Acer C300 Tablet PC Review
I've had my Acer C300 Tablet PC for a few months now, so it's about time to do a review; especially given that I've been promising one for a while.
This entry is going to meander quite a bit. I'm not a professional reviewer/writer and I'm doing this in a rush between other stuff, so please bear with me. Feel free to ask questions or request clarification in comments. I'm going to assume you know the basics of the Tablet PC. If you would like more background on just what a Tablet PC is, you can visit the official Microsoft site. I should also state that I've been using Acer laptops exclusively for several years now, so it's difficult for me to compare against any other brands, Tablet or not.
My first experience with the Tablet PC was the Acer C100. l immediately saw the potential that the Tablet PC offered, but found that the C100 had some limitations that kept me from using it on a regular basis. For one thing I found it too small to use as my primary computer - I kept drifting back to my laptop for must computing, thus never having enough of my information on the Tablet to encourage its consistent use. Another contributing factor was the low memory capacity - 256MB maximum was just not acceptable. l wanted something that was either a simple slate, or a combination of a full-featured laptop and Tablet PC. When I saw the C300 announced as "the convertible Tablet that you'll want to use as your primary computer", I immediately ordered it, knowing it was the Tablet I was waiting for.
Here's a picture of the C300 next to the C100, and the C300 in laptop mode
Just so you know what my baseline expectations for a laptop are, here are the primary things I use my computer for:
Hardware
Here are the hardware specs of the C300 with some comments:
I'm quite happy with the processor speed. I was very happy with my previous 900MHz laptop, so this isn't terribly important to me.
It's good to see a laptop ship with a base of 512MB. I considered ordering my laptop with 1GB but didn't. I now wish I had. The specs say that there are 2 RAM slots, but I opened the back and there only seems to be one slot. I'm not sure what I have to do to upgrade, but it is something I'm going to do in the near future.
I think that hard drive speed is the single biggest speed limiter on any laptop computer. I wish this laptop came with a 5400RPM drive (or even the new Hitachi 7200RPM). Oh how I dislike that flashing hard drive light. The 40GB capacity is nice for carrying around those extra VMWare/Virtual PC images, but 60GB would be better. I've been pretty sloppy so far on disk management with this laptop, but my free space is still at nearly 7GB. I like lots and lots of fast disk space.
I'm quite happy with the screen size. I'm an odd man out when it comes to screen resolution. I've never been happy using any resolution higher than 1024x768, even on a 19" flat screen CRT. I find everything too small. 1024x768 suits me just fine.
This unit also has a built in light sensor to auto adjust the screen brightness. I was ok with this initially, but disabled it after a few weeks. It got annoying having the screen constantly change brightness as I moved around the office, and I found the screen was always a bit dimmer than I usually prefer. There may be ways to tweak these tolerances, but I'm quite comfortable with changing the screen brightness myself using the keyboard shortcuts.
This is fine for me. I don't use anything that significantly pushes the video subsystem. Just about anything will suffice, as long as it gives me 1024x768 at High Colour. Over the Christmas break, I did play a bit of SimCity 4 (for me) and Impossible Creatures (for my son) so it was nice to have more detail enabled due to the better video memory. But I would have been fine with less. Any gaming itch I have is satisfied by my XBox. I really don't believe that the PC is an acceptable platform for gaming. Maybe I just worked in retail software/hardware sales for too long; thru the DOS gaming days, into the early Windows 95 era; Anyone remember autoexec.bat and config.sys?)
The wireless adapter is an absolute must-have for me. I've been wireless since the first Linksys WAP11 came off the assembly line. I opened one of the slots on the bottom of my computer yesterday and found that the wireless is a replaceable module. Given that Intel has just upgraded its Centrino line to support 802.11g, I'd say that I stand a good chance of being able to upgrade the internal wireless to this faster standard.
It's nice to see that gigabit Ethernet is becoming generally available, though the office is still wired for 10/100. If I have large file transfers to do, connecting to the LAN through the wired NIC is still the only way to go. 802.11b is just too slow.
As for the modem, I guess we will still need them for the foreseeable future. I'm hoping that wireless will become as ubiquitous as modem connections in the next few years though. I will not shed any tears when the modem as a computing device gasps its last breath.
I love the five-degree curve on the Acer laptop keyboards. The key travel is great, though I would prefer a little softer touch like the IBM laptop keyboard. The placement of the delete key in the upper right also suits me fine, and I enjoy the inverted T cursor layout with the page and home keys located on either side of the up arrow key. The only thing I don't like about the keyboard is the placement of the Home and End keys. I use my laptop to write and program. When programming, especially, the Home and End keys used in various combinations are very important, but the fact that I have to use the Fn key to engage either makes it nearly impossible for me to use them. I always fumble over Ctrl-Shift-Fn-End. Needless to say, if I'm going to be doing an extended bout of programming, I plug in a real keyboard.
I prefer the Touchpad over the pointing stick but rarely use it. When I'm at a desk I use my Logitech MouseMan Traveler.
The C300 uses a Wacom digitizer and pen. The pen is the standard large Wacom pen with eraser and side button. It doesn't ship with a second smaller pen like the C100. However, the large pen does mount in the chassis unlike the C100 which can only mount the small pen.
This machine ships with a 24x CD burner, which is a nice boost from my previous 8x, and of course the DVD is a necessity for all those MSDN and U2 DVDs.
Here are some other general comments about things I like and dislike.
The C300 includes USB 2.0 and Firewire. My MOTU 828 external Firewire audio interface works just fine with my Cubase SX 2.0 recording software and plugins. When I ordered the new laptop, I decided to hold off on purchasing a docking station for it, but was pleasantly surprised to find that it worked with the docking station I already owned for my previous Acer laptop!
I wish there was a way to configure ClearType settings for different screen orientations. ClearType doesn't look right when I change the orientation to anything other than the standard. Hopefully this is something that Microsoft will address in future Windows versions.
Battery life is great - more than 4 hours, even on wireless and generous power setting (i.e. Presentation mode). My experience is that after a couple of years, battery life drops off a steep cliff, so I'm not sure if this one is any better.
I really like the swivel hinge on this model. The C100 required engaging/disengaging two side clips. With the C300 you just twist the screen. The swivel feels sturdy, so I don't expect any trouble from it.
Acer ships a nice 3M screen wipe cloth with all their Tablet PC models. This is a nice touch. They clean my glasses wonderfully too.
This model doesn't ship with a floppy drive, but that hasn't caused me any trouble so far. I have a USB floppy drive in case I ever do need one again.
Oh, the unit looks nice - black and silver - though I really could care less about the look. This ranks very low on my priority list.
The Tablet comes with a 4 in 1 Card reader in the PC Card slot. This is great for my Olympus digital camera that uses SmartMedia. It doesn't support Compact Flash, but I already have a PC Card adapter for that.
I rarely use any of the software that's included with a PC, so I can't really comment on what shipped with the Acer. l think it was some Antivirus
Software, CD burner and DVD player app. I uninstalled all of the apps and really didn't look at them.
Areas for Improvement
The M key is starting to rub off already. I normally wear my keyboard down pretty quickly, as I do a lot of touch typing, but this key is actually scratching off. I don't know if this is covered under warranty. It's really not an issue with me, as I never look at the keyboard anyway, but it has already caused others difficulty when they use the computer.
I wish the C300 was a bit more ergonomic for holding in Tablet mode, both portrait and landscape. I find it a bit clumsy to hold in certain seating positions, especially vertically. With the C100 I preferred vertical mode. With the C300 I prefer horizontal. Of course, because it's a full sized laptop, it's fairly hefty to carry around. I knew that going in. For me, it's an acceptable price to pay for having a full featured laptop and a Tablet PC.
I find that the pen calibration is a little off in the corners, especially the bottom and top right. This is significantly improved over the C100 though - something I found so annoying on that model that it was a show stopper for me.
The system runs pretty hot at times, but that's to be expected on a system with this speed, but I have never had it feel uncomfortably warm to hold in Tablet mode.
The unit shipped with the hard drive divided into two FAT32 partitions. I had to manually convert the partitions to NTFS and merge them using Partition Magic. Thankfully this worked without incident, but it makes me hesitant to ever rebuild the system using the included recovery CDs.
Conclusion
Overall I'm very happy with the C300 . I'm finding that the more I use the Tablet, the more I like it. I believe the Tablet PC has a big future, especially with the significant improvement that Tablet PC 2004 (codename Lonestar) will bring. In 2-3 years we will wonder how we ever lived without Tablets. There's something wonderful about being able to sit in a comfy chair on a Saturday afternoon, drinking a Tim Horton's coffee and writing a computer review on your laptop screen in your own handwriting.
Comments
"The specs say that there are 2 RAM slots, but I opened the back and there only seems to be one slot."
Ahhhhh, yes. Acer.
I have an Acer TravelMate 800, and I love it. But, my docs also stated that there were two memory slots, when in fact there seemed to be only one.
So, I did what any normal geek would do - I forgot about the wad of cash I dropped on the box and ripped its face off.
After a little bit of crackage, I managed to remove the keyboard and some of the surrounding plastic, where I discovered the second slot (how convenient, eh?).
From the looks of the photo, your tablet's keyboard is laid out almost exactly the same way the one on my TM800 is.
My friend - I know this isn't what you want to hear, but your second RAM slot is under that keyboard.
And I mean *way* under it.
You can get to it, but you'd risk busting some nice bits of your cool tablet.
Just so you know :) I was really frustrated about not being able to find the second RAM slot, so I thought I'd pass along this small bit of Acer esoterica (acerterica).
That said, my laptop now has 1 GIG of RAM :)
Posted by: Rory | January 19, 2004 01:07 AM
I was afraid of that - it did cross my mind as a possibility. My previous Acer laptop had both RAM slots exposed though, so I find this odd. Thankfully, we have a guy at the office who is very good at taking apart laptop computers. He gracefully disassembled my old Acer to replace a broken power switch. I'm have full confidence that he'll be able to get it upgraded without having to resort to Rorifying it. :p
Posted by: Steve Clarke | January 19, 2004 01:13 AM
The second slot for RAM is under the keyboard.
Posted by: HPClean | February 3, 2004 08:02 PM
Hi there! Stumbled across your blog while looking for more info on the C300. I'm typing this on a C300 with 1 GB of RAM, and I thought I'd share the method for upgrading the RAM. As an aside, shame on ACER for the poor split-location memory design, and even more shame for not even mentioning it in the manual!
Ok, the second ram slot is under the keyboard, but it's not as tough to get to as past models may have been. You'll notice a little round doohicky between the F12 and the prtsc key. There are two others between F4-F5 and ESC F1. Take a paperclip, straighten one side of it, and put that side in the doohicky. pull down towards the front of the computer. Each will slide a couple of mm's and click. Flip the computer over, and tere's a screw in the middle of the computer labled "KB". Remove it.
You can now lift the keyboard out of the computer by pulling up on the Function row. Carefully lift it up and rotate it towards the touchpad. There is a ribbon cable attaching it to the computer. Now very carefully pry out the extremely poorly designed cost-saving clip that retains the ribbon cable to the computer. I can't believe Acer used this rather than the typical "cam'd" locking clip. Once you remove that, hopefully in one piece, you're home free.
The memory slot is under the metal cover you're now looking at. Remove the 6 or 7 screws that retain it, and slide it towards the screen and up and out. Ta-da! you're set.
Don't be afraid of the ribbon cable. The only thing you need to make sure of is that the cable isn't backwards, but it'll be obvious which way it goes back in. You just press it back in and put the clip over it to retain it. After putting the metal cover/framwork back in place, the keyboard will click back into place by pushing on the left and right sides. Flip the computer over and re-install the KB screw, and you're done :)
Posted by: John | February 17, 2004 12:22 PM
Clearly I'm still getting used to the increased key-pressure required with the C300 over my Fujitsu...sorry for the dropped letters / misspellings.
I should have described lifting the keyboard out better. You don't pull up on the FN keys, you lift it by the screen-side of the quick-launch buttons. It all comes out as a unit.
That's all :)
Posted by: John | February 17, 2004 12:26 PM
hey i got two 512 sticks of kingston exactly the right specs and i am getting memory errors after the install.....did you guys manage to get more access to the bios in order to disable video bios shadowing and the other caching option in there...as it stands the computer would not run for long....it would boot and crash.... with 1gb and it worked ok with 768 but i need it 100% stable and i am back to the infineon ram that it came with...which brands did ya'll go with?
Posted by: Jeff | March 15, 2004 01:04 AM
I haven't upgraded yet. I'm looking at moving the C302 model that comes with 1GB and passing the C300 to a co-worker.
Posted by: Steve Clarke | March 15, 2004 10:13 AM
Hihi! Am interested in the display quality!
Is it like the c100 -- where brightness and contrast fade/vary across the screen?
Posted by: serwei | March 16, 2004 08:34 PM
I have found the screen to be consistent.
Posted by: Steve Clarke | March 16, 2004 08:39 PM
Hi Steve,
I'd be very interested to hear more about using a tablet PC with Cubase and VSTi's as I can't find anywhere on the web that discusses this. Is it as good as I imagine where you can sit in your armchair, happily drawing in notes and automation data much more easily than with a mouse? Are there any downsides to it?
Cheers,
Storm :o)
Posted by: Storm | March 31, 2004 08:02 PM
if u have any information about removing the keyboard on an acer travelmate 800 plz speak up!! :)
Posted by: poulseye | April 1, 2004 08:19 PM
PCMag.com or PC magazine in its review of tablet PC's have lamented many times that the only 2 tablets with good viewing angles are the Motion 1400 and HP tablets. Is that true?
I love the Acer c300 becuz of the long battery life and CD-rw/ DVD built-in.
SO how is the screen quality on the Acer 300 ?
I wil use ot for note taking in class, so does the image fade or wash when looking at it while sitting on a desk at an angle?
Is it almost as crisp as HP screens?
Posted by: AH | April 16, 2004 01:42 AM
I've found the screen to be acceptable, as compared to a non-tablet pc. I guess where the screen is set back a bit to accommodate the digitizer, it's not quite as bright. The color is a bit more 'yellowish' compared to my old non-tablet Acer. I can only comment on the Acer models, as that's the only notebooks/tablets that I've been exposed to in the past few years.
I haven't found any problems with washout or difficult viewing at angles.
steve.
Posted by: Steve Clarke | April 19, 2004 11:57 AM
Do you know if the C300 can recognise and convert cyrillc (Russian Alphabet) text into digital ink?
Posted by: Michael Davis | April 19, 2004 05:08 PM
The conversion is done by the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, so if Russian is supported in the operating system it will be supported on the Acer C300.
Posted by: Steve Clarke | April 19, 2004 06:09 PM
Hi, I'm back.
I have seen the updated HP TC1100 recently and the screen is really good.
Was wondering if you've had the same experience and could provide an opinion.
The Acers in my place are all unpowered with rather sullen salespeople LOL.
Am quite impressed by the Acer, though, having used a Fujitsu ST5000 which had a surprisingly sad 12-inch screen.
Posted by: serwei | April 20, 2004 02:50 PM
I haven't seen or used any other brand of Tablet PC. My newest C300 is more than powerful enough. I can run two Virtual PC guests simultaneously while continuing to do regular work. Our Acer distributor has been fine to deal with.
Posted by: Steve Clarke | April 20, 2004 03:00 PM
Not to contradict Steve, but to offer another opinion: I find the screen on my C300 to be the one weak spot in an otherwise brilliant machine. The colors and contrast quickly wash out when shifting viewing angles. To make matters worse, the optimum viewing angle for my screen is not dead-on straight, but about 25 degrees to the left (in portrait mode; or to the bottom in landscape). Having worked with LCD screens for many years now, I'd rate the Acer's as pretty bad--more like the laptop LCD's from several years ago. Current LCD's are much better in terms of color/contrast shifting at different viewing angles.
Regards,
Dan
Posted by: Dan | April 22, 2004 09:51 AM
That's interesting. As I mentioned, I've only used Acer for a few years, so I don't know any different. :)
Posted by: Steve Clarke | April 22, 2004 10:29 AM
There's an interesting post available on a Chinese site to display the details of C300
'Piece by Piece'!
http://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=163&t=28351
Very facinating!
Posted by: Hung-Cheng | June 9, 2004 06:30 AM
The max resolution on the c300 is only 1024x768, i'm not sure if this is common do to the fact that acer's are the only tablets my company buys. the screens are not incredibly bright, but are milestones better than the lcds on the c110's. battery life is good, memory slots are annoying, and the screen isn't bad, but at the same time it's nothing impressive.
Posted by: Tim | June 21, 2004 02:35 PM
Hi there, great review.
I am a dutch student and want to buy a acer c300 to use for college stuff. I am wondering how the build-in microphone works and if I can use it when the tablet is rotated to tabletpc mode instead of normal laptop mode.
Posted by: Erik | June 24, 2004 07:04 PM