[100202]
Comics done through 548, little progress on 549.
I actually caught up to my “storyboard” with 549. I “planned” about ten pages ahead around Thanksgiving last year, and I think I did a fairly good job following the plan. I’d like to make the planning more comprehensive, though; I want to be able to just “draw through” the thing when I feel like drawing; at this point I’m still finding myself skipping panels that I didn’t like too much or thinking about how a certain panel should really go.
So I need to plan another ten pages or so, and may not get anything drawn for a bit. Been doing pretty well doing a page a week this year, though.
I figured I better write about something this week. Last two weeks were busy; this one seems to be letting up a bit. I ran this by J as I usually do, and he said I should talk about the iPad. That’s actually not a bad idea, but I’m a little loathe to jump onto the waves and waves of iPad discussion that’s swamping the Internet. I also think it’d be better to actually *use* the thing before writing about it.
So no iPad, at least not until someone I know gets one and I can take a look, but I can write about another, somewhat related, piece of hardware that passed through my hands recently.
I wrote about my experience with the Dell XT back in d228, and how it really failed to live up to my expectations. I never really meant to keep my TC4200 for that long; I’ve been looking for something thinner, faster, lighter, etc, for almost as long as I’ve had it, and recently I had the chance to test another candidate.
As I’ve mentioned, I really wanted a Dell tablet for power supply compatibility among other things, but I’ve had to kick the XT2 off the candidate list because of the silly ntrig digitizer, which will not work with OpenCanvas or PS or several other graphics programs all for the same of multitouch, for which I really couldn’t give a damn. Still less than stellar battery and display, and the high cost… c’mon Dell, what’s up with that.
ThinkPad laptops have a good thing going for them in that they have a working third-party fan control software, which should eliminate the noise factor for me. The third-party fan control software for Dell stopped development in 2007, which is another load of fail. TP tablets also still use Wacom, but I can’t stand the TP lack of a touchpad, or their silly placing of the ctrl key. The X201t might be looking different, but it’ll be a long time before the price drops enough such that I consider buying one.
It seems to me that around $600 to $700 is about when I’ll consider buying something like a tablet these days, so when I was able to find the HP 2370p for around there, I decided to give it a spin.
The 2370p is three generations down from the TC4200 (TC4200 -> TC4400 -> 2710p -> 2730p; J’s HP is of the same generation as the TC4400), but there’s a fairly radical break in stlying between the TC4400 and the 2710p. It ticks most of my boxes; the Wacom digitizer, thinner and lighter than the TC4200, better specs including battery life, a touchpad (albeit a puny one), and even a ThinkLight!
I pretty much got a unit with base specs, but I don’t really need more. SU9300 is plenty fast enough for everything that I need, and so is 2GB of memory. Yeah, 1.8″ hard drives are pieces of junk, but I was going to get a real SSD anyway. The downgrade in USB ports is somewhat of a fail (3 on the TC4200 to 2 on the 2730p; seriously, they decided to add FireWire. Who the fuck uses FireWire?), and so is the small touchpad, but honestly, I could’ve dealth with those…
Alas, the fan operation was unacceptable. To make a long story short, I was absolutely certain that the SU9300 would remain cool enough for passive operation under almost all normal circumstances, but the fan kicks in at such low temperatures this doesn’t happen. If there was working HP fan control software, I’m fairly certain I would have finally been weaned off the TC4200. I just wish manufacturers wouldn’t pull this kind of shit.
Combined with the fact that I’d have to get new heads for my universal adapters, a new SSD, and maybe even a new secondary battery, I decided that the total cost of ownership was just too much. So once again, I’m sticking to the TC4200. It’ll be four years for the machine and two years for me come March/April. I made a profit on the sale, though 
The next thing on my hit list is probably the x201t, but for now it looks like the TC4200 will go into its third year…
Ok, that’s all for now.
