Imagination in VGA

I don’t plan to post a lot of deals here (I would refer people to Slickdeals and Fatwallet for that), but as I just took advantage of this deal, I thought I would share with other folks that might be interested in Tablet PCs.

Dell has always had good deals on its refurbished outlet items (50% off), and currently they have a Spring Clearance Sale running with a 20% coupon (CPP1002XWDHXDK), allowing users to get the Latitude XT and new Latitude XT2 for 60% off the retail price. Depending on the models available, that could mean an XT2 for $1,031, or an XT (Core Solo) for $575 (though I would go with the Core Duo for  a little extra).

I have an XT, and it’s a little slow, but certainly faster than a netbook, many of which are going for $400-$500. Add in the LED, 12 inch, WXGA screen with capacitive, multi-finger touch, and you have a nice little machine that weighs under 4 lbs. It’s also one of just a few tablets that has true multi-touch, will should be an integral part of Windows 7.

Just a quick summary on the IUE 1009 conference.  First, it is a local conference for Southeast Michigan, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t some quality speakers present.  As Dan Klyn pointed out, Ann Arbor can be seen as the birthplace of modern IA (check out his slides for more info).

I did do some tweeting at the conference; more than I’ve ever done actually. In fact, at one point I think I was the top contributer for #iue09. Compared to my last conference (CHI 08 in Florence), I noticed that Twitter was playing a larger role. At a panel on social networking, all of the panelists had their twitter usernames on their namecard, including Chris Barger, GM’s own Twitter guru.

I would give a summery of the talks I went to, but you can basically check out my Twitter feed for that (#iue09). A few good presentations that I could find on Slideshare:

• Our Slideshare presentation: Lessons Learned While Integrating a new IA tool
  – an overview of the process of adopting Axure for our organization, Enlighten.
• Now that I see It – Dan Klyn’s excellent presentation on his project documenting trends in Information Architecture.
• Doing Social Media Right in 2009 – Marta Strickland’s excellent keynote from Wednesday has a number of useful tips.