i have had the best gadget related season, i have to admit. (although, none of these gadgets are in my possession yet :-p ). i have or will order both a new laptop and a new mp3 player.

the laptop story…
my mother and father have decided to give me a new laptop for christmas, so i have picked out a combo laptop/tablet. this is something i have been exploring a while, even since blogtalk when i saw martin using his. i tried one at bloggforum and fell in love with the ability to use it as a laptop, or scribble notes on it. the only problem i had with them was the limited power issue. when i did a little more ‘homework’, however, i realized that i can get a relatively light weight laptop with good power.

some of the aspects of a tablet versus a laptop i have considered…

*torill mentions using it as an alternative to a blackboard. i am not sure how well this would work. i was able to draw in pp in the create mode, but not in presentation mode. if you want to use it as a blackboard, it will not be seamless. perhaps there is software that will enable this, but none that i am aware of. at the moment, i think you will have to go back and forth between presentation and creation modes. is that more distracting than going back and forth to a physical blackboard? i am not sure. perhaps it is more disruptive because the use of a black/white board is part of our existing classroom ontology. but, if you introduce that mode of working, both the teachers and the students will adapt (if it is workable).

*an article i read (via lilia) was quite interesting and actually ‘compared’ the exact model i am buying with an ibm thinkpad, which is another i was considering. he also mentions something i noticed when taking notes in class one day. it is easier to listen and take notes in tablet mode than to type them in. he states that this is due both allowing for creative flexibility as well as:

personal effectiveness: research shows that if you use both hands to accomplish a task, a much larger percentage of your brain becomes engaged in that operation. typing with both hands tends to totally engage your brain in the typing activity and makes you visibly less tuned-in to the meeting. in contrast, writing with one hand during a meeting is second nature to most of us. the brain stays mostly engaged in the meeting activities. we all can take notes and participate in a meeting at the same time. using a tablet pc in a meeting is little different from this.

*things like weight and power were upmost in my mind. the toshiba i have chosen is 2 kilos with 1g of memory and 60gb hdd (7200 rpm). also, the tosiba has a really neat anti-theft/tracking system which tracks the computer when it is used. i am not sure if that is really neat or really scary from a data mining/big brother perspective.

so, long story short. i am very happy/excited about my choice of computers. when i actually get the computer, i will post more about how i feel about it’s usability.

the mp3 player story…
training for stockholm marathon can get, well, boring at times. it is nice to have music and audio books to distract me. i have successfully killed all of my players in one way or another. i had decided on an ipod, but was having a bit of trouble justifying spending that amount of money when i never even filled up the smaller player i had (before it died a horrible static electricity death). i knew that i wanted to listen to music, listen to audio books, and have the option to record. i started from the list of compatible audible players and went from there. i ended up choosing the creative nomad muvo tx fm 512mb usb 2.0. this seems to meet all my needs as well as my pocket book :-p . and i just saw that it has arrived at my post office 45 minutes ago! i will bring in my receipt and ask them to find it! (i don’t think they get to happy when i do that…)

ok, enough said. i am sure there will be more posts about these two pieces as i begin to play with them :-)