TABLET FOR DRIVER STATION

[JesseK]

I had this Lenovo netbook for a while. Off the shelf, it was awful where performance was concerned. Windows 7 isn't made for a touch device, so I wound up writing my own utilities in Java to launch applications, do some monitoring, etc. I also stuck a solid state drive in it, used a blank copy of Win7 Home (to get rid of the Lenovo crapware) and doubled its RAM for performance.

For FRC, that tablet is pretty good if a team knows how to program an interactive touch display. It's only slightly larger than the classmate. It can do dual touch (though getting that through to Java is next to impossible without custom JNI libraries). It's lightweight. Java can emulate several things, including a USB device or keyboard -- so it can replace a button board while also showing the state of the robot.

However, the interactive Java display can go on other displays as well. Look for other touch netbook convertibles, not just tablets. Having a netbook that works with Windows out-of-the-box will save you compatibility problems.

[daniel_dsouza]

We used this laptop-tablet this year: http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPa.../dp/B000RBB8YO

Our mentor just received his Alienware laptop, and decided to give us his 4 year old Thinkpad X61 tablet. Ours had a Core 2 Duo processor, 500GB, 2GB RAM and a special SSD memory device to boost top speeds. Needless to say it worked perfectly. Booting up took less than 20 seconds, and we could go from shutdown to field-ready in under a minute.

The only cons was that there was no DVD drive, you would have to buy the expansion base separately, and the screen was a little hard to see outdoors. Oh, and you could only input using the screen/stylus (which were surprisingly accurate), or the red trackpad thingy - there was no touchpad.

If you want to do a fresh install, all the current drivers (most updated in 2012) are easily available on Lenovo's site. Just make sure to install Wacom's special driver as well. Ebay prices are $400 - $700 depending on condition.

[SenorZ]

I've used a Lenovo ThinkPad X61-T for years as a classroom computer. They are rock solid, sturdy, and have plenty of upgradeable specs. They glass on the screen is really good too. After almost 5 years of writing with the wacom pen there are hardly any scratches. The "multi-touch" screens allow for human input as well.

[MAldridge]

I've seen teams use UMPC's before with mixed results. I personally have owned many tablets over the last few years. Currently I have two tablets a Fujitsu Stylistic 1440 and a Motion Computing m1200. I regularly use the m1200 to drive at demos, but it is rather finicky because the pentium series processor in it doesn't support SSE2 optimization.

Another computer of mine I use a lot is a Panasonic Tough book, they are small, practically indestructible and have a screen that spins around and then folds flat.

One thing you should be wary of is that because tablets don't look like normal computers, field personel may give you a hard time. Also, if anything goes wrong, you really won't be able to troubleshoot because a touchscreen display isn't that easy to navigate quickly, and the parallax on a pen driven display is even harder to work with in a fast and accurate way.