Just because of the future tone of this post, let me say first that every other aspect of my Kenan experience has been awesome (my externship – which I think I will be continuing this summer (Dr. Muddiman has offered me a job, the conferences, the camaraderie, the information, etc.).  That said, I was excited when I learned we were also going to receive a tablet as part of the fellowship.  I have an iPad that I love, but I’ve been a PC guy forever and there are certain limitations that the iPads have that I thought the Lenovo’s wouldn’t.

Unfortunately, the Lenovo tablets turned out to be a disappointment.  While I didn’t have as many issues as some of my cohorts (I know of almost 20 people whose initial tablets wouldn’t even turn on), I got off to a bad start when the Microsoft Office download we received didn’t work.  It took about 4 hours to troubleshoot that process, which seems like an inordinate amount of time (especially now that I realize after 8 months that I’ve never used the software).  I’ve had problems with it turning on (there’s a trick with hitting a button a couple of times, then holding it for 30 seconds, then plugging in the charger, then holding the button again…wow, that’s intuitive, isn’t it?) and the functionality once it’s on leaves a lot to be desired.  I know that I wasn’t alone in my frustrations as most of the fellows just didn’t use the technology.  If I hadn’t gotten a computer assigned to me during my externship, I might have had a much more difficult time.

There are other problems with the tablets that I’m not discussing here, so overall I don’t suggest their use in the future – maybe this was a bad batch.  I know that I’ve talked to some people who love their Lenovo laptops, so maybe their laptops are better.  I do suggest that if Kenan fellows are given something like this in the future, it would probably be a good idea to do a training session right off the bat.  I’m pretty savvy when it comes to technology, but I would have found that helpful.