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Going from 1oz to 2oz is a 100% increase in weight. Doesn't mean it's significant. It's half a pound. It is not some sacred threshold between portable and not portable.

I currently use a LE1700 tablet PC that weighs 3 lbs. I also own an iPad. The iPad is lighter, for sure, but the 3lb tablet is still usable. I look forward to a 2lb replacement for the LE1700.

No, apple has not done well to capture those markets. Apple Tablets are a joke, suited exactly for little more than toilet-sitting.

Motion Computing has done well to capture those markets.
http://www.motioncomputing.com/products/tablet_pc_c5.asp
You'll notice a big pile of difference between them and Apple iPads in both concept, focus, and function.

Then either spend a stack of money to get am x86 tablet that does have an 8 hour battery life, or find the developer of the app you want to run, and ask if they can compile it with the /ARM switch turned on.

If your so concerned about having an 8-hour tablet that runs your desktop software, then those are really your only choices. An iPad / Android / WebOS / Chrome tablet won't do it.

There are lots of them - and have been for good long time. I have one of these, that I got when a local hospital was selling off the old generation of computers and upgrading to these. These things are freaking amazing - usable in full sunlgiht, nearly indestructible, great battery life (plus hot-swappable batteries), but they do cost $2000+, which is why you never see them, except in hospitals or government contracted job-sites, or on sci-fi tv shows.

Fujitsu, Acer, HP, Dell, or Lenovo all have Windows tablet offerings. They just tend to be full-fledged computers, rather than toys, and so carry a higher price. Windows 7 with gestures / flicks works quite well as a tablet OS, but it is helpful to have the active digitizer with stylus, regardless of whether you also have a iPad style touchscreen.

Motion has 3 models available:

http://www.motioncomputing.com/

There's the Archos 9:

http://www.archos.com/products/tw/archos_9/index.html?country=us&lang=en

and the Samsung Q1EX:

http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/laptops/NP-Q1EX-FA01US

and the Panasonic Toughbook is available as a slate.

Sadly, Fujitsy quit making slates though (perhaps they'll go back to making them?) --- interestingly the selection of Windows slates has gotten so low that some people who want a larger format slate are purchasing the Axiotron Modbook (a converted Mac laptop) and installing Windows on it.

William

They're available, and expensive, and not selling that well:

http://www.motioncomputing.com/products/tablet_pc_J35.asp

http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=home

And until recently the battery life wasn't that great either (technology is finally catching up to the early promise) --- I still have to use 9-cell extended life batteries in my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4121 (and unfortunately Fujitsu has discontinued their ST-6012)

William
(who has been using pen computers w/ Wacom styluses since the NCR-3125)

While it would be nice if they could keep companies like Fujitsu in the slate market (they recently discontinued their Stylistic ST6000 line and HP/Compaq has yet to replace the TC1000/1100/1200 line), there are a couple of slates running (or which can run) Windows 7 available:

http://www.motioncomputing.com/products/tablet_pc_J35.asp

http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/archos-9-pc-tablet/1805-3126_7-33800951.html

Unfortunately, the marketplace has mostly switched over to convertibles (pending the release of devices intended to compeat w/ the iPad). This has gotten so bad that some people purchase the Axiotron ModBook:

http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=home

and then install Windows on it, which indicates there is a market...

William

I'm writing this on one of them. Specifics:

http://www.motioncomputing.com/products/tablet_pc_le17.asp

True tablet, no keyboard, though it supports most USB keyboards (obviously). Runs Windows 7 just fine (ran Vista when I got it, which was a nightmare), and has really good handwriting recognition. Great for reading in bed. And being able to play Plants vs. Zombies with a stylus instead of a mouse nicely offsets my hand-eye coordination problems.

Which is not to say that I disagree with TFA about the economic viability of the thing. It's way too expensive, and if I weren't an overpaid geek who's willing to pay a huge premium just to have certain ubercool technologies, I wouldn't own one.

The iPad is overhyped, as are all Apple products. But so what? Even if it's just an overgrown iPod Touch (which means it's something I'd never bother with), there's obviously a market for it. On the train to work this morning, half my fellow commuters were passing the time on some kind of pocket device, and maybe a third of these were iPhones or iPads. Take one of these and give it a half-decent screen, and I think you've got a winner, even if it is a product most geeks would sneer at.

Motion computing makes some fine tablets. The J3400 is particularly interesting and I believe it has earned some good reviews: http://www.motioncomputing.com/products/index.asp Couple it with a bluetooth wireless keyboard and its completely sealed design should work great.

I've opted not to buy this gadget, because ultimately, it's just not as satisfying or lasting as having a book. I have books given to me by my grandparents that they had as teenagers...

And you also have (or most people have) cheap paperbacks you'll read once and discard. (A major hassle for me, since I'm totally unable to simply throw books out; I've got a full box sitting in the back of my car right now, waiting for me to think of a place to donate them.) And you have bulky dictionaries and other reference books that would be a lot easier to refer to if you had them in electronic form.

I'm really tired of hearing this lame "ebooks will never replace real books" argument. No one's saying they will. But that argument is like saying that regular books will never replace stone tablets. There will often be things that old technologies do better.

There are still places where a horse is a more practical form of transportation than a car. But of the dozens of carriages house in the old neighborhood where I live, not one is used for its original purpose.

Cost is still an issue. (As it was for the first cars and books.) I'm certainly not going to pay $300 for something like this. But if it were cheaper, or the convenience factor of ebooks were worth more to me, I'd buy one in a flash.

In point of fact, I already read ebooks on my table PC, a device I spent way too much money on. (Maybe 3 times the cost of a comparable laptop.) Possibly if I didn't already have the tablet, an ebook reader would be a lot more tempting.

We've just finished demoing Motion Computing's C5. I was quite impressed. As the demo period ended, the surgeon that we paired it with told us in no uncertain terms that we weren't getting it back. Of course, none of this matters if your EMR's interface isn't touch friendly.

http://motioncomputing.com/products/tablet_pc_c5.asp I have the Motion C5 here right now on trial, and can't help but notice the similarity.

Never been a fan of convertible touchscreen laptops. Too heavy (and bulky) to be used as a tablet. Hell, even the few true tablet, non-convertibles PCs out there are too clunky.
http://www.motioncomputing.com/products/tablet_pc_le17.asp

What I'd really like to see is the MacBook Air in tablet only form. Something like an iPod Touch with a 10-13" screen, but just as thin (as the MacBook Air / iPod Touch). Apple, are you listening?!?

Failing this, how about something a little more down to earth:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/21/we-want-a-dead-simple-web-tablet-help-us-build-it/

The main icon for this story is the one for the handhelds category. Which makes sense, except that the icon is a photo of a Palm V, or something similar. Sadly, a pure PDA is no longer a representative handheld. More typically, a PDA is some kind of feature-bloated "smart phone." The iPhone's a good example of that, and probably the best candidate for the new handhelds icon.

Not to trash the iPhone. It just isn't something I'm ever going to want. I want a simple phone, with easy-to-use PDA functionality. (I'd prefer to have separate phone and PDA, but that train has left the station.) If I want to watch video, I'll get out my LE 1600.

It turns out that someone else beat them to a solution that's probably close enough, if maybe overpriced: Motion Computing's C5 was released Tuesday.

I've seen the "view-anywhere" screens on the motion computing tablets, and it's quite impressive. If you ever have a chance to play with one, definitely check it out. http://www.motioncomputing.com/products/promotions _view_anywhere.asp#vad

If you want something for art/drawing then do not get an Origami device, or the Fujitsu P1510 either. You need an Active Digitizer, not a passive touch screen. With an active digitizer you can rest your hands on the screen, and it provides pressure feedback - press down harder and get a thicker or darker line. Since you're looking for a small device, maybe you could try the Motion LS800 tablet. It has a small 8" screen with an active digitizer, I would expect it to be a great sketchpad.

if you want a small computing device and want to take a note or two this might come in handy.

Its a pretty cool gadget. Unfortunately Windows Tablet is your only OS option, but its only a matter of time till someone makes linux work on one of these things. No need for a keyboard since it has handwriting/speech recognition. You could load up a bunch of music and video on it (60 gb hard drive) and take your notes by hand... the pepper pad is cool, but I agree I need more functionality on my mobile device, and my LS800 does everything that the pepper pad can do and more since its a full functioning pc...it just doesn't run linux...yet..firefox and thunderbird work great on it though.

Actually in the past, most tablets were only touch screens, which kept me away from them.

http://www.tabletpctalk.com/faqs/hwcomparison2003. shtml

I've been doing research on the newer tablets that implement WACOM digitizers, since I'm an artist and came upon the above link when trying to find out their specs. The first tablet I tried out was only touch screen and the problem with that, is that if you wrest your hand on it for sketching, or writing, it screws everything up. A digitizer using WACOM's tech, even though it's dated with no "tilt" feature, and only 256 levels of pressure sensitivity, is vastly more accurate than any touch screen I've tried, and more importantly, you can wrest your hand any where on the screen.

IMO, these things are just too big and kind of fall into an awkward inbetween area, where a product really isn't needed. They're too big to be convient like a PDA and are too limited to replace a notebook. I just can't see that many peeps buying one, since a notebook can provide soo much more for not much more. Samsung's version is selling for $1100, which makes it way too expensive for what it can't do.

I personally would like one of these, since they're full fledge computers in a smaller package, but at $3k, I'll be investing in a Wacom 21UX instead;
http://www.motioncomputing.com/products/tablet_pc_ le1600.asp (These things can be upgraded to 180 viewing angles.)

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Have you considered a Motion LS-800 Tablet PC?

It's spot on for everything you mention save HD (and which it's much, much larger than 20GB standard, 30 and 60GB available).

http://www.motioncomputing.com/products/tablet_pc_ ls.asp

All you have to add is a keyboard---put one in a nice portfolio case and it'll work just like a laptop (that's what I do w/ my Fujitsu Stylistic when I feel the need for a keyboard).

You might want to consider one of the old Fujitsu Lifebooks if you're dead set on having an attached keyboard.

William

For $2000? You get a really tiny screen, a really tiny keyboard, and a laptop's battery life. Why not just get a larger tablet based PC? Here's one I've played with that had about the same specs as OQO and is a really small, and usable, form factor. For about the same price you get the same features but a more useful size. No you can't hook it to your belt. But really people, anything bigger than a cell phone on your belt and you look like a real goober. Given that it comes installed with Windows XP Tablet Edition, and has no Linux support to be found, I don't know that this crowd is going to accept something like this.

Okay, I have been looking around for a good keyboard/mouse combo to allow me to use a Mac mini as a Media Center computer for PVR/iTunes.

I am wanting something inexpensive, preferably rugged incase it is dropped. Must be wireless, preferably bluetooth, and perferably a single unit.

I want to be able to sit on the sofa with a keyboard in my lap and use OS X for launching/navigating iLife applications. I am not trying to have a workstation for cutting iMovies, just want to be able to manage an iTunes playlist or import some digital photos. Nothing too fancy.

Please offer your advice/experience/opinions!

Thus far, I have found the following:
Wireless Mobile Keyboard - Developed by Motion Computing and offered at $150, this bluetooth all-in-one keyboard/mouse is meant for TablePC users, but looks like the best offering I have found thus far for my purposes.

Media Center Remote & Keyboard - a $180 offering by Gyration is not Bluetooth but includes an interesting pointing device that looks like a large remote control and uses a gyroscope to point the mouse on the TV. This offing is specifically for media centers.

diNovo Cordless Desktop - This $250 Logitech 'system' does not have an integrated mouse but apparently the detached calculator pad functions as a remote control and has an LED screen. I believe much of the functionality may be Windows Media Center/XP only.

Or you could just order them directly from Motion Computing, since that's where Gateway gets them from. It was about $100 cheaper that way back when I bought mine, and I've been quite happy with it.

• The pen interface is awesome, whether using it as a mouse or for writing. Writing is just incredibly rewarding, especially with all the neat features like copy and paste, delete stroke, convert to text, etc. There's an updated version of XP Tablet Edition coming out this year for FREE too with new features.
• The connectors (100baseTX/POTS/usb/firewire), portability, weight, speed, flexibility (ie: use as desktop via docking bay or notebook with clip-on keyboard/hardshell cover) is wonderful. I've found myself using my tablet as my primary system over my 3GHz desktop many times.
• The battery life is superb, it's ability to play a DVD or a CD-based game from a disc image on the hard drive is acceptable, and overall the "Centrino" optimization is very noticeable.

• The screen is notably bad if you aren't at a "sweet spot" of an angle - it seems too bright. They do have a solution for this, though.
  XP Tablet edition isn't as stable as XP Professional. The mouse cursor gets laggy/jumpy sometimes and consume 100% CPU randomly. I've experienced the "blue screen of death" numerous times, and had system freezes even more frequently.
• 802.11b built in and only one PC-Card/PCMCIA port. I wish they would've provided a 3-way 802.11a/b/g as the built in wireless - for something this expensive already it'd make sense. I would like to have all 3 802.11 specs while having a celluar modem in the PC card slot.
• As with all the tablets I've seen without an integrated keyboard (and thus all the compact, lightweight ones), it does not have a built-in CD/DVD drive - a major issue to me.

• The pen interface is awesome, whether using it as a mouse or for writing. Writing is just incredibly rewarding, especially with all the neat features like copy and paste, delete stroke, convert to text, etc. There's an updated version of XP Tablet Edition coming out this year for FREE too with new features.
• The connectors (100baseTX/POTS/usb/firewire), portability, weight, speed, flexibility (ie: use as desktop via docking bay or notebook with clip-on keyboard/hardshell cover) is wonderful. I've found myself using my tablet as my primary system over my 3GHz desktop many times.
• The battery life is superb, it's ability to play a DVD or a CD-based game from a disc image on the hard drive is acceptable, and overall the "Centrino" optimization is very noticeable.

• The screen is notably bad if you aren't at a "sweet spot" of an angle - it seems too bright. They do have a solution for this, though.
  XP Tablet edition isn't as stable as XP Professional. The mouse cursor gets laggy/jumpy sometimes and consume 100% CPU randomly. I've experienced the "blue screen of death" numerous times, and had system freezes even more frequently.
• 802.11b built in and only one PC-Card/PCMCIA port. I wish they would've provided a 3-way 802.11a/b/g as the built in wireless - for something this expensive already it'd make sense. I would like to have all 3 802.11 specs while having a celluar modem in the PC card slot.
• As with all the tablets I've seen without an integrated keyboard (and thus all the compact, lightweight ones), it does not have a built-in CD/DVD drive - a major issue to me.

I have an early version HP from work, and I also tested the Acer tablet and briefly tried out the Motion version... all in all, I wouldn't recommend using the tablet PC unless you a) give lots of presentations or speeches, as I've found them more portable than laptops, or b) like to draw a great deal and don't have extra money to spring for a Wacom. When I use the tablet, I often find myself needing to attach the keyboard to get things done quickly. I've all but given up using it in favor of a regular notebook, which has a longer battery life, more memory, and... well, more of just about everything, for a smaller price.

That being said, the handwriting recognition for Windows tablet is pretty good. If I was going to purchase one for myself, I would probably try to evaluation the Motion Tablets. I was fairly impressed with them, and I wish I had more time to use it. Battery life is a KILLER on these things, and they had a nice little back attachment available (about the size of a notebook, so increasing the width) that would greatly extend the life.

HP's and Motion computer have DETACHABLE keyboards, meaning that you CAN have the best of both worlds.

I would know, I have a Motion M1300 with mobile keyboard.

A detachable keyboard is very very nice, I can break out the keyboard for my social sciences where text notetaking is all that's needed and keep the keyboard in my backpack when I'm in a math class. If I need to draw a couple of diagrams/charts/etc side by side in my text-heavy classes, I could do that too :-)

Say what you will about the sucess of tablets, having handwritten notes searchable to prep for tests is happy-fun-good-times. Bringing a plain laptop isn't good enough for most classes, I'd end up bringing a sheet of paper along with it to draw diagrams, and because of that it fucks up my organization when looking over my notes later. Tablets keep everything ORGANIZED and searchable.

I really couldn't see some start-up company doing this on their own. There's some serious stuff in there, all the modern tablets have pressure sensitivity (the "button" is on the tip of the pen, not the screen like with palm pilots) and I'm pretty sure that Linux doesn't have drivers to support that last time I looked, so doodling or professional drawing won't work (Penny Arcade is drawn on a tablet, for example). Also there is very little integration with the tablet in slate mode (no keyboard), think of linux w/o using the command line . Linux without the convienience of power nor the UI integration of Tablet XP. We're talking about copying and pasting handwritten stuff between programs here, if you want to get indignant.

Tablet PCs have a LONG way to go with Linux, unfortunately.

I would love to have one - I'd use it all the time (I dont' play games much, but if I did, I'd use a separate machine of course). The problem is they're too damn expensive. The only one I know of with USB 2.0, one of my main requirements, is the new one from Motion Computing ( http://www.motioncomputing.com/ ), and I can't spend two and a half grand on a computer that slow, when I can get a low power desktop and monitor for just over three hundred.

(That's why I dislike PDAs with keyboards. They force you to continually switch between finger and stylus. Maybe some people are dextrous enough to multiplex their keyboard/stylus hand. I'm not. Not that I'm any good at Graffiti or Jot. For me, the ideal is a stylus-compatible keyboard.)

The new Zauruses may be as small as "other" PDAs. But the keyboard and the L-shaped design make them too much like subnotebooks for my taste. A good slate-style tablet PC is actually closer to the PDA concept than the Zaurus. A slate-tablet may cost 4 times as much, and be way to big for your pocket. But at least it preserves the strolling user concept.

Fortunately for you the Gateway Tablet PC isn't really made by Gateway anyway. You can get the same machine without the rebranding cheaper from the actual manufacturer. Check them out at Motion Computing

Damiano

Microsoft is hyping the tablet PC because it uses their Operating System (Windows XP Tablet). Several companies are coming through with the hardware, including Acer, Compaq, and Motion. My university has had demonstrations of all three, a couple of them MS sponsored.

In our demonstrations Microsoft never claimed credit for the tablet concept, and the demonstrators did acknowledge that the idea has been around for some time. They are selling the difference in that a) the new tablet PCs are now affordable and b) the OS can run anything Windows XP can run.

For approximately the price of a laptop, you get a somewhat more mobile but less powerful laptop. Acer's includes an integrated keyboard. They are nifty, but I wouldn't say that the Linux users in the audience stood up and cheered by any stretch of the imagination. Right off the bat they have their drawbacks. CD/DVD isn't integrated (which would be difficult at that size, although they have lots of ports to use), the voice recognition is still somewhat weak, and as I mentioned, they are somewhat less powerful than laptops at the same price. On the other hand, people can carry them around like they're a pad, people can annotate in any program, it makes using drawing programs a lot better, and it has the best handwriting recognition software I've ever encountered (that is what impressed me the most).

All in all, they are selling the tablet PC as "an idea that's time has come." I don't know if that's true; if my area decides to support them I will probably use one, but I wouldn't go out and purchase one myself at this point.