My TC1100...

My machine was purchased from eBay for about $330. Why did I buy my TC1100? Well, I found out about the design will doing some "Googling." I've been interested in an iPad for some time now, but I saw the hardware specifications of this machine and decided it was truly the winner:
Originally, my TC1100 came with the 1.2GHz Pentium-M, 1GB of RAM, 30GB Hitachi 4200rpm, knackered battery and Windows XP Tablet Edition (2005).
Aware of its hardware "issues," I did some upgrading:
All this added to make the machine cost around $450 after it was all said and done. Windows 7 Enterprise was just 'around,' so that's what I used. I thought it was finally time to drag onwards and "upwards" from Windows XP. So far, its been good. Performance with the extra RAM and SSD is quite good, actually. Windows 7 actually performs quite nicely, given the mediocre hardware, and I can only assume the SSD is responsible for this.
The tablet itself, however, does its job, and is still quite competent for any task requiring touch-capability (school-work, note-taking, reading PDF books/E-Bibles etc.).

Overall, the experience on this tablet has pretty good. The machine, being designed for ruggedness and durability in the business-field environment apparently has strong plastic or even some sort of aluminium/titanium casing. I haven't cracked the machine open (yet) to find if there is any truth in this claim. However, I would think it is true, given some of the nasty battle scars this machine has attained without significant damage to any other hardware!

Update - January 2016:
The tablet has proven very useful not only for personal reading, but also note-taking in the educational environment.

Quite unfortunately, the aftermarket battery I use is not quite as good as it once was, particularly after sitting severals weeks discharged. Unusually, this battery does not seem capable of sustaining it's charge in the long-term, although the OEM battery does, and immediate charges if installed. This aftermarket battery often looses enough voltage as to prevent the tablet's charging circuits from operating. The only way to get it to charge is to leave the machine powered off for several days, whilst connected to mains power. Eventually, stopping and starting the powerflow will cause charging to begin. This is a tedious process that I dislike - although it seems to work.

As for the Kingspec SSD - I found this lost its appeal after just 6-8 months of use, and the usual "clutter" of Windows Updates on Windows 7. Either this machine just isn't quite enough for Windows 7, or perhaps the SSD was lacking the necessary quality to run normal computing tasks. Its transfer rates were quite abysmal when I removed it from service a while back - sustaining far less than even the 4200rpm Hitachi drive was capable of. I opted for a New-Old stock Hitachi 7200rpm drive to replace the OEM one and installed Windows XP. The system has been far zippier, although I plan to restore Windows 7 from backup to the new drive and see how it fares.

Otherwise, the system is still working exceptionally despite its age. The CMOS battery will need replacement oneday, although I have to keep the battery charged constantly anyway, so I doubt this will be a major issue for some time yet.

*Whilst I cannot give any specific temperatures, as the SSD has no thermocouple to measure temperature with, I have seen a reduction in CPU temperature by a couple of degrees under normal usage circumstances

Site Navigation:
Home -> Features Index -> HP-Compaq TC1100 -> YOU ARE HERE {"Webmaster's TC1100"}