Fortunately for me there’s no shortage of tablets on the market: Windows OS, Android OS, iOS. Crud, based on reports from CES 2012 I’ll have a much bigger selection within another 6 months or so.

The iPad is out. Been there, done that. It didn’t meet my needs.

I’ve thought many times about going with an Android device. After all, I’ve used an Android smartphone for the better part of 3 years and love the operating system. The Samsung line of Android tablets is awesome, and the Asus Transformer Prime is nothing short of spectacular. If I were to purchase an Android tablet I’m certain that it would be the Prime, but alas, as a productivity device the Android tablets suffer from the same shortcomings as that fruity device.

Which brings us to the Windows tablets. I’ve been eying Windows tablets for a while, but I’ve been a bit underwhelmed. In addition I’m a fan of convertible tablets and those have virtually disappeared as everyone seems to be going to a slate model these days.

After looking over my options I think the Samsung Series 7 Slate is my best bet. It’s a fully functional Windows computer with no compromise. In addition it has decent battery life, good specs and works well with both touch and a pen – yes, I still prefer a pen for note taking. A friend and colleague recently purchased a Series 7 Slate and he’s been raving about it. I spent a little time playing with it today and I must say that I found it to be quite impressive.

So there you go. If I were to purchase a new tablet today it would be the Samsung Series 7 Slate. Then again, I did drool a little when I read about the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga.

The installation went very well. I didn’t have a single problem, which is why I’m creating this blog post on my tablet with a freshly installed Windows 7 OS. Of course I didn’t even attempt an upgrade from Windows XP Pro because it just wasn’t an option. And because I practice what I preach I had almost nothing to re-install once Windows 7 was up and running on the tablet. It’s all about the cloud making my life easier.

I use Google Chrome and Firefox to browse the internet, Google Docs for much of my personal document creation, Microsoft Live Mesh and Dropbox as my primary data storage and back-up solutions, and Evernote as my solution for just about everything else. I did install one desktop application, Microsoft Office 2010 beta. However, with the installation of Office 2010 I am able to make use of the Office Live environment as well as Microsoft’s SkyDrive online storage. I suppose I could have gotten along without Microsoft Office 2010, but all my documents at work are created in Office and just about everything I receive from colleagues is in the Microsoft Office format so it’s just easier to use it. In addition, Office 2010 has some incredible features that make the tablet experience better.

After installing everything I simply logged into my Google account, synced my bookmarks and started using the machine; seamless. There have been a couple of hiccups with the pen interface however. Nothing major, but still annoying. I’m not sure if the issue is with Windows 7 or Office 2010 beta. Navigation with the pen is fine and I haven’t had any problems with simple applications like Paint. I guess I’ll have to collect a little more data before saying one way or the other.

The Windows 7 user interface is great. Similar to the Mac, I love the fact that you can pin items to the taskbar. I’m sure that’s not a coincidence. I’ve moved all my favorite apps to the taskbar making my desktop clean and icon-less, just the way I like it.

Features like Aero Peek that allow you to see the desktop by simply hovering over a small rectangle in the far right corner of the taskbar, thumbnail previews, and the snap feature make Windows 7 a real winner in my book. So far it’s been a much better experience than Windows XP.

I realize that I’m still in the honeymoon phase of Windows 7 usage, but so far I like it.

- The Final Destination was #1 at the box office last weekend followed by Inglourious Basterds.

- Earlier this week John Poikonen at RxInformatics.com posted a very interesting discussion on the use of auto-verification for medication orders entered via CPOE. The nuts and bolts of the discussion center on the approval of certain types of medication orders without a pharmacist review. The idea makes a lot of sense and is a very interesting topic. To understand how this might work take a look at this, also from John.

- mobihealthnews : “Sprint announced a multi-year agreement with M2M [machine-to-machine] company DataSmart to help embedded device makers to bring their products to market sooner. As part of the announcement the carrier quoted Yankee Group’s Vice President of Research Steve Hilton: ”The demand for sophisticated M2M applications that provide data transmission is growing. Specifically, the rapid growth in M2M healthcare, energy and fleet services is fueling the need for faster and easier deployment models.”” – The article also mentions that Verizon Wireless and AT&T have both made similar moves. This looks like great news for healthcare as these companies can leverage their relationships with mobile device developers to improve healthcare technology.

- After only two years in beta it looks like Microsoft’s HealthVault is ready for primetime. HealthVault was launched in October 2007 and is now “available in the production and pre-production environments”, which means Microsoft is removing the beta label from the product. Final release notes are available at the HealthVault blog. I don’t hear much about Google Health anymore. I wonder why that is.

- Check out the touchatag RFID system. The touchatag system is a web-based client that interacts with your PC to perform all kinds of functions. Just get close to the reader and make your PC do pretty much anything you want. Cool.

- Ever heard of healthBase? Neither had I, but it turns out that it is a search engine that aggregates medical content from health sites including WebMD, Wikipedia, PubMed, and the Mayo Clinic’s health site. HealthBase uses search technology to read sentences inside documents and understand the meaning. Check out the video of healthBase on YouTube. It looks pretty impressive. I did a couple of cursory searches using some pharmacy/medical terminology and the results I received were accurate. I won’t replace my bookmarks to PubMed, UpToDate, or Lexi-Online just yet, but I’ll certainly add it to the list.

- University of Southampton News: “A hand-held device which could offer point-of-care blood cell analysis in doctors’ surgeries is being developed by University of Southampton researchers led by Professor Hywel Morgan of ECS. The research team, which is based in the School of Electronics and Computer Science’s Nano Research Group and involves collaboration with Professor Donna Davies and Dr Judith Holloway of the School of Medicine, has developed a microfluidic single-cell impedance cytometer that performs a white cell differential count. The system, which can identify the three main types of white blood cells – T lymphocytes, monocytes and neutrophils, is faster and cheaper than current methods.” There is an abstract of the device in Lab on a Chip this month. Lab on a Chip is a real journal, seriously.

- You should already know how I feel about tablet PCs and touchscreen technology. Well, there is a great video (inserted below) of the soon to be released Fujitsu multi-touch tablet PC at Gottabemobile. The tablet in the video is very nice, and the screen behaves a lot like an iPhone/iPod touch screen. Watch the video and listen for the word “surface”, and notice how the person performing the demo is able to handle the photos on the screen. This is very impressive technology.

- “Can Opioid Tolerance Be Treated by Increasing the Opioid Dose?” – This is a good question and the pharmacist answering it did a fine job. People are often afraid to treat pain as aggressively as they should. How much “pain medicine” is too much? There’s no such thing as “too much” as long as the patient has pain. You treat the pain until the patient can no longer handle the side effects of the medications or they stop breathing.

- Check out the Nao robot playing with a Microsoft Surface table. It’s just a little bit spooky.

- Windows 7 will be available for purchase October 22. Apparently we already have some copies available in our IT department. I asked for a copy for my new tablet PC and was firmly rejected. It looks like I’ll have to wait until October 22 to purchase my own copy just like everyone else. Bummer.

- Everyone can relax; the NFL regular season begins in less then a week. My Arizona Cardinals open up at home against the SF forty-whiners (i.e. the 49ers). Here’s hoping the Cardinals look better in the regular season then they did in the preseason. They were atrocious.

Have a great weekend everyone.

- Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was #1 at the box office last weekend. I told you it would be #1. The movie brought in just over $200 million during its five day opening. My family and I enjoyed the movie over the weekend. It was great!

- Medscape.com: “Three of 4 observational studies suggest an increased risk for cancer associated with use of insulin glargine (Lantus, sanofi-aventis), although these findings warrant further follow-up studies to confirm an association, according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).” – The studies suggest a dose-dependent increase in the risk of cancer, meaning the bigger the dose, the higher the risk. It’s not time to dump your Lantus just yet. A lot more information is needed before anyone can make an informed decision.

- Check out the Archos 9 Windows 7 tablet over at cknet uk. “This is a tablet PC weighing 623g, featuring a 9-inchcapacitive touchscreen (that’s the sexy kind, like the iPhone), an Intel Atom Z515 CPU, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1“. It’s hard not to love these little things. The Archos 9 is one of those “tweener” devices, not quite a full blown tablet, but much larger than a smart phone. With web access, this thing would make the perfect social networking device. So many toys, so little time.

- thejobcure.com: ““Zero error rate” eludes surgeons at mature trauma center - In an 8-year study at a “mature” trauma center in Southern California, fewer than 1% of patients experienced preventable complications, according to a report in the June Archives of Surgery (Arch Surg 2009;144:536-542). “Even at a mature trauma center, with a highly experienced group of surgeon-researchers with a very focused evidence-based practice, errors continue to occur, despite our best efforts to detect preventable errors and institute corrective mechanisms,” Dr. Kenji Inaba from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles told Reuters Health.” – That’s just a little bit scary. The article goes on to say that preventable or potentially preventable complications represented 16% of the annual complications at the trauma center. Well, at least the other 84% of the complications were out of their control.

- Twitter changing the world? I’m not really sure, but this is pretty funny.

- Barcode.com: “The Active Shelf System, available from Barcoding Inc., is an affordable method of keeping track of inventory in retail stores, stockrooms, pharmacies, libraries, and warehouses, allowing automated asset tracking in libraries, document storage facilities, and data tape archives. Basically, anything that can be placed on a shelf can be tracked using the Active Shelf System…..The RFID Enabled Active Shelf System works by placing RFID antennas on each shelf to monitor signals from UHF Gen 2 tags that are placed on each product. The antennas then send information through the hybrid multiplexer that transmits the data to a central RFID reader. This RFID reader is connected to your database through a hard-wired connection or wireless infrastructure, making the inventory levels available through a web interface or XML feed from the system.” – Dawg gone RFID keeps showing up everywhere I look.

I wish everyone a great 4th of July (a.k.a. Independence Day). Keep it safe, have fun, eat lots of BBQ and ice cream, but don’t blow up anything bigger than your head.

You can imagine my excitement when my brother sent me an interesting link to a “blog dedicated to the engineering of Microsoft Windows 7.” The page contains information specific to advances to the tablet PC input experience.  Improvements to the writing pad were deperately needed and the addition of text prediction on the soft keyboard will be a welcome addition. I’m looking forward to the next generation of tablet PCs. Our department has plans to roll out an additional 5 tablets over the next 12 months. Maybe I can hold out for Windows 7.