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Very interesting meeting with my customer today. I didn’t expect the owner of the company to pop-in, but I’m glad he did – I ended up getting some more programming work out of the meeting – always good. He and the comptroller were pretty taken with all the tablet PCs. It is not often that you get to play with 4 totally different tablet PCs without attending a trade show.

They were both immediately taken with the TC1100 – their overall favorite. They were majorly bummed when I told them that HP had discontinued the model – they loved the size and hybrid aspect. After the TC1100, their attention turned to the LE1600.

The Gateway M280 didn’t even raise an eyebrow for them – much too heavy and big.

The M200, although powerful enough, just wasn’t as “sexy” as the LE1600 and the TC1100. I get the feeling that the Thinkpad and TC4200 will go over like the M200 – nice unit, but it doesn’t “grab” them – too “me too” like. They mentioned “small” and “spy like” a lot . I explained the LS800 to them and they seemed kind of interested in it – although the performance was going to be a hinderance for them. They loved the fact that the extended battery of the LE1600 was “built in” – nothing to full with or worry about – I like that, too.

They will be retooling their entire operation next year and from what I gathered, Tablet PCs were probably going to account for 90% of their new computers., with the other 10% going to be high end Alienware notebooks for engineering purposes.

What I took away from the meeting is that slate tablet PCs with full docking station support will be important to them and will likely be where they end up. Most of the users will be customer service folks, purchasing managers, inventory managers, ceo, and comptrollers – lots of meetings and walking around the manufacturing floor. What I also took away from the meeting was that HP has REALLY messed up by not sticking with the TC1100 platform, addressing performance issues, and taking the platform to the next level.

Both men picked up the TC1100 by themselves without my handing it to them. After I handed the other tablet PCs to the them to hold, play with, etc, they would put them down and then move back to the TC1100. Very interesting.

# posted by Rob Bushway @ 11:09 PM