A question for U true road warriors

vilasman · 01-13-07, 04:09 PM

I'm walking up on a situation where I will have enough cash to order or buy the laptop or UMPC of my choice.
Thursday I cruised the stores looking at their selection, including the samsung and the sony umpc.
Friday, I began to discover the power and usefulness of MS word and excel mobile, while I was out gathering prices and information and working on the proposal that will make this purchase possible.

I used my 4705 to do the mobile part of things, using my mda to take the 4705 online.
Basically, on paper (I would like to do it on some kind of computer) I sketched a group of interior spaces, and then filled in the sketch with the details of the changes that needed to be made.
Listed out all the items in MS word in black ink. Under each item I added various pieces of info in various colors. Charge info in green.
Notes to self in orange.
notes to wife (who corrects my mistakes and makes things look professional) in purple. Notes to the client in navy. And so on. Then I saved that file and moved it from desktop to both the MDA and the 4705. Took wife to work. I was prepared, or so I thought to email the version of the document with the purple client notes only. I tried hotmail, fastmail and Gmail to get the document out of the phone into my wifes mac and entorauge so I could print it and generate a material list, so I could go price shop the materials.
The emails showed up but the attachments didn't.
In the end I cut and pasted the document into hotmail and printed that. Of course my colors and layout info was gone. But it did show on the 4705. I was shocked.
So then I opened pocket excel and made my shopping list, in the end I made 3 spreadsheets and was happily surprised at how that went. Especially after I flushed the memory and got calligrapher to work.
Went to a couple of stores and filled in the cost column, that worked well. Went back to wives office, set up the calculations and got my results.
Then I figured i'd get smart and upload the spread sheet to some online file space and pull it back down into my wife's Mac. Mac excel dosent like pocket excel. It was gibberish.
So being the enterprising young fella that I am, I went to the bookstore to check out the latest cost estimation guide for this field so I justify what I was trying to do.
I didn't even try to write that 6 or 7 pages into one of the ppc's cause part of it needs to go to excel, part needs to go to word and a part may go to phatnotes because it's searchable and back up able.
Tonite I am going to put this info into the various programs. Then I will turn it over to wife to make it presentable, pdf it so that I can lock it and email it out.
Then I can layout the project in project. We all know how outlook plays into this and I am thinking MS accounting and one note will play into it as well. Although I do like plan plus from frank covey.
Now with a UMPC, if I can sketch on the screen, I can do the sketch, take the notes,
convert them to text, cut and paste them into word. Then, I guess I could make a comma seperated list and flow that into excel. I could have then gone straight from the work site to the stores and gotten cost info, or emailed it or faxed it to the store and gotten price info while driving. Then I could have emailed my opening negotiating price on the way home.
I also could have made all my color coded notes while waiting to pick up wife from work.
And she could have applied her graphics and editing skills to it in acrobat as she rode home.
I would be hard pressed to walk around the building or the store with the laptop, I could take the intial info on a ppc and sync it to the laptop in both cases but I feel that converting file formats back and forth is going to screw me up.
A 12 inch tablet or convertible gives u screen space but walking around a house that is under construction, sitting it down as I take measurements and such, thieves,dust and the prying eyes of the client concern me. Also going back to the store to shop for the job, there is a thief issue, a umpc I can stick in a fanny pack in all of the above instances.
I am going to re-read all the info on the net about the viao, I believe I can hook it to a larger screen, hopefully a keyboard and or a digitizer tablet. I wish I could find a wm2003 or wm5 emulater so that I could run a few of my ppc softwares on the umpc.
I have heard that the viao will run XP tablet, so I draw and such on the screen.

My direct question is how well does a umpc run ms office? I think it was a n50 that I saw at best buy so I know 280 or a 300 series will run better. Will office run on a umpc at least as well as it does on a ppc with out the file conversion issues?
Is it more or less frustrating to enter info on the umpc than on a ppc?
If anyone has a vaio and a htc with a slide keyboard is typing better or worse? I am not a touch typist. I am 2-4 fingers all the time.
Any other thoughts about the subject are welcome