavy pen or a light pen; if I want glossy paper or a nice linen, I go out and buy them. But when I choose my tablet, I choose not just my computer but all these very personal things.

First Impressions

The Scribbler has the feeling of a hefty notepad lying on the knee. It’s a larger unit than the TC1100, with a 12.4" screen instead of the 10.4" we’ve had to accustom ourselves to in the last two years. The fact that the TC1100 does the smaller screen with the same number of pixels gives it a super-crisp visual appeal that we love, but there is a lot to be said for having that much more screen. I (Lyn) found myself reaching for the Scribbler to read and take notes over the TC1100 during its visit to our house, in order to have that extra space. And you get it for almost the same weight–3.5 lbs for the Scribbler vs. 2.9 lbs in the slate mode for the TC1100.

It writes a little different from the TC1100. It makes a scribble scribble sound, consistent with the name ‘Scribbler.’ We liked the drag and the nice feel of friction of the pen on paper, compared to the glossy feel of the TC1100 (of which we’ve never been great fans). I also picked it up for notetaking during its visit to enjoy the feel of the stylus on the screen.

The speakers get big points from us. We’ve grown accustomed to having the TC1100 talk into our bellies, with the speakers on what is the bottom edge when in slate and portrait modes. But it’s still a little odd. Kind of like some strange alternative medicine vibration healing thing. The Scribbler puts the sound where you want to find it: out into the air, travelling to your ear.

The stylus holder, however, is slightly less logical. If you hold the tablet in slate and portrait modes, the pen is awkwardly located on the left bottom side. As a right-handed person, I have to hold out the tablet forward with my left hand and remove the pen with my right hand. This feels strange and non-intuitive. I also worry that the pen will fall out, though it seems fairly secure in the holder.

Indeed, while Electrovaya, unlike HP, figured out that we didn’t want the sound projecting into our stomachs, they somehow thought we’d like to draw out the pen that way.

In landscape mode, it was somewhat less odd, because then the pen would be at the top left–still a reach across with the right hand, but the same as the primary landscape orientation on the TC1100.

(Of course, you have the four orientations available so you can turn things around–but then all the other buttons end up not in their intuitive places, and screen quality isn’t quite the same if it isn’t in primary portrait or primary landscape.) 

It really made us think about the development of tablet technology. Because people have such personal relationships with their Tablet PC and with writing implements, one shouldn’t really have to choose one’s tablet based on the thickness of the pen. It does seem that you can use digitizer pens interchangeably–the TC1100 pen on the Scribbler, for instance–but then it doesn’t store inside the unit, which does seem necessary, given how costly the pens are and how useless the tablet in slate is without one. Perhaps some day the market will be big enough that many other manufacturers will be making many different pens to fit each tablet…ah sweet dreams….

Keep tuned for more review to come…

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 22nd, 2006 at 7:26 pm and is filed under Tablet PC Reviews, Electrovaya Scribbler SC 3100. 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.