Nathan’s Daily Grind

Unfortunately I had a few meetings and other tasks to get to this morning so it took me a while to get some time with the machine.  I made a Ghost image of the hard drive before I even did the first boot - good suggestion for anyone getting a new box.

But image done I now have had a chance to get the box up and running.  My primary machine is a Dell Latitude D630 with a snappy SATA hard drive, 4GB of RAM, etc.  According to Vista’s Experience Rating my machine is a 4.0 (not bad for a laptop).

The Latitude XT has a 5400rpm ATA hard drive which I was bummed to hear about at first since I’m losing transfer speed, etc.  I was quite surprised to see the Experience Rating of the tablet is a 3.5 however.  Not too shabby!

Typing seems pretty normal for the current Latitude keyboards so that’s nice.  This is still a standard factory build so all the Google stuff is on there indexing and thrashing the drive - thanks.  Still, everything seems pretty snappy so far.  Might have to take this baby home and play with it some.

I’ve got a trip for a week-plus next week so I want to see if I can get happy enough with the box to take it with me.  Sure would be nice to watch a movie on the tablet on the plane … good test of battery life that would be too.  This has the 6-cell battery.

I’ll keep you all posted as I spend more time … for now I need to get my last expense report of 2007 in!

Update: Also see my other Latitude XT posts: first impressions, more thoughts, and the verdict.

Looks like my firm is one of the first to get Dell’s new tablet!  So for all of you out there wanting to see it, here are some pictures next to a Lenovo X61T tablet.  The Dell is a widescreen so it’s a bit shorter and wider, and the Lenovo I am playing with has an extended battery hanging off the back.

Next comes making a factory image of it so I can get back to default, and an actual build and test.  Might keep it if the performance is halfway decent. 

Update: Welcome Engadget readers!  And I was remiss to not shout out a special thanks to my good friend Barton who is lending me the Thinkpad.  Also be sure to check for my other posts as I get more acquainted with the Latitude XT.

Kaitlyn is TOTALLY into princess mode at this point in her life, and has been for a couple months.  Every nice dress someone has on (be it a baby or a grown woman) is a princess dress.  She even asked Santa for a “Princess Christmas”, which he delivered.

Kaitlyn is also in question mode.  Most things we say to her usually get sent right back to us with her cute little questioning voice inflexion. 

“Time to get in the car Kaitlyn.” -> “Time to get in the car?”

KC from time to time will ask if I’m a princess, or if Mommy is a princess - both answers are no.  We’re king and queen of course!  [Which inevitably leads to a question from her inquiring if I'm a queen - but I digress.]

This morning when we were packing into the car for the family commute into Bellevue KC asked if Alicea was a princess, to which Mommy replied that she was a queen.  I piped in that Mommy is in fact a domestic goddess.

KC: “Mommy’s a messed up goddess?”

:-)  Had to share.  Enjoy your day!