First impressions count. It's an old cliche, but it is so true, especially when it comes to technology.
Why do you think people lust after gadgets made by the likes of Apple and Sony? It's usually for a reason. When you see them for the first time, your first experience is usually positive.
Nice to look at and above all, user friendly. It's out of the box technology. With that in mind, it's not too surprising that the first impression of the new Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook P1010 tablet PC left me a little cold.
It's not blessed with the aesthetics which have become so important these days, and while in reality it isn't a brick - its dimensions do feel a little on the clunky side when compared with other rivals.
It's also not a good start when someone who considered themselves pretty au fait with computers spends a good three or four minutes looking for the on button.
That's because the on button isn't actually a button. It's a pull-back switch. It's not sign-posted as a power switch. And to make matters worse, it isn't located in the same place that 99.9 per cent of power switches are.
Humans are creatures of habit and intuition matters.
Of course these things are technically trivial things when compared to stability, processing power and speed - but to the consumer they tend to matter a lot.
And it's the poorly thought out design touches which really do detract from what is essentially a more than competent machine.
What you will get with the Lifebook is a whole lot of memory thrown in, a giant hard drive and a top end Core Duo processor.
Best of all is the battery life, which considering the intensive workout the machine will get, stands up pretty well and lasted a fair few hours without recharge.
What is most impressive (and to be fair, this is the core function of the Lifebook) is the tablet mode.
While not entirely intuitive, a quick glance at the help function has you up and writing in no time.
The handwriting recognition is very good. Extremely fast and extremely reliable. And if, like me, you have handwriting so messy that would make your last doctor's prescription seem like a work of calligraphy, no problem. When I looked back at the screen and was confronted with the reality of how scruffy my handwriting was, I was actually amazed when it managed to come up with row after row of correctly interpreted words.
But its round about here the Lifebook starts to run into problems again. Perhaps it's the iPhone factor which has pushed the bar out there for technology products, but there is just something frustrating about having to push a button to manually switch your screen display from landscape to portrait when in tablet mode.
In 2008 I think a lot of people will see it as an automatic function, flip your screen sideways and the display follows.
