Tablet PC Buzz

C3500 - Need input

I bought one of these last night after years of wanting a tablet. Now I'm wondering if I made a mistake. I have the option to return without the restocking fee since the box was beat up and it was the last one.

My issues are:

The fan is loud even after I downloaded Speedswitch.

DVD/CD makes high pitched whine that made me wanna toss it out the window.

The pen feels funky and I hate that it shows a point on the screen when I am writing, but being new to a tablet I don't really know what to expect from this.

I guess I wonder if I should take it back before it spontaneously combusts after reading all the mixed reviews...anybody really just LOVE it? And, how is it holding up over time?

I had a much more detailed message but I was unable to post the first time...operator error;) and am too frustrated to write it all again.

Comments are welcomed by this tablet newbie...

Sky

Ram upgrade for Averatec 3500

Just bought the Averatec 3500 for school and love it. It has worked perfectly for my needs. For anyone who knows more about laptops than I do. What type of RAM goes into the Averatec 3500. I can't seem to find that information anywhere. I want to upgrade to Gig ram.

3150 "North Bridge Fan Error Message"

Hello, very new to the group. I have an Averatec 3150. I have
had it close to about a year now. I keep getting an error message
that says to check the "North Bridge Fan".

I hope someone can enlighten me with just a little insight.

Sorry if this is old news, I just found the fourm.

Thankx in advance.
Hebus-[thumbsup]

Averatec C3500 Good for Artists? You bet!

Seeing the massive number of posts bashing the Averatec, for once here is a post praising it! I purchased my C3500 Tablet PC approx. 2-3 weeks ago. Being primarily a digital artist, the concept of a tablet PC appealed to me greatly, however being a 16 year old highschool student, the price tag associated with them kept me at bay. That is, until the Averatec came out. I went to Circuit City to check it out, and while thier floor model was not functional (the pen wasn't communicating with the digitizer at all, for some reason) I decided to grab one anyway because at approx. $1300, it's the only Tablet PC I can afford. I was weary of it, and questioned whether or not it would be capable of handling the massive digital artwork files which I produce (usually 4000x2500 or larger, at 300DPI+). I had read numerous reviews that said that the C3500 was far below par when it comes to artistic use. I find that I PREFFER to use my C3500 over my Wacom Intuos 2 actually.

So I set out to see for myself, and lo and behold, it works great! I really can't figure out why folks around here bash it so much, since it's an excellent machine. It's sturdy. I've taken it to school numerous times and it's survived quite well. Kids groped the screen, trying to figure out the whole 'touch screen' concept, they twisted the screen around, folded it, opened it back up, and so on so many times that I lost count, and yet the machine's still in one piece (Save for a few scratches on the back, but who cares about that?) The battery life is decent; I get around 3 and a half hours of life out of mine. Compared to the mere hour or so that I was able to get out of my old Powerbook G3 laptop, 3.5 hours is great! As for running too hot, yes, the C3500 DOES get hot, but it's far from enough to bother me.

Now onto the Digitizer. I have no real complaints with it. It runs smoothly, and while it's a drag that Photoshop doesn't recognize the pressure sensitivity, that doesn't keep me from creating artwork with it. Here's an image which I finished today that was created using only my Averatec C3500 and Photoshop CS. No Wacom.

"Devotion"
4400x2597 @ 300DPI
Photoshop CS + Averatec C3500 Tablet PC
[img]http://starfinder.biz/sf-devotion.jpg[/img]

And here is a photo of a image I created within an hour of having purchased my C3500, as a test.

[img]http://starfinder.biz/photos/tabletpc6.jpg[/img]

All in all, I think the C3500 works great for artists, it's all a matter of the artist's skill level. A talented illustrator can make a masterpiece with a pack of Crayolas, or a $200 set of FaberCastel Colored pencils.

I for one love my Averatec C3500. It was a well spent $1300.

I feel sorry for all of you buying Averatec Tablets

I test equipment that our business is evaluating for purchase and I rushed out to Costco and bought one a few weeks after they became available.

My LONG TERM test results.

1) Technical support coverage can be spotty.

2) Warranty coverage can be dicey as well, we get different messages from different people on what things are covered by warranty.

3) Warranty repairs sound like they could be troublesome as well. Slow return times, can't swap good machines for bad, they tell me that we would violate the warranty if we swap out hard drives from good hardware to bad.

Now for the HARDWARE problems

NOTE: Though I have been testing it for my company I have NOT done any of the possibly destructive testing that I normally would as the machine seems to be fairly fragile. I have treated it pretty gingerly and better than I suspect that field techs or our sales people would.

1) The machine puts off a lot of heat. Much more than other low power utilization tablets or laptops. This seems to be causing problems with other hardware components.

2) Battery life is taking a nose dive. :( Battery life on the thing was not stellar to begin with but after having it only 3 months is has measurably been reduced by 40%. Lithium Ion batteries are very sensitive to heat, excess heat not only makes a given charge last a shorter period of time BUT AS WELL accelerates the aging process of the battery reducing capacity. The batteries in the thing get unacceptably hot.

3) 2 Weeks after I had the thing a crack showed up in the hinge connecting the lid to the keyboard. I was being careful with it.

4) There is a problem with the display, it is getting occasional horizontal lines in the display. Perhaps heat related.

5) When the machine has been on for about 30 minutes, gotten warmed up... The sound will start having very loud clicks sneak during playback. Heat Related.

6) At 2 months another crack has shown up, this time in the case above the battery charging mechanism. Heat again.

7) The video card has problems displaying moving objects, movies, flash, animations, in any orientation other than the "normal" landscape.

8) It takes a proprietary pen, not a standard Watcom digitizer. Alternate pens are not readily available from 3rd parties and replacement pens are difficult to get from Averatec. DON'T LOSE YOUR PEN!

I could go on and on. My summation of this product from the symptoms that I have seen and my several years of experience evaluating laptops...

It gets too hot in normal usage... This will cause components to fail and batteries to wear out faster.

Cheap components were used, they will fail quicker than high quality components. The high heat will make this even worse.

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT... They used cheap plastic and poor injection molding techniques to make the case. Especially considering that it is a convertible tablet over time the case will virtually disintegrate. I have seen this happen time and again with poorly designed laptops.

Don't just run away from this product, run away fast. You would be much better off spending more money on a product that is reliable or buying a used product.

should i get an averatec or a Toshiba

I am looking for an new tablet and the averatec c3500 and the Toshiba m205
cought my eye.
im just wondering witch would be better.
I have heard some mixed blessings on the averatec but for a price so close to $1,000
its almost hard to pass up where as the Toshiba is almost $2,000
i would be useing for school and some dvd watchng o and a little starcraft
thanks

upgrade of averatec 3150

i've had an averatec 3150 for over a year now so the warranty period has expired. have had no major issues with it, and am quite happy. my 2 questions are: 1. i want to replace the processor with a faster one but don't know how fast i can go. any ideas? 2. i wanted to put in a different hard drive so that i could 'experiment' with linux and not mess up my existing setup. but the bios does not seem to recognize the new hard drive, even on auto setting.. i tried using the user defined setting also, but that didn't work. any ideas with that?

thanks for any input..

transferring tablet specific files between computers

Hi,
I am planning to transfer the unique files generated by my tablet PC to another. I have added many words to the pen generated vocabulary over the past 5 months. I want to be able to use these in my new computer as well without recreating them one by one.

What files should I transfer? ( I do not want to "Ghost" image the entire Hard drive).

[?]Thanks,

Bob Langston

My Diary of averatec 3500

I bought this item from Samsclub.com
with 3 years of service agreement.

Day 1: Unpacking (12-23-04)
I received the item when it was -5F outside.
(The item has been left it outside for 10 minutes which I believed.)
I observed that the seal has been torn before I opened the box.
In the box what I found were battery,3 averatec recovery media CDs, 3500 in the plastic bag and power cable.
I didnt see Tablet PC system disk and One Note CD.
I have to go... I will come back and finish it.

c3500 asp.net logon problems

Hello all,

I will take this time to congratulate myself on my purchace of a brand new averatek c3500 tablet pc (cuz I couldn't justify spending 3 times as much on a M200 and have it also be outdated when dual core proc's and a 64 bit wintablet[borg] hits the market)

so far so good, (5 hours and counting, upgrading windows and the anti-virus) but I have, since the first logon, had to click on an ok button that I can't explain.

it comes up cuz winxp trys to auto login an account called asp.net (something), so I wen't to user options and turned the accound off. now it trys to do the same thing with the admin account (I don't wanna turn that one off too :-) )

I remember a check box somewhere where the option of autologing in can be turned off from.

Just wondering if anyone else has had this happen to 'em,

-El Franko a.k.a. that one guy