Thread: Comparing Motion LS800 Tablet PC to again Lilliput 8"

The lilliput with flash in the carport.

The LS800 with flash, in the carport.

The lilliput on the road on a sunny day, no direct sunlight.

The LS800, on the road on a sunny day, no direct sunlight.

The lilliput. See the map? No, I couldn't either. But it's a great view of my hand! Note that this is *not* direct sunlight and still unusable.

The LS800, same setup. Look, I can see my house from here!

Here's the dock for the Motion. Note how well it fits into the hole in my dash...

I'm thinking of fabbing it in like this (removing the stand obviously) but set a little further back so I can make the front nice of flush.

And from the back, it has all the connectors you'd need for just about any car PC need...

So here's my list of pro & cons:

Pros:

• 2-3 hour battery built in. Standby becomes a really useful state to provide instant resume. Hibernate only after it's been in standby for probably a week!
• Surviving crank is a non-issue.
• Great screen.
• Can use EM pen to avoid getting finger prints on the screen.
• Pen is easier to target things because your hand isn't in the way.
• What little reflection of your hand there is is also reduced because it's further away.
• Relatively powerful cpu for low power usage.
• No audio pop - has built in suppressor on startup.
• Great dock with easy connections for all the peripherals. And fits the hole in my dash pretty much perfectly and could be fabbed in to look pretty nice.
• Built in wireless.
• If you fab the dock in to the top of the dash, unit is removable so you can take it inside to copy large files onto it / install software / hide it from thieves / take it out and use handwriting to enter larger amounts of text (it is a Tablet PC after all!).
• Extra USB slots on the side for data sticks or a full USB keyboard if you feel like it.
• Possible: USB peripherals might remain powered and hence GPS might never lose it's lock! The built-in battery is plenty big enough to keep it active if that's the case! Ooh, I wonder.
• No fan (I think) - possibly it's just a really quiet fan. Either way, it's good.
• Laptop hard drive, so more shock resistant.
• Finger print reader for secure logon.
• Ctrl-alt-del for, well, not sure what!
• Buttons on the right side for direct control of front end (up/down/left/right/center + 4 others).
• IR port for remote control
• High quality - don't have to deal with crappy Lilliput's that get ridiculous dim within 9 months and dodgy connectors that cause the screen to go blurry when *too tightly* coupled (!? - what's up with that?).
• Built in array microphone. Noise cancellation software comes installed. I *need* to try this feature out to see if it can handle car noise.
• Bluetooth built-in.
• The big battery means turning it on/off with the remote locking becomes much more of an option. Hell, you could do far more than that - have the music turn on with the car engine and off with the remote lock and the PC turn on with the remote lock and turn off 5 minutes after the care is locked again.
• Can control the bios with pen + buttons. Don't need a keyboard. On the other hand, there's practically nothing you'd ever tweak in there...
• Built in SD memory reader.
• Looks like there's a built-in (to the dock) 5V (I'm assuming) out.

Cons:

• Have to source a 12->19V convertor that's happy with 11->14V input.
• Not sure yet how to auto-power on/resume from standby. Might be trivial. Might be really hard. Looking hard...
• Have to use an EM pen. Not sure whether this will be better or worse than touch for car use (it's fine out of the car) but at the very least - must come up with a good mounting location for the pen / use the thin string it comes with to avoid dropping it on the floor under the pedals.
• Cost. It'd be something like $2100. But once you factor in the $700-$1000 you could easily spend trying to get a daylight readable lcd (possibly even more?) then the extra for the rest of the car PC looks a lot more reasonable.