Photograph: Marc SimonMotion's slate-style M1400 Tablet PC adds some interesting goodies--including additional wireless options, improved security features, and innovative visual and audio tools--to the company's excellent M1300 model. The M1400 deserves points for innovation, but I found some of its new features too difficult to use right out of the box.
The shipping unit that I tested came with Bluetooth and 802.11g Wi-Fi built in (the M1300 featured only 802.11b). Motion improved security with a biometric fingerprint reader; however, it took some undocumented tips from the company before I could consistently log in with a single finger swipe. The M1400 also includes a light sensor that adjusts the screen brightness to your environment--helpful when you step outside.
Motion added built-in directional microphones for recording voice memos and for use with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition's speech recognition tools. My early test recordings produced with the OneNote note-taking app (part of an optional $35 bundle) sounded somewhat faint, but using some new tricks from Motion I adjusted the settings, and subsequent tests yielded better results.
The best feature is the device's Motion Dashboard, a utility that pulls together the various tablet-related hardware control panels into one well-conceived interface.
Our test unit included a 1.1-GHz Pentium M, 512MB of RAM, and a 20GB hard drive. It earned a PC WorldBench 4 score of 106 (about average for comparably configured tablet PCs we've tested) and netted a time of 3 hours, 18 minutes on our battery test.
The M1400's voice recording and biometric tools could increase this solid tablet's productivity potential. But Motion must make these features easier to use right from the start.
Solidly built Tablet PC offers novel features that take some tweaking to master.
Street: $2244
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