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What Kind of Tablet PC to Buy?
nic barajas asks: "I'm going to be attending college this fall, so I have been looking into a computer to use on campus. My preference has been to looking at the Tablet PC, although they are still in their proverbial infancy. I have been looking at a multitude of vendors, including Sager, Acer, and Toshiba. I'm looking for something that has a sizeable screen (at least 12"), decent storage (40GB+), and a long battery life. What are some of the better models on the market with these characteristics?"
Sure, you can carry it anywhere, but it still performs like crap no matter where you take it.
Who wants a tablet in reality? Laptop yes. PDA yes. Tablet? No redeming features...
Seeing as I am now in the same shoes as you, I have been thinking about this too. At first I was going to look into tablets, and the obvious choice looked to be a tablet/notebook crossover. However, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered how much I would actually use the tablet functionality, and what the overall advantage would be over a pen and paper. But it seems like adding the notebook stuff to a tablet kills all the advantages of the tablet, such as the really small size. I've been developing some apps for my high school that we're running on a Fujitsu tablet (I think it runs for about 2G), and that seems like a really nice just tablet, if you want to go in that direction. But what I think what I'm going to do for next year, is get a lightweight centrino book, and a 19" or so LCD monitor for my pc. I can use the laptop for portability, and the computer/RDC for anything more.
Has anyone tried any of the Linux tablets?
Is there more than one?
Would they replace the Windows tablets in functionality?
I don't use Emacs; it uses me.
the majority of the posters here will try to steer you into a different direction than tablet-pc's.
Notepad and pencil... so much easier to edit on the run.
The bonus is that when transcribing your notes into a computer for safe keeping a filing, you are effectively reprocessing the lectures you go to. One of the best study methods i know of.
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
i prefer a notepad. for like 2 bucks you can also get a "pen" which you can enter in data in directly. it doesnt take much battery power either.
Really, you probably won't use it much. I've known a lot of people who have picked up PDAs or laptops for the purpose of using them in class and, after the initial novelty wore off, reverted to pen&paper. I can't think of anyone who's kept using them.
There's something to be said about a laptop for doing work while on campus, but I don't think that a tablet is worth the extra expense.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
...when you are too fucking lazy to go out and read reviews and do research on your own.
go ahead, mod me down...but c'mon...news? that matters?
oh I forgot, gotta go to news.google.com for that.
The tablet interface has serious productivity issues, so make sure to get a convertable so you can use it as a real laptop when you actually need to get stuff done.
A buddy of mine was looking at tablets a while ago, instead he went with the IBM T41. Of course, his needs were more along the line of Mobile-AutoCAD-Demo-Station, not just something to take notes on and maybe goof around on.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
any reason you'd be getting a tablet over a regular notebook/laptop? and would this be your primary machine, or something that you'd have in addition to a desktop. it's hard to make good recommendations unless we know what you're using this for
Unless you have money to burn on bleeding-edge technology (and in this case, it could quite easily be described as bleeding-to-death) as a college student, I would stick with a traditional notebook PC - you'll get much more for your money, and you don't risk being stuck with a possibly dead-end investment.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
out of all of them i like the toshiba.durable construction and descent warrenty. although i dotn think they are worth it still.
Dalbert
Does anybody no which washer and dryer I should buy? I'm thinking about a Whirlpool or a Maytag. What do you guys think?
...
Thanks in advance! Get back soon because my wife is in the car waiting to go
The Transmeta based tablets have to be the slowest ones I've ever used. A 1Ghz processor from Transmeta felt like a 200Mhz Pentium chip.
Sorry Linus! But they suck!
And returned it very quickly. Wait another generation or two if you really need to buy one. Give time for kinks to be worked out. Likely by then you'll find yourself not needing one and will have saved yourself a few bucks. If you seriously feel you need to have a computer in the classroom, there's no reason a small laptop can't do what you need better than a Tablet PC. Baring that, hadwritten notes will be easier to take and study with later on.
The only real reason anyone should get a tablet PC is if they already own and use a full-on desktop PC. That way, you can use the desktop for normal use, and grab the tablet for reading /. in bed or pr0n in the bathroom.
Tablet PCs haven't sold very well lately; I'd be seriously worried about vendors dropping support. Might want to go with a more conventional laptop.
What is the driving force to spend extra dollars for a tablet over a good laptop? What do you want to do with it? If you can answer that, it might help some of the folks here provide more relevant answers. If you can't answer that satisfactorily, that should tell you something.
Check with your prospective school. See what their requirements are and what sort of discounts/deals they offer to students who buy through the university. That should factor into your evaluation.
Try checking out the comparisons here. Why? Check out the links on the comparisons, as well as the owner of the domain via whois... At least you know this (unlike Computer Shopper magazine) site is not being whored out by some vendor. It's a pretty detailed site on specs, vendors, etc.
MoFscker
The Tablet PC's aren't nearly as usefull as they are touted as being. Sure, you can draw driectly onto the screen.
They are like giagantic PDA's in that respect. If you want a good PC for college, get a VERY powerful system that will last you a good three or four years before showing it's age.
Take a look at one of the high-end gaming Laptops from Dell, Alienware or other high-end laptop manufacturer.
I considered tablet PC's for some of our sales staff, after taking a look at a few models, I found them quite lacking in terms on long-term performance, long-term durability as well as usability. Some of them DON'T have keyboards at all.
If you need serious portable computing power, a Tablet PC is nothing but a really fancy toy.
I own an older Fujitsu Stylistic Tablet and can honestly say they aren't worth all the trouble you put into them...get a laptop. Here @ Purdue they are piloting a test program of the Acer pen tablets and they are nothing more than a fancy laptop w/ a stylus and a keyboard that folds back. They ran slower and seemed very flimsy than other laptops I've used, even ones a few years old. They also have alot of software that is needed for all the "special features" that in all honesty doesn't get upgraded that often. Just my 2 cents
those with tablet PC don't read slashdot!
seriously, the tablet PC technology is more for places like airport information kiosks etc which are used by non-tech savvy people.
if you don't know what kind of tablet PC to buy, then most likely, you don't need one either.
Other than suggest some googling to find reviews, my only other piece of advice is a question.. What makes a tablet PC better than a laptop for school? I think that may help you make your decision.
Powerbook, if you can afford it?
:p
Since I don't have extra $$$ to burn (and I'm not a mac user), I use Thinkpad and am happy with it. I'm running SuSE on it.
I've used the Acer one. It's pretty nice, built in ethernet, wireless, and pretty easy to use, but I don't feel it's practical.
I used one for software compatibility testing (it basically is as compatible as an XP laptop would be), but I did find myself using it in laptop mode most of the time though. Passwords and login information are really hard to enter in in tablet mode. Since the pen input usually assumes you're typing in words, it'll tend to add extra spaces when writing login information and passwords. As for other types of writing, it's easier just to type in keyboard mode.
I've only found it useful in Tablet mode for tapping out check lists. Maybe someday I'll find a better use for it.
If I had money to waste on such a thing, I'd love to have a tablet pc for wireless web surfing on the couch while watching TV or playing games... Being able to look stuff up without having to go to the PC and print it out would be rather nice...
A tablet would be less bulky than a full blown laptop, and a bit more appropriate for this.
/sig
I'm a rich kid, whose parents will buy me anything that I like, so should I whine for them to first buy a tablet PC, only to throw it out and have them buy me a nice purple iMac with matching iPod, or should I just complain that I'm failing my classes because, like, the PC ate my paper, and it was a really good paper?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
It's small enough to be truly portable, powerful enough to do more or less anything reasonable you want to do with it, and it's OS kicks ass. Or you can run Linux on it if you think you'd prefer it, though my guess is that after a while of using it, you won't.
Learn how to arc weld and start your own Discovery/TLC show - Monster Haxxor!!
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
most of the times I would agree, although I must state I recently bought myself an older PowerBook which is pretty much nothing more than a word processor. Albeit a heavy one, it serves its purposes when I'm on Metro North doing something simple. As for the PDA's, I'm too clumsy/ignorant to mess with them too much I had a zion once upon an internet era ago and saw it as nothing more than a novelty
MoFscker
You say you need a computer at college. Get a large screen laptop (15 inches are well under 1G now). That way it can act as a decent desktop too. You'll spend far more time at your desk studying than anywhere else.
Haha, how it is a "Troll" or "Flamebait" if almost EVERYONE OTHER PERSON AGREES WITH ME?
Has anybody played with the digital ink handwriting recognition for writing up equations?
is it faster than TeX?
Have you ever used a pda?? It unfortunately has most of the same shortcomings. The screen still isn't large enough, sometimes it gets your notes wrong and believe me, paper is faster. Transcribing your notes back to your laptop later acts as study time, and when you read the notes that you rewrote 6 months ago you will still be able to read them. If you were going to have the money to buy a tablet, look into IBM's thinkpads, light, durable, fast, great warranty. I have used thinkpads for over 4 years. They are the best in the business. T41 is a good choice.
Word of advice: buy a laptop, instead. Laptops have been manufactured for years, and, as such, the companies producing them have become quite good at it. Large hard drives, large screens, even several removable storage drives are no problem for these portable titans. Laptops are quickly becoming complete desktop replacements. Given laptops ubiquity, their presence is insured for a long time coming, while the Tablet PC's existance is threatened by mediocre sales and poor quality. Trust me, as the owner of several laptops, a Tablet PC, even in a laptop-style dock, is a poor substitute for a laptop.
"I never lived in this century." --Dan Quayle
While not actually a tablet PC, I think the Fujitsu lifebook would be just the thing for you. I have been delighted with mine. It is very small, has excellent battery life, uses a Transmeta Crusoe processor, and runs linux like a charm
Only get a tablet PC if you will be taking a lot of graphic design oriented classes. Or just art in general. But if you have never played with a regular ole tablet on a PC, do not go out and by a TabletPC! They have specialized art based uses, and are not useful for anything else then that (maybe except signing your name). If you do not need one, save the money from a TabletPC and get a better laptop, or more batteries.
You are doing a smart thing. The full touchscreen on Tablet PC's is what drew me in, and honestly I wouldn't have it any other way- the ability to surf the net with just a pen to scroll, or just clicking things with it, it feels MUCH MORE natural. Make sure you go with a convertible, however, because it sucks when you get stuck without the keyboard.
Other than that, I can recommend that you stick with a Centrino-powered model- the models based on other chipsets/processors will not be as fast. Centrino gives you a much faster notebook with good support and battery life and you get the performance of the Pentium-M, which is a very impressive processor.
In term of specifications, most tablet pc models come with the minimum of 12" screens and 40gb hard disks. So your requirements pretty much encompasses every tablet pc out there. What you might want to consider beforehand are the following: 1. Convertible (with keyboard) or slate (external keyboard). I personally use a convertible model, since my typing is still waay faster than scribbling. 2. Connectivity. Do you need bluetooth built in ? 802.11G or B? 3. Battery life. Depending on how many power points there are in your lecture theatre, this is likely a big concern if you plan to take lecture notes. 4. Processor power. Tablet PCs range from 800mhz to 1.6mhz. if you plan on running hefty simulations,etc., you might want a rethink. Finally, ask yourself if you -really- need a tablet pc. Remember that you are paying a premium for being able to scribble on your laptop, at the same time forfeiting some screen quality and performance.
All you really want is decent note taking right? Instead of a $3,000 POS, get a decent PalmOS PDA and a Stoaway folding keyboard. Spend the >$2,500 you save on beer and condoms.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
Size of screen as q
size of hard drive as r
speed of hard drive as s
battery life as t
No constants are used, because I have a life (posting as an AC!)
t
----------- = 1
q^2 + (r * s)
Stick with a laptop, they're already annoying enough to type on (5x the typos of a desktop keyboard due to no contour.) Get a PDA if you need to scribble. Or better yet, a pad of paper and a scanner.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Seriously. Start saving you money now, and wait for Apple to release a tablet. Any tablet that Apple Releases will be sure to be top notch and meet your needs.
The tablet PC hype seems to be pretty strong lately but I've yet to see anything that has changed since the WinCE that were hyped the last time round (or the WinCE tablets before that, or all of the other failed tablets that Microsoft and others have tried to sell). The ad copy from the last version is almost verbatim -- the handwriting recognition is soooo much better, screens are better and they have a new OS which is pen centric. Also, given Microsoft's upgrade history for these things (new OS? Buy a new computer) it seems to be all stick and no carrot.
I've had tablet PCs before and, cool as it seems now, you will not use it as a tablet especially in school.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
I admit, a lot of the tablets out there are useless. But a minimalist (or maybe maximumist) tablet would be a notebook with a rotating screen and pen input.
I'd be very pleased to spend an extra couple hundred dollars over the cost of a notebook for that. (Apple, are you listening? Because my preferreed laptop to add this feature to would be my 12" Powerbook G4!)
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.
the Tablet PC, although they are still in their proverbial infancy
Hardly. I had an i386 based tablet PC back in the days. More correct to say that after all this time, tablet PCs are *still* the neglected children of the PC world. They still aren't replacements for good old pen and pad yet aren't as full of goodies as a full blown laptop. I suggest getting a regular laptop. There are smaller ones, if size and weight are strong considerations, that are far more useful in the long run than tablet PCs.
I guess the case of tablet PC, Speech Recognition, etc. shows how the open source movement is good at replicating what others have done. But very low on innovation. I mean open source hasn't bought out the best handwriting recognition engine! Guess the innvotation that can bring in money and food on table is always done by so called close source! If you wanna disprove me give me a link to a open source handwriting recognition that runs on a tablet PC and is better than microsoft's tablet OS.
The 12" PowerBook is the best value out there. It's certainly the best constructed, best looking, and most secure with it's UNIX based OS. As a student, you'll get $200 off your purchase.
I'd say they're whack.
"multitude of vendors" "characteristics"
Oh shit do you need to get laid.
Don't you know that your tablet PC sucks because Apple didn't come out with one first?
Had Apple come out with one all shiney and metallic the press would have heralded it as "visionary", "inventive", "out of the box" and whatever other nonsense terms the marketing dreck could muster.
Now for the useful part of this post.
I've spent a few weeks with the Toshiba Portege 3500 and found the handwriting recognition was excellent and the performance excellent as well. It was a bit pricey and I wouldn't have paid for it if I had to
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
One of my bus-mates has one, and it allows him to productive on the bus-ride into work. It's a convertable so he can work efficiently at the office, and in tablet mode, it takes up just the right amount of room.
/. is irrelevant.
This is a "me too" post - I find that a laptop really isn't necessary during my stay at university. Besides, if you have a less-than-stellar work ethic, having your machine relatively grounded means that by simply going somewhere else, you're more likely to be more productive, due to you not screwing around on the computer mindlessly. Honestly, ask yourself what you're going to be using this machine for; my guess is that it'll include programming, web browsing and some word processing (along with peripheral tasks like listening to music and gaming). Note taking on a laptop blows, and it pisses the people off around you because they have to accomodate your annoying clicking and typing. Additionally, a pad of paper crashes much less often than a word processor (you may not think this is so important, but just wait till it happens to you right at the end of a long lecture).
Ducks for cover! Shortly thereafter, a thousand Voodoo2 PCI boards were thrown in his general direction...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
i don't mean to troll.
just seems like the main benefit of Tablet PC's is that they make more money for the hardware manuf's.
1. Get a laptop from a reputable brand.
(Dell, IBM, Alienware, or Apple)
2. Get a student discount
Dell, Apple do this, probably others too.
3. Get a 3 year extended warranty.
Laptops are fragile, especially when carried around! SOMETHING WILL BREAK, and replacement parts are EXPENSIVE. This will carry you through most of your college life.
4. Wait until JULY to order your laptop.
Get the most bang for your buck.
Get a laptop if youre not a gamer, you need to get out of your room sometimes. And buy beer during the week... You can easily sneak it in the dorms during the week days... you'll have girls in your room in no time. Paper and Pen is best... i'd hate to see you take notes during chem/physics class. lol Introduce yourself to every girl you see the first week of school, and say a friend of mine may be having a party this weeknd(yea it's a lie... but you said MIGHT)... trust me Thank god for older brothers.
Why a tablet??? Get a decent laptop. My PHB got a tablet with XP on it, and has had nothing but trouble with it. The WiFi is intermittent, the battery life is short, and the handwriting recognition is unusable. It also has lower specs and twice the price of a laptop with same weight/screen size. I just don't see the point in the things at all.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
I have the aforementioned Toshiba, and, to be honest, think it's a great machine. It is absolutely awesome for classes where the professor gives you a copy of his notes (like my thermodynamics class). All I had to do was "print" the notes to a Windows Journal file, and was able to mark them up with no fuss.
I'm going to suggest that you keep below US$2200 though. The price deprecation on the machine will hurt if it's much more than that. Trust me on this. I bought a $3000 laptop (thanks, Uncle Sam for the Tax Credit!) and within 6 months the machine was valued at about 2/3 that. Stay in the middle of the pack, regardless of whatever machine you buy, tablet or notebook.
Also, be sure to consider a convertible tablet, i.e. one with a keyboard. There are many times when it's simply more effient to whip the display around and type out notes in MS Word or whatever. However, at the same time, in certain classes it's much, much easier to draw diagrams, derive equations, and things with a pen. Having both options is very much worthwhile.
Also, think long and hard about an extended warranty. The machine supposedly will travel with you for at least three years, taking quite a bit of abuse along the way. Mine was VERY handy on another machine (Sony VAIO GRX-520), which experienced a sudden failure due to some hardware issues. After 20 minutes on the phone with a tech, they fedexed me an empty box and label, I fedexed the machine, and two days later, I got it back in perfect working condition (Sent it out Thursday, got it back Monday (FedEx only delivers on Weekdays). If I had not purchased that warranty, the service would have cost about $800 and who knows how much heartache.
Oh, and one last thing: Don't splurge and get a machine capable of playing the latest, greatest games. It'll be outdated within a year, and you'll have no upgrade path. Again, buy the middle of the pack and save some money for a replacement battery in two years or so.
That reminds me: Don't buy generic batteries, or old batteries off ebay. Lithium Ion batteries start to decay from the day they're manufactured.
Just my two bits...
Mike Hollinger
Michael C. Hollinger
An expensive item to leave lying around or to throw in your rucksack. Murphy's law says that it will contain the only set of your notes when it's stolen. Sod's law says this will happen just before exams. Stick to pen & paper for taking notes.
ibook or powerbook.
not tablet pc!
As I said when a similar topic came up in October:
I use my Acer Travelmate T102i every weekday for about 8 hours a day.
I'm a college student and researcher in Biochemistry.
Tablet PCs are _perfect_ for this setting. I can take notes without having to lug around huge notebooks, I can reference professor's webpages on the fly, and most importantly: I can include all the diagrams and drawings needed in my field in with my notes, saved on a computer to search and reference.
You can't type a lot of college notes- there are too many diagrams, drawings, and weird flowcharts to do that.
I haven't used a notebook since November 2003, when I first got my Tablet PC, and it's completely changed the way I get my work done.
I'd reccommend the lightest weight one you can find-- using it like a notebook means often holding it or resting it on your arm for extended periods of time.
This statement is solely an opinion. Kindly take it as such in all cases.
- Call or email them.
- A real live tech who builds the computers will call or email you back!
You can't beat Sager for tech support, community, and price for what you get. I bought a 5680 from PCT/Sager, and I love it. It's incredibly powerful, and I've had zero problems with it (except a cracked LCD frame, but that was my own damned fault). It runs Linux perfectly, I run Red Hat 9 without a problem. It takes a little bit of configuration to get the touchpad working, but other than that it's great. I've been recommending anyone who asks me about laptops to go Sager. You can't beat 'em.Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
My initial impression has been favorable, though you're right on in your assessment that tablets are still in their infancy. Microsoft's handwriting recognition is excellent, definitely the best I've seen. They also have some limited support for gesture and shape recognition, though they don't appear to be using them for much at the moment.
As far as I can tell, there is not yet a "killer app" for the tablet pc platform. The only thing that comes close is OneNote, which is pretty damned cool, but not really worth the extra money, imo. The tablet platform still has quite a few warts, the biggest being the lack of decent integration with existing apps. MS's solution to ink input for legacy apps is a rather clunky keyboard/writing area applet that sits above the task bar and transmits your handwriting as text to selected text input controls after a short delay. I suspect that this will get better and better with future revisions of the tablet pc operating system services.
As for the hardware, the Toshiba is a nice machine. It's fast, being Centrino based, though not as fast as some of the other Pentium M machines out there because they've pushed it as far in the battery life conservation direction as possible. Mine gets about 4 - 5 hours under normal conditions. The display is good, and I like the high resolution (1400 x 1050). The graphics accelerator is middle of the road for current laptops. Overall performance is decent, though noticably slower than my Thinkpad T40p.
That said, I do have a few gripes with this particular model. It's much larger than you might expect, especially given that it has a curiously cramped keyboard. It's very thick, and fairly heavy for a tablet. I vastly prefer the form factor of my T40. It is, however, leaps and bounds above the 1st gen HP/Compaq tablet we have, which was based on a suck-ass tranmeta processor and just felt cheesy as hell. Apparently the newer ones are much better.
As for competitors, we have one of the Motion Computing slates, which definitely wins in terms of sex appeal. It's thin, good industrial design, and very appealing. I haven't had a chance to play with it, though, and I think I would sorely miss the keyboard in short order.
To summarize, I think my advice would definitely be NOT to buy a tablet right now . For the extra money, you can get an absolutely kick ass notebook that really blows the tablet away in terms of overall capabilities. I like my tablet, but I like my T40 even more. It's much friendlier to use, and I find myself wishing that I were typing when I take notes on the tablet.
If you just have to have the tablet because of the cool factor, make sure you have an opportunity to play with both types (slate and convertible) before you take the plunge. Buying a convertible is a concession to practicality. When you stop using the tablet features after the first month, at least you still have a decent laptop to use. With the slate, you're pretty screwed unless you use the docking station all the time.
- adam
Get a Miele... you won't be disappointed!
-1, Offtopic
Others have said basically the same thing, but as someone who's just wrapping up his college career, I can basically second this: Don't bother.
I have a laptop. An honest to goodness, actually portable, quiet enough to use in class laptop. This is an important point, because everyone at universities nowadays has a laptop, but most of them are of the ~8lbs./non-mobileCPU/1.5 hr battery life flavor. My handwriting is atrocious, and I'm an English major. Those two things together meant that I could actually read my notes (in classes where the class structure lent itself to massive notes on some days), and I could work on papers during the hour or so between classes that I might have otherwise wasted. To be brutally honest, I never, ever wished that I had a tablet, mostly because they don't seem to have any redeeming features for people other than comic artists.
Get a decent desktop. Something small enough to bring into the dorms, maybe one of those Small Form Factor machines, or a mini-tower. Get a nice, 17" flat panel monitor to go with it. Unless you want an uber-gaming machine, you should be able to do this pretty easily for about $1,200. If you really want a laptop, might I suggest an iBook. The 12" models are light enough to carry around (5lbs., which is pretty close to my ceiling for what I will carry around in addition to the big-ass book that that one professor will always want you to bring), they get a good 4 hours or so in the real world (provided you aren't hitting the hard drive or optical drive too frequently; make sure to load it with RAM), and while the polycarbonate finish will get minor scratches, they're very durable notebooks. You can (at least last I checked) get the G3 models with few frills (CD-ROM, 30GB Drive) for $800. Toss in another $125 or so to max it out with RAM, and I managed to get my airport card for $50. At $1,000, it is ever so slightly more expensive than the ludicrously cheap after Mail-in-rebate jobs at some of the retail stores, but it is significantly more lightweight and significantly less noisy.
Honestly, though, outside of a few classes (generally the giant lecture hall ones), I rarely used my notebook. It was mostly for time between classes, but that was only because I lived off-campus and couldn't get home to work on my desktop. If you are absolutely positive that you need a tablet, go ahead and snag one, but I'd otherwise recommend grabbing a desktop and waiting to see if a notebook is something you really want after you've been there for a few months.
... may i advise AGAINST getting a tablet pc. even though i've been working on several ports of open source software to support tablet (notably giving AbiWord tablet functionality), the applications are just not there yet to support a proper pen-paper metaphor. if your computer dies, gets wet, or any other of a number of faults, you could end up loosing all of your class notes (if you used the tablet to take notes). one of my friends, a microsoft representative for the campus, got a tablet from them for free and used it to take notes. it was great until one day there was a small rain storm before class and a few drops of water got into his tablet, preventing him from turning it on. i had to give him a pen and paper to take notes that day while he prayed that it would turn on after air drying.
word to the wise: if you do get tablet, get a convertible tablet. and if you do, be sure to still take notes on pen-paper.
Yes...
Go ahead little slashdotters and mock this platform. Before you know it you'll have the Tablet PC worth so little I'll be paying the half-price for a non-convertable system with equivalent specs.
Dear sir:
.although they are still in their proverbial infancy."
". .
My friend, if you use this overused roughage in college writing courses you will be be in for quite a beating.
" I have been looking at a multitude of vendors, including [three computers]."
My pre-freshman friend. Use this adjective clause in class next fall, and you will be labeled an M, for you take a guess.
That said, it is not as nice as a wacom tablet, which is what I've used in doing computer based artwork. Although you do get to draw on the screen, which is admittedly pretty cool. Also note, he and I only find them useful because we do art on the computer. If you don't plan on using it for artistic purposes, you might want to try some other setup (ultra thin notebook or desktop replacement notebook and a pda). However, if you really want, or feel you need a tablet pc, I'd recomend the toshiba. It's definitely a well-built tablet.
Cheaper, and I might add, much less trouble than actually buying a tablet!
I'm ordering one through Dell, or you can buy direct from motioncomputing.com. While it's true that some people who buy them don't really use them, the fact that some people don't like them doesn't make them worthless. I know some people who use and love them.
On the other hand, those who have pointed out the value of writing on paper then transcribing as a study aid make a good point. A laptop will probably work fine for you, but if money's not an issue, why not get the tablet? For what it's worth, I work at a university, and have yet to see a student using one.
How's that for ambivalence?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Hi!
My oldest daughter is a sophomore in college, and she's had both a desktop and a laptop. I've been working with various kinds of portable computing initiatives since 1995--including working with a predecessor of the Fujitsu Stylist in Japan.
How will you use it?
Unless you're going to tote spare batteries with you all day, chances are you won't take your computer to class. There are very few notebook options with real world (as opposed to advertised) battery life records of longer than 2 hours. There are very few college days with fewer than 2 hours of class. Do the math: you either carry extra batteries, or leave the computer in your room. (A survey of Daughter #1's dorm mates: nobody brings a computer to class.)
So a desktop is a good idea?
The big advantage of a desktop is the price--a desktop these days is extremely inexpensive. Taking a desktop to school will save your parents (or you, if you're financing college with loans you'll have to pay back) a ton of money. The down side of the desktop is that it pretty much stays on the top of your desk. So when you're in the library--you're stuck. You take notes by hand, or you stand in line at the photocopier. A laptop makes an enormous amount of sense at the library--and you'll find that most schools have wired the carrels in the library for the campus network. So you can work on your laptop in the library, access Internet resources, and use whatever local file & print resources you have set up with your roommates. Getting a laptop makes a lot of sense.
Do you need a tablet?
In a word, "no." The business case for tablets assumes that the end user either a) doesn't know how to type, or b) isn't in a position to type. If you have enough typing aptitude to submit an article to SlashDot, you know how to type. You will enter a lot more data, with a much higher rate of accuracy, using a keyboard. And the gee-whiz features of a tablet (the reversible, touch-sensitive screen) adds a whopping amount to the price. It's kind of like buying an air-conditioner for your igloo: the feature is undoubtedly cool, but you're not likely to get much benefit from it.
What you should buy instead
First, you should buy a notebook. Second, you should buy an inexpensive, lightweight flatbed scanner. While you will want to take notes at the library, you will also find zillions of times where you will need to photocopy or type information that you find in a reference volume. If you have a scanner with you, presto! Just scan the pages. I strongly recommend the Visioneer 9020 USB scanner. It is very lightweight, it is extremely easy to use, and the work flow (what steps you have to take to scan pages) is very, very simple. The one concern that might surface is that an overzealous librarian might question whether you're violating copyright law by scanning. I'd suggest that you're not doing any more than you would be using the photocopier, but the library may "have a policy" about it. Let me suggest packing the scanner in and out in your backpack, and not make a point of drawing attention to yourself.
Bottom line:
Skip the tablet. Buy a laptop. Buy a cheap scanner (the Visioneer 9020 is $99). Spend fifty bucks taking your parents to dinner to say "thank you" for all they're doing for you, and put the other $950 you'll save aside for other, better uses.
We have one at the computer store where I work.
r ). cfmg ure.z ip
Nice machine
http://www.eurocom.com/products/showroom/T200V(
http://www.eurocom.ca/dealers/pos/T200Vconfi
Maybe it fits your needs. You can also get an external CDRW/DVDROM drives if you need an optical drive
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Until Apple releases a decent upgrade to the Newton, I would not spend the money on a Tablet PC. I just don't this it is the right form factor and combination of portability, function, and battery life.
My recommendation is to get a good PDA and learn how to take good notes with paper and pen - it is good life skill! There are some good PDAs (I have a Sony TH-55 on Pre-order) out there that might serve your purpose and leave you some coin to get nookie. If you must get a Tablet, look for a refirb.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
I'd say don't, get a laptop instead. Reasons:
1) Unless you are quite a slow typist and quit a fast writer, you can probably type as fast or faster than you can write. Also probably far more accurately than the computer will recognise your penmanship.
2) You can get laptops plenty portable. Dell offers lots of nice, light, but respectably powerful laptops.
3) Laptops tend to cost less, for what you get. So either save the money or invest it to get more computer.
4) All the tablets I've used have quirks and problems that laptops don't. You don't want to be dicking around with something that will cause trouble when taking notes, you just want it to work.
5) You'll find that for papers, typing is much, much better. It is a much superior interfact for composing, organising, and editing large amounts of text. A large part of what you will be doing is writing papers, so keep this in mind.
6) Depending on your major, you may want to load specialised software to work at home. For example our engineers load a student version of Pspice on their systems so they needn't work in the labs. You are more likely to have compatibility problems on a tablet than a full blown PC.
So, unless there's a real compelling reason, get a lightweight notebook. You'll be far happier in the long run. DOn't let the wow factor of tablets draw you in. They are neat, but not ready for the prime time yet.
I go to the University of Wisconsin Madison, and I would advise you not to bother. Very rarely is a Tablet PC a useful accessory. I have a Dell Inspiron, and sometimes I wish I had a regular desktop PC. Fact is, you can't carry around a laptop/tablet; it gets bumped, scratched, etc in the bustle of the college world. I leave my laptop on my desk much of the time; the only time it leaves there is when I go home for the weekend or go on Student Council trips.
If your heart is really set on a tablet pc, I would advise you to grab an older generation tablet pc from ebay (like this). Or, see if you can salvage one from local companies or relatives.
If you're going to Madison, Wisconsin, contact me so you can get a students' view of things.
As per subject; looked into the tablets from Motion Computing? Okay, I don't know that they sell to consumers -- but we've been evaluating their tablets at work, and we're generally quite impressed. (We make medical software intended to be used from tablet PC hardware, and have been working on it quite some time -- actually, the company's first incarnation about 5 years ago had among its primary risk factors that nobody would have hardware akin to modern tablets on the market by the time our code was ready, which is happening right now).
Second choice is NEC's tablets -- they're light and have good battery life, but the accessories that come with them (stands and such) are cheap and of questionable quality, and they can't convert into a laptop form-factor. The Compaq tablets, like the Motion Computing ones, *are* convertable, but the Compaqs are relatively heavy.
If you're going to be running Linux, I'd look into FIC's Crusoe-based tablets. They gave us a few preproduction units, and we had nothing but trouble with them -- until we tried running Linux on one as a research project; its performance is dramatically better there than it was on Windows XP Tablet Edition! (Granted, it was a *prerelease* of WinXP Tablet; the whole reason we played with Linux on the system in the first place was that its OS had expired).
All that said, though, I'm with (most) everyone else here -- if you want to do the practical thing, get yourself a laptop.
[PS: In Austin? Good with Java, or an exceedingly excellent sysadmin with some system-level programming skills? Willing to work mostly for stock, at least for a while? Drop me a line].
At the risk of repeating the same sentiment voiced here I have to say that the Tablet concept is not a new one as it has previously failed in an attempt to corner the market that was "emerging" in the eighties...I seem to remember a Grid machine (early laptop) coming out and months later a Compaq Concerto with no keyboard and hand writing recgnition...this was years ago and where are they now? In a museum I suspect, the best place for the latest breed of form without function.
My 2c...
-- Sig meltdown immine...
I have a Motion Computing M1300 and it is probably the most awesome computing device I have ever purchased.
I bought this tablet after around a month of research into them. I also demoed alot of the alternatives to the one I ended up purchasing. The most obvious difference in tablets is obviously the difference between the hybrids and the purbred slate tablets. Yet you really don't realize how profound this difference is until you go down to a Gateway Store or CompUSA and try both out yourself.
What I'm saying here is do not get a Hybrid Tablet. If you want a laptop get a laptop, if you want a tablet get a slate tablet. Hybrids are bulky and obnoxious. They pretty much take away all the advantages that a tablet gives you. A tablet is ment to be more of a device then an actual computer and these hybrids are attempting to be desktop replacements as well as tablets, which is probably why they don't do so well at both. If you absolutely MUST get a hybrid I would suggest the Toshiba M200 if you are not on a budget or the Acer C110 if you are. The M200 has the highest screen resolution of any tablet, slate or otherwise, out there. If you want to go slightly cheaper then the M200, get the Acer 300Xi (I think thats the model.) It is slightly cheaper and has basically all the same features as the M200, except resolution.
If you want to get a slate, which is the path that I recommend, go for the Motion M1300 or the Electrovaya Scribbler 2000. The scribbler is the same speed, has a better screen, slightly less ram (256 or 512 MB built in, then an upgrade slot for one DIMM) then the Motion, but kills the Motion on battery life with a whopping 9 hours. It is however $2600, so that may make you think twice about buying it. The Motion has fully upgradable RAM and a slightly worse screen, however it is older and you can probably get one for around $1700.
You can get a perfectly good laptop for about $700 new (retail), less used. These are fine for watching movies, playing non-bleeding edge games, or even school work. As a bonus, when it gets smashed, stollen, or fried, you're not out your life savings.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Stay away from them with a Ten foot pole. They are the worsest notebooks you can buy. I have to deal with 1 or 2 sagers a day. Problems with them range from dead motherboards to frequent Overheating issues. Stick to IBM's with the 3 year warranties or HP Business level notebooks and save yourself alot of problems in the future including frequent visits to the repair center.
What you need is a l33t gaming box for dorm LAN action; trust me.
IBM brought out an incredible machine a few years back that has a bit of a cult following. Review
...and it runs XP Tablet Edition if you have a MSDN subscription handy.
Best of all it can digitise whatever is drawn on the A4/8.5" x 11" pad too!
It's 10.4" screen may seem small nowadays, but it has a keyboard underneath, so you can use it as laptop, tablet or writing pad.
-Roy
current auctions
...from someone who is an IT Manager at a University.
Actually, in many of the Business, Science, and Engineering classes at the University where I work, notes are distributed in powerpoint or PDF format, and the students usually end up printing out full page copies of the slides/PDFs, and marking them up. Then students file those marked up prinouts away, and end up having to look through hundreds of pages of prinouts when studying for finals. A tablet PC is perfectly sufficient for doing what it was built to do. You can check e-mail, browse the web, and use "ink".
We also use have faculty use them in Distance Education classes, because it is the perfect alternative to pointing a camera at a whiteboard or chalkboard, and the electronic notes can be saved and distributed to the students for later reference.
Tablets are also being piloted in our regular Engineering classes. Students don't have to worry about copying down every bit of information before it is erased from the board, because it will be made available to them later. It allows them to focus more on the lecture instead of copying down every little formula.
In short, I would recommend that you don't worry about a huge screen or fast processor. A tablet will handle 95% of what the average will want it to do without problems (nobody is going to use it to compile the nightly Mozilla build). Just pick the lighest model you are comfortable with holding and using the stylus on, and make sure you get Office 2003, since it has native pen support.
It's interesting to note that under Belgian law she could be sued for damages by any corporation damaged by her work (e.g., Microsoft [microsoft.com]).
how the hell is that interesting? that's also the case in every country in the world.
Beer isn't free, but, it is open source.
I have a Toshiba tablet and I love it... as for everyone that tells you to get a laptop... IT IS A LAPTOP, there is nothing that I can do on my laptop that I can't do on my Tablet.... plus I love being able to sketch out database diagrams during meetings ... a feature that they don't really talk about is that is also has voice recognition, wouldn't recommend it for dictation, but when you you are laying in bed it is nice for "Open Browser".. "Slashdot".. "Page Down".. "Page Down"... all from a natural laying position... no weird laptop angles.
LOL!
the truth hurts.
The specs on two of them are 80GB HD, 12.1" 1024x768 screen, 800MHz, 1GB of RAM. You can get a slightly better system now.
THE PROS:
THE CONS:
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.
so umm battery life increases as any of the factors involved increase (solve for t)? damn now i want a tablet pc :)
First, the machines are designed to be lightweight so they tend to be underpowered. They're not up to graphic intensive tasks or heavy processing (compiling, CAD, etc). Also, if you're not a big note taker, then it won't turn you into one. However, if you're going into Business, Arts, Music, or even Math and take good notes a tablet could be ideal. OneNote is a great program for creating a virtual MEAD notebook. There are music notation programs, great art programs, and even math programs that solve handwritten equations. I would have loved those for my engineering classes.
As far as which tablet. Go Toshiba, especially there latest model. I don't recommend a slate, you'll need to type papers. The Toshiba's are the most powerful, longest battery, big screen, etc. Also, go to a CompUSA, BestBuy, somewhere and try one. You really need to see how it feels, some people just can't write on it it feels to wierd. Others find it very natural.
Finally, there are some benefits people overlook. It's great for forms! My local taxes use totally custom forms in PDF format, but I could load them into Journal, fill them out correcting as much as I wanted, then print them and save the electronic copy. Printed looked exactly as if I'd hand written them.
Anyways, I do reccommend tablets for students, but choose it only if it fits you.
Greg
My friend has a toshiba tablet and loves it. He draws a webcomic (www.badasshamster.com)
Geez, that webcomic is one hell of a reason to never ever buy a tablet if that's the best it can do...
A real man's machine is a nice laptop with your choice of [linux] distro, dual booting with windows (for your office, assignments and such). I recommend thinkpads, they are sweet.
mix_master_mike
vafrous
I was breifly excited about the current Logitec IO pen - until I found out it needs "special paper" with little dots all over it. [why? to know its absolute xy postion? - I know optical mice don't need special surfaces, but you don't generally pick them up and set them down again...]
Anyone have any input on this? It seems like maybe [even with "special paper"] something like a Logictec IO pen could fulfill the "tablet" notetaking function + you get a "real" notebook to download it to and have the best of both, with an extra step?
My personal interest is that I keep "engineering" logs in cheapo composition books and I would love to be able to dump it to a PC - make PDF's whatever, rather than keep the chicken scratch hardcopies forever... [although, truth be known, I could probably transcribe the "good stuff" in an hour or so, per book, If I weren't so lazy.]
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I purchased the new Toshiba M200 in December and I have been extremely pleased with it. I am also in class and I have had no problems with speed or crashes at all; 60GB drive, 512MB of RAM, 12inch screen and the best Video card/resolution of any Tablets currently on the market. Your best bet will be to check out TabletPCBuzz.com and do some research. It is quiet so it does not interrupt class, and the M200 comes with Microsoft Office OneNote which is IMHO the best note taking program out there.
Linux User #296508 Get Counted!
well, im also considering rather to buy a tablet pc, laptop, or stick with regular methods. instead of spending all that cash consider using a pen and a notebook for your own notes and a tape/digital sound recorder for the lecture.
In case you didn't notice, I like Microsoft. :)
I've been thinking about buying a tablet computer so I can use it as a portable terminal. Has anyone tried to use anything like the Linux Terminal Server Project (ltsp.org) on a tablet computer? I think you can get some really cheap older tablets from ebay for under $300, and with a wireless card I should be able to connect to my (much more powerful) desktop from anywhere within wireless range. It would be great for browsing the web and doing some simple programming. What are other people's experiences with this kind of a setup?
What could be better :)
Per Thompson
20996 Peppertree Lane
Cupertino, CA 95014
(408) 996-XXXX
February 12, 2004
CT Corporation System a.k.a. STAPLES the office superstore
818 West Seventh Street
Los Angeles, CA 90017
Re:STAPLES service contract
Dear CTCS:
On March 15, 2000, I purchased a Compaq 1200 laptop computer from your Staples store at 500
E. Hamilton Ave., Campbell, CA for $1299.98, and $249.99 for a five-year service contract
which included complete parts and labor coverage, and $107.25 sales tax for a total of $1657.22.
November 2003 I called your service center and told them that the screen would become dim
and unreadable after being on for more than an hour. I was told that this was not covered
because Compaq never covered the screen in their warranty and my contract only covered what
their warranty covered. I called Compaq and was told Compaq most defiantly covered the
screen and was invited to have anyone saying otherwise to contact Compaq. I called your
service center back and was told my contract didn't cover physical damage to the screen such as
breakage but since it wasn't physically damaged I should send it in, and that it was probably just
a cable judging from the symptoms I described over the phone. They shipped me a box and I
shipped the laptop to them in it. A few days later I got a message from Dave asking me to call
him, when I did he told me they had left my laptop on over the weekend but they couldn't find
anything wrong. He said sometimes faulty cables could be jiggled during shipping and would
sometimes then appear to be ok but he would replace the cable. The laptop arrived at a couple
of days later with a note dated 21/11/2003 stating the FL tube had been replaced and that it had
passed all tests.
When I turned on the computer, the screen would dim out in the same manner as before. I called
the service center(Robin) and was told that Staples didn't sell contracts covering screens when I
brought mine. I asked where this exclusion was stated in my contract and she told it is not stated
anywhere in the contract because "at that time Staples didn't sell contracts covering screen
replacement." This contradicts what I was told during the sale. The salesman stressed that the
contract covered the screen as the screen is an expensive and common repair.
After taking to a couple of local shops it has become clear to me that:
Anyone with a few minutes experience in a computer shop diagnose the problem correctly.
It is impossible that my screen worked well in your "service center " but not for me.
You have known what the problem is from the first time I called and have been stalling.
This is not employee laziness or dishonesty. This is employees perpetrating fraud at the
direction of Staples management.
If you do not honor our contract or refund me $1657.22 within 7 days I will sue you.
I would like to go over a few things that have not worked just to save us both a little time.
Trying to run out the clock: my service contract's five years stopped running from the date you
first acted dishonestly. Let me know if you disagree.
Telling me "that salesman doesn't work here anymore," or "he must have given you the wrong
information," etc. My contact is with Staples and it is in writing.
Instructing your employees not to give out your address of service. This information is
available for all corporations registered in California.
When you're working at the Tablet range, every ounce matters.
(I'm assuming you have a desktop of sufficient use for your "power" needs.) It's worth nearly every tradeoff to get those pounds off. How often do you REALLY need a CD-ROM drive when you're out? Or floppy disk? Serial port? Parallel port? Firewire? ZV (rca) port? Heck, 2GHz and the associated bigger battery?
I used to use a 7lb laptop. Now switched to 3.5lb. Still calling it heavy. But much better than before ^^. Drool over the Thinkpad X40, 2.9lb
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
I really can't wait for wearables to become mainstream.
I would pay $thousands for something that slipped over one or both eyes with a decent amount of transparency (i.e. 80% transparency for the background and 25% for the active window) which took input from speech recognition and a cell phone keypad for data entry.
There are too many situations where it's impractical to bring a laptop with me, and sync issues with PDAs annoy me.
I did a lot of research a while back before I bought mine.
Toshiba: Heavy, expensive, and not very well designed. Car simile: Late Model Ford.
Sager: I've owned Sager laptops before, and they are the BEST workhorses BUT they don't survive long on a battery and very heavy. Car simile: Hummer
Compaq: Expensive and pretty, and no stand-out features. Car simile: Plymouth Prowler
Acer: This is the one I went for. The C102 is one of the smallest notebooks around, with a decent battery life and a fast recharge. You can get 2-3 hours on a charge, and it recharges in 50 minutes. Not very powerful, but gets the job done.
Car simile: Honda Civic
My recomendation would be to go with the Fujitsu Lifebook P1000 Ultra-compact notebooks. They will fit in your pocket, yet have a fully-functional keyboard for touch-type notetaking (which is much faster than handwriting). Furthermore, P1000 notebooks include a stilus/touchscreen for tasks that require diagraming or drawing. This device would take the place of a tablet, home PC (if you get an external monitor and arn't an avid gamer) and PDA for an under $1,500 Pricetag. And, if you customize it to the max for battery life, it will last an estimated 10 hours without recharging. That should get you through your classes easily. It has 802.11b, 10/100 wired Networking, USB and PCMCIA to connect to other devices/systems. Most importantly for a college student, (trust me) it weighs less than three pounds (less than some of your textbooks will). It will be easy enough to cary around you won't just leave it in the dorm room (like you might a 15-17" uberlaptop) because it is to heavy to carry along with all your books. This is the only specific system I would recomend for college use (at one time I recomended iBooks as well, but they were, at the time, much cheeper than the P1000).
Little Brother, watching the watchers
I use mine for college notes and stuff (including all my papers etc). Never crashes, runs MS Office (main thing you'll find yourself using) better than any machine I've ever seen. It's not a tablet, so you'll have to type, but that removes any odds of illegibility...besides, who can resist this?
Not exactly a tablet but...
I'm a CS senior in college and I've gone through a dell inspiron, a toshiba portege and now have a 15" Al Powerbook. I've built several computers and fiddle around with them constantly so I know computers. So when I say the powerbook is the best computer I've ever owned, I mean it. It's not a tablet and battery life sucks but I never have needed to use it for more than 3 hours without having access to a wall socket and the adapter is one of the smallest ones I've seen out there so you can't really complain about lugging it around. The primary feature that really sets it apart from the crowd is OS X. Since it's based on Unix you don't have to fiddle around with installing Cygwin or Latex. I do most of my Math homework and term papers in TeX. Apple's X11 user app is a really nice way to connect remotely to the lab computers using SSH. I haven't used xcode much but it looks promising for programming projects. You don't really need MS Office for your own work and if others want to send you a document they just need to "Print to File." Having said that my friend has a Compaq tablet he bought after dropping his Thinkpad multiple times. It seems fine for him but everyone who I've seen playing around with it has ridiculed him about how awkward the writing input is. You'd probably want a tablet to take notes on or doodle in class, but you're better off typing into something like Emacs or Outliner. You can use TeX syntax for taking down equations but you'll probably have a little trouble with diagrams. I think one of the bundled programs is a flowchart app though. The 12" is a lot cheaper and lighter but has fewer ports, no backlight keyboard, and a lower quality lcd, but it's probably a more appropriate alternative to a tablet. Be sure to get a student discount. You can probably save yourself at least $200.
P.S. get the Bluetooth mouse if you go with Apple. It is much easier to use than the trackpad.
I read an average of 1 paper per day and like writing in the margins and would love something where I didn't have to rape trees. Can't do it until someone makes a screen that fits 8.5x11" page without zooming/scrolling. Why is that so hard?
First, "What Kind of Tablet PC To Buy?" is not a question. Second, you get points subtracted for the improper use of "proverbial". That's all.
My fiancee has been using the Scribbler SC800 for almost a year, and she finds it very useful. Unlike the Toshiba or Acer models that she looked at, the Scribbler is more like a slab than a notebook. This keeps her from breaking an already fragile joint. The processor isn't anything special (866 MHz), but it is fast enough for most uses, including data analysis using MATLAB. The real advantage to the Scribbler is the battery: the Li-ion battery gets about 10 hours out of a single charge. After almost a year of use, the battery is holding up under daily recharge cycles after a full workday. DISCLAIMER: Neither of us is associated with Electrovaya.
And for that matter, what planet are you on recommending PalmOS over anything?
I agree with everything the parent poster is saying.
Regarding the Portege 35xx series, they have been on closeout since Toshiba is moving to updated models (M100 & M200???). Some of the Porteges 35xx can be found for $1400 or so with discounts and rebates.
I got my Portege 3505 for $1500 with a spare battery from Toshiba.
I'm a double major in Microbiology and Immunology(Science) and East Asian studies (arts).
for the sciencey stuff, nothing beats a legal pad and a stiff drink. Drawings come up frequently, diagrams, Rxn mechanisms, metabolism paths etc...
for the Artsy type stuff, nothing beats my ibook, I can type much faster than I can write so I can get down everything prof of the day says. I can also write down a timeline as shown on the overhead projector, then add in details as we go along. Instead of (as with pen and paper) kind of guessing at where the hell the teacher is planning on going today and scribbling in the margins.
for studying, I just pop down to the library, re-read the notes, put them into some sort of format that's presentable form and print them. While I'm doing this I add in my own ideas for good places to start essay questions and maybe future term papers.
Studying in science (FYI): Memorize the fuck out of 400 pages of random acronyms... Promptly forget everything.
It seems like the only people who "love" the Tablet PC is Bill Gates himself and someone named Hahn Choi.
0 ,2 3008,3599442,00.html
I watch a great deal of TechTV, and it seems to me that each of the ones that Leo and the rest of the gang dislike them, and nearly every single one reviewed by them seems to claim the same thing.
Under powered
Over priced
Lacking in the basics
Overabundance of headache
However, I myself have never used one. I searched TechTV's website, and I found this article which has several different Tablets. Perhaps this can help you.
http://www.techtv.com/freshgear/products/story/
Hey, as long as you're linking to the New York Times and Microsoft, why not hyperlink every single word?
I mean, I'm sure there are Slashdot readers out there who don't know what Belgium is, or a computer, or pizza, or female.
"Extra money to spring for a Wacom"
Extra money? You can get a Graphire2 used for under $75 and a Graphire3 new for under $100. Works great, too. Unless you draw with huge strokes, the 4x5 Graphires are fine.
Who doesn't like free music?
From the mods that brought you such things as
-1 Insightful and
0 Funny
comes.....
Score: 4 TROLL!
Maybe if the parent had said L1|\|ux 15 7h3 r0x0r, M$ 15 7h3 5ux0r at the end of their post they would have been modded +5 Insightful?
Does anyone have any experience with the longetivity of these things?
I was turned off buying one by the fine print on a Toshiba model:
Warranty does not apply when used for school use.
How durable can it be?
I can only give you my experiences. Our company was purchasing new laptops and/or computers for everyone (well- alot of us). Our Director of Technology wanted a Compaq tablet PC. So he got one instead of a kick-ass desktop. (He doesn't travel except a few times a year, doesn't really require a portable.) Aside from the first week, I have yet to see him undock the tablet PC and use it anywhere but his desk. He has a 19" CRT monitor that is the "primary" and the tablet's monitor is setup as the secondary monitor. He complains now about it being too slow, and it is only a year old, meanwhile, my powerhorse is still pretty kick ass. He gave a few people the option of getting a normal laptop or the tablet PC. There was one other person that got the tablet. I have yet to see him use it as a table, and it too sits nicely docked all day long, and it is this other person's ONLY monitor. Unfortunately, I think that tablet PCs are in that "cool" status symbol phase that Laptops used to be in. Meaning, there are mostly purchased by people who don't need their functionality, but are bought as a status symbol.
I'm not going to argue your lone example regarding handwriting recognition (a rather narrow field). Unfortunate as it is for your world view, extremely broad extrapolations of single points of data can be misleading.
Sorry. I know the truth can hurt. Might I suggest you partake in a little more investigation into the various factors driving open source development. It may keep you from embarrassing yourself in the future.
Just consider this a friendly suggestion from an open source developer who has no problems "bring[ing] in money and [putting] food on the table."
Open Source: I'll show you mine if you show me yours.
It is absolutely awesome for classes where the professor gives you a copy of his notes (like my thermodynamics class)
Wo, awesome! My philosophy teacher doesn't give us electronic notes!
...didn't think so! This was Gateway's first attempt at an internet appliance. They teamed with AOL (to force people to use their internet service), offered the poorly designed hardware at a very low price (almost gave them away at the end-$199), and discontinued the product after less than a year on the market. They can still be found on E-bay. Many people have converted them to useful touch screen devices (cheap lcd's were only capable of 800x600 with 8 bit color) running Linux (yes it did run Linux--Midori Linux for that matter). Basically, high hopes for a poor product. Sound familiar?
My wife and I noticed the cool tablets at the local CompUSA and thought we had to have one. Bought a Compaq/HP TC1000 after much looking around. A week later the coolness effect wore off and wife and I found oursleves fighting over who gets to use the Thinkpad in the house. I eventually ended up eBaying the tablet. I was shocked to see that some people wanted it and bought it from me right away.
My advice is to stay the hell away. These things look cool. Very cool. But they are useless.
I also have a M1300, but the argument against hybrids is very apt, BUT the M1300 is EXCELLENT with a keyboard too! There's a snap-on USB keyboard made by Motion Computing. What's good about a detachable keyboard is that you have the benefits of a convertable AND a slate. Keyboard when you need it or, when weight is an issue, you can shed off the 1LB keyboard and only have a 3LB computer. The only issue I have with it is the tiny weirdly-placed backspace key, but using it for a while makes it a non-issue after a month.
:-D Looking over a scribbled chart/diagram afterwards saying "WTF IS THAT?!" is moot just by highlighting the diagram :-)
When using a tablet, THE biggest issue is weight. Nearly all laptops are heavier than the Motion slate (with the exception of the insane Japanese Sony). This is essentially a NOTEBOOK REPLACEMENT, which means it's going to be carried EVERYWHERE. A 5LB convertible is a big difference when you've got to walk 20 minutes to class.
And for those that claim that a pen and peice of paper is like a tablet, then they obviously haven't tried OneNote. OneNote allows me to RECORD lectures and all I need to do is highlight a sentence and it'll play back exactly what was said at the time the sentence was written. No need to synchronize between paper notes and a tape recorder
If you want a small, notebook-sized machine to carry around and take notes on without opening it up like a clamshell laptop, I recommend the TRS-80 Model 100. The screen's kinda small, but the keyboard is a joy, and its battery life beats the pants (and shirt and socks and underpants) off any laptop on the market. The Bill-Gates-written BASIC interpreter might make some queasy, but it's a really nice piece of gear.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Apple has no interest in that market for now.
Notes on a Laptop != Notes on a Tablet PC
The guys who posted previously don't know jack squat about the benefits of a Tablet PC.
First of all, taking notes with a laptop is not the same as taking notes with a tablet pc.
In my economics class or my Psychology class, I take notes as the prof speaks and I'm able to keep up with 95% of the words that the prof. utters. Combined with Microsoft's OneNote recording feature, I have the whole lecture in audio and text. I'm able to INLINE graphs and diagrams as the prof draws them on the board and it's easier to organize them because I don't have to freak'n rewrite my notes after class - Just cut and paste them.
Install the Office Tablet PC extensions and you can INLINE drawings in MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint and such. All my notes are in Word and I INLINE diagrams. Also, it's AWESOME especially in Powerpoint where ALL my Computer Science courses are done in Power Point. I can directly write on each slide and print them later. (Imagine that you can circle and add questions marks, notes to a powerpoint slide and save it)
To answer your question, Toshiba's latest tablet pc is the most powerful and best in the market.
Things to consider when buying a Tablet PC:
1) Screen - Almost all are 12" except for Acer's 14" clunky monster. 12" XGA screens are 1024x768. With MS's virtual desktop manager, you can 3 additional screens and it's great. The reason Toshiba's the best is because it has an SXGA+ which sports 1400x1024 resolution, but still 12". It might be too small.
2) CPU - get a centrino based 2nd generation Tablet PC model. The 1st generation just sucked and Pentium III and crusoe chips... My 1.4 Pentium M blows my desktop away.
3) Get 1 GB of RAM if your doing development. They're coming out with 512MB as standard. My Tablet is my development station so I have alot of things running from apache/mysql, iis/msde, eclipse/visual studio.net...etc. 512mb should be enough for most other application. 1Gb is specially nice when doing art work.
4) Video Card - Most centrino models come with Intel's eXtreme video card that's part of the centrino brand, but once again Toshiba blew the competition away by shipping their Tablet PCs with Nvidia's GeForce 4200 mobile card.
5) Size - most are 12" and that's a really good balance between weight and size. the 14" Acer is huge and heavy. Any other will be very light and mobile.
6) Hard Drive - 2nd generation Tablet PCs now ship 40GB+ to 60GB (Mine is 60GB).
7) Wireless - Centrino will have either the 802.11b or g. the Fujitsu and Toshiba both offer 802.11g cards.
Like I said Toshiba has the best screen and video card. My fujitsu is great and matches the toshiba feature for feature except for the screen and video card. I wish I waited 2 more months(I got my in Sept, Toshiba released theirs in Nov.)
2nd generation Tablet PCs simple rock! They're not a desktop replacement but they're very powerful laptops nonetheless.
Good luck
whether or not a tablet pc is reliable and useful or an expensive paperweight, it's a toy that most college kids don't have. there will always be bullies that want what you have and they'll steal it if they have to. don't go for "flashy" in college, go for functional. paper and pens are easier to replace if they do get jacked and are also easier to lend to pretty girls. if you get anything that's mobile, don't forget not to leave it unattended.
sizeable screen (at least 12")
decent storage (40GB+)
and a long battery life.
Choose any two. They're not quite there yet.
doesn't mean that they are "crappy" and "useless", yeah that's really objective guys. The truth is they are very useful for the situations they were INTENDED for. They were never meant as a replacement for regular laptops! I bet if they ran Linux, all the negative comments on this thread would disappear.
An etch-a-sketch?
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Use a spiral notebook and a pen to jot down lecture notes as the traditional way. If simple illustrations are presented either on a blackboard or projection, go ahead and copy them down into the spiral notebook.
The above should work fine for most classes. With some exceptions, if you think you need a computer to 'type your notes faster than hand-writting them', you might be trying to take too many notes.
If you're taking a class like my Microprocessor Applications course where lots of code is presented that is useful in the labs, a good digital camera comes very handy. Instead of trying to handcopy the code, take a picture of the projection (obviously, with the flash off). I'm able to manage at least 1/100 shutter speed, 1/160+ IIRC so it's not too prone to camera shake. For each picture you take, indicate you've done so in your spiral notebook.
When you're done for the day, download any photo-notes to the laptop, and review your hand-written notes with them. If for some reason you wanted to archive your handwritten notes to the laptop, you could transcribe them or take pictures of them.
If you can swing it, get a second battery with your laptop for longer mobility. Other things to look for are 'legacy ports' (parallel, serial). Many new notebooks don't come with serial port, (although you could buy a PCMCIA/serial adapter) and I've seen some lacking the parallel port. You should consider these if your area of study involves using development boards.
$cat
compaq tc1000. go to www.ecost.com and buy a refurb tc1000 for $1099. for another $200 you can easily find another 512mb and pccard or usb wireless. screen is only 10.4 but to my eyes (54 years) 1024x768 is perfectly readable. it's transmeta 1ghz so battery life is pretty good. surfing in portrait mode, with pen and wireless is bliss.
If you don't have a desktop already, then really you should look at a laptop. You're going to get more use out of it, you'll have better battery life and you won't be spending assloads of dollars for a product in search of a market.
If you have an overwhelming need for a Tablet Pc, I'd like to hear it. Are you planning on working for UPS when you get out of school?
Without more information, the educated /. masses (like those who have tried and rejected this tech, those who have finished school, and those who don't see a clear reason for tablet PCing) can't answer your question.
If you want a computer that you'll be glad you spent the money on, get an iBook or 12-15" Powerbook. My 15" Aluminum Powerbook is my first laptop, and my first Apple, and there is no way I would ever buy another (windows) PC.
If this is your 'get stuff done for school machine', OS X is seriously the way to go. Really. Read what this really smart guy said about the difference between Mac and PC.
You will send me a check because you'll be so happy with it.
Remember Tablet PCs = job at UPS. You don't want to see what you can do for Brown, do you?
Since it seems like we have run out of the 'Ask Slashdot to do my homework' questions, it looks like we have moved on to the 'Ask Slashdot to do my market research' phase.
I'll get the next one started: Slashdot - how do I design and install a network for an international comglomerate, integrate with legacy applications and ensure adequate security across the whole mix?
MS has demoed and is going to soon releas the second generation of tablet os. The new version will make pen input more natural within explorer and other windows applications. I saw a demo at a recent conference and i'm anxious to get my hands on it. So, now is a very good time to purchase a tablet pc. MS will be offering a free upgrade to existing users. Also, OneNote, Microsoft's new application targeted at tablet pc users, is a tool valuable enough by itself to justify the purchase of a tablet
where's all the helpful slashdot ammo this kid was going to use to convince his parents to buy one? seems like he might be stuck with 'just' a laptop :P
I can recommend the Acer C110 strongly for note taking, project planning and sketching. I have had one since they released - i think it was around May or June of 03.
Pros in my experience are:
It keeps all your notes, sketches, etc... in one place and easy to find.
The handwriting is fast and fluid, you'll feel like you are on a pad of paper.
Cons are:
Battery life is terribly short (3 hours or so)
The tabletPC interface needs alot of work still, you'll be glad to have a keyboard attached - i cannot imagine trying to use a pure tablet - convertibles are the only ones that i would consider.
The resolution of the screen and the screen size is too low to make it optimal for painting (1024x768)
another good page for info:
http://www.tabletpc2.com
I have had nothing but luck with the Toshiba m200. It functions perfectly well as a laptop (in fact I view it as more of a laptop with tablet capabilities). I was a little worried at first that it would deliver on all the hate that seems to surround tablet pc's, but I have been more satisfied than i could of imagined.
And don't listen to all the "I have a friend of a friend on the 2nd floor of our company that said his sister's tablet crashed all the time", these people sound like hardcore pc users talking about mac's.
Also, there is a free update to the OS coming in a few months...much more significant than a SP, it is considered a full upgrade.
When I started college I wanted to get the Biggest and Baddest systems I could get. Back in 1997 it was a Duel Pentium 200Mhz With a full 128 Megs of ram, and a 6 Gig Hardrive. At the time that was the killer system and running Linux as the default OS it really flew. But by a couple of weeks went by and my cool factor to the system left I decided to put my time and interests in more important things (Girls). Having a fancy computer will not get you any respect in college. Get what you need and what you truly know that you will use. Very few students in my college used laptops or PDA's in class because they shortly found out that it was more of a distration then a help. The Tablet PCs seem to be much more of a distration then a tool right now. Use the money and get yourself a nice laptop heck get yourself a nice new 17" Powerbook or something like that for the money. That way if you need it in class it is there, with a good screen and solidly built. Or even the $200 Walmart PC with that price you can get a new PC every year to stay up to date. Or if you find that everyone is using a tablet in your school and they all find them indespencible you can then go and buy one.
For College the freshmans bigest mistake is to buy a bunch of stuff first. The real trick just get things you will know you need. Cloths, Towles, Toothbrush, Then when you are at College buy what you need when you need it. That way you save money and dont overpack.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Buy paper and pens for classroom notes, and a really good laptop for everything else.
If you willing to spend $ on a tablet, why not buy a high-end laptop w/ good graphics and sound?
Also, don't forget to buy a security cable and insurance for it as well.
Just throwing in yet another OSS HWR whinge. IMHO tablets are worthless without HWR..
(waiting for OS X tablet computer that can actually _do_ HWR rather than some bastardized pseudoscribble..)
I'll leave it to others to talk you out of getting one. I think they're great if you've got the money. The Compq/HP is my favorite. Get a current one (TC1100)--sad to say the 1 GHz Transmeta is much, much slower than the 1 GHz Centrino. Yeah, it has a 10" screen but everything else is fine--wireless, battery life, etc. Plus, it's the only tablet that has a detatchabe keyboard, giving you 100% the functionality of a convertible and slate.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
You wrote: "I use my Acer Travelmate T102i every weekday for about 8 hours a day."
...
Curious, do your classrooms have electric outlets all over? If not, how do you handle battery life? Do you carry spares, or does your schedule just work so you can recharge at the right points?
Battery life is my biggest complaint about nearly every notebook I've owned; the lead-acid battery in the Toshiba from which I type has actually been surprisingly hardy, better than any of the Li-Ions I've had in other laptops. (Who knows why?)
My 2nd biggest complaint also applies especially to tablets, which is screen brightness, but I suppose in a classroom it shouldn't be too bad
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I was interested in a Tablet PC about a year ago. At my campus computer store they had one on display and it seemed decent. When I was looking into actually purchasing one, the processor speeds were way too slow and cost way too much. You'd be better off buying a regular notebook and getting a Wacom tablet. I got a Dell for Christmas and never looked back.
Every time I critisize open source they give me a 'troll' modifier. So much for freedom of speech and expression. Why should I be embarrased to critisize open source? It may be 'religion' kind of thing for you people. I would rather take an objective view of this circus.
I can see why you would want a tablet, it is almost impossible to type notes (ie: ones with graphs or equations) quickly. But, if you can stand taking notes on paper, I think a desktop is the way to go. Laptops cost more than desktops, plus they aren't very upgradable. I have a desktop, and haven't really found myself wanting to use a laptop in classes in college. Some people say that you might want one in the library, but most schools have public terminals in the library and give you some kind of public space to store your files. You could work on your files in the library and then save them to your public space for access in other places. The only time I would suggest getting a laptop is if you want to travel from your dorm to home often or something like that. Almost everyone I know with laptops just leaves them on their desks anyway, so I would seriously consider a desktop.
SIGFAULT
I've got a Fujitsu Lifebook 3000 TabletPC, and I'm very happy with it. It's got a 1024x768 display, Pentium M 1.4 GHz, 512 MB of RAM and a 40 gig hard drive.
The first Tablets to market (and most of them, at this point) run on low-voltage Pentium 3's or Celerons, or worse yet, Crusoes. As such, they all ran like crap (underpowered, slow).
I can squeeze nearly four hours out of a battery, and my laptop is about as fast as my AthlonXP desktop. And it's 4 lbs. It's got all the power of a non-tablet, while also having slick tablet functionality. The keyboard is extremely nice for a compact notebook as well. I'm happy with it, and would happily recommend it to you.
I've been looking at tablet pcs and ultra portable laptops for a while now. I'm a college student in the process of moving a lot, so I'm looking for something which is easy to bring around. Also, I DO actually type up all my notes. Currently I've been doing it with a Dell Inspiron 2650 and I love doing it. Downfall is though hard to do diagrams, I just usally open up paint thugh for those. But for my recommendations. The Fujitsu Life Book B3010D (1 ghz, 10.4" screen, 3 lbs, touch screen) is a great laptop IMHO. U get the touch screen capabilties of a tablet, yet its still a laptop. Expect to pay at least $1500 though. Fujitsu Lifebook P1120 is a smaller, more economical version of the B3010D. Good for the student looking for something to take to class instead of a bulky laptop. It also has a pen based screen. LifeBook T3000D is a laptop/tablet convertible. Starts at 1799, for those who want both. My only worry for this is the strength of the joint between the screen and keyboard. Fujitsu's warranty isn't that great which might influence ur decision. TABLET'S Fujitsu offers i believe 4-5 different tablet solutions, many marketed for business implementations. they begin around 1500 dollars so it might be alittle to pricy for the niche. Yet, they weigh around 3.2 lbs and can be compared to a thick magazine. If u need to take visual notes, a tablet would be the way to go, however, I can give no advice how well the software works. Fujitsu offers mutltiple accessories such as a wireless keyboard and a docking station for the tablet witha dvd/cd-rw drive if u want to use the tablet as a multimedia solution. But look at it urself. My final notes is for the student in school wanting to go electronic, get a ultraportable laptop. They're smaller, probably sturdier IMHO, and can be used for other uses as well. Use paint or a graphics program if u need to draw stuff on ur notes. Remember, Function before Style.
Do these work well for drawing in Photoshop or Painter? I know Gabe uses one.
-----.----.-------
I'll
If you're looking for a tablet PC start with the company that has been doning tablet PCs long before you heard of them Fujitsu. http://www.fujitsupc.com/www/products_pentablets.s html
I find it annoying that MicroSoft finally sees value in a product that has been around for 10 years, and they pretend it is a new product that they're pioneering. Most annoying is everyone buys it. Fujitsu has been offering pen based computers for business for a long time. They are the experts in this area.
And if you want a copy of your data on your PC, you can look at one of the Logitech io Digital Pens, which basically track what you write on paper with a special pre-printed background pattern.
They range in price from $160-200, and apparently are good for 25-40 pages before they need to be recharged (depending on battery and memory). I believe Logitech just came out with a slightly updated model, so you might want to look into their forums and find out what to be looking for before plunking down your money.
Notebooks, post-it notes and the like are available for them and while I'm sure they're more expensive than standard notebooks even if they're twice the price they're still probably less than any drink at Starbucks. One drawback of the notebooks as far as I'm concerned: every page is numbered, but every notebook has the same numbering - you tap an area on the inside of the front cover to indicate that you're starting a new notebook, but unless someone's started selling notebook identifier labels with specific background patterns there's no good way to specify that you're in the notebook for Quantum Physics vs. the notebook for Molecular Biology.
fencepost
just a little off
Tablets are really a niche product. For general purposes, they are far worse than laptops. They are also much worse than paper/pencil where notepads are usually used. They do look attractive for special appliations in healthcare though. I've seen several EMR products being peddled, and most would work out very well on tablet PCs because very little typing is involved when using the software. Notebooks don't work as well because the keyboard goes relatively unused.
With a tablet, nurses and physicians can carry around a smart notebook and use it while walking around and interacting with patients. With a laptop or a desktop computer, the patient/provider interaction is less personable because the healthcare provider has a tendency to sit behind a computer.
I've been using a Motion Computing Tablet PC at work now for a number of months, and love it. Obviously, don't get one if you want to do gaming. However, for notes, writing documents, and the kinds of things that computers are used for most at work and school it is unbeatable. It has 1 GB of RAM (which helps to make up for the slower processor), a 40 GB HD, and an external CD-RW/DVD drive. I get 4-5 hours of battery life out of it, and use it constantly. Also, the battery recharges very quickly.
I travel around a fair amount, and use it to give presentations hooked to an external digital projector. Works like a champ. Although I have seen a very few of the crashes mentioned by other posters, there haven't been many, and they have not been a significant irritant.
I've also looked at several other vendors, and my boss tested out a number of different types. He selected the Motion Computing as the best of the current lot.
It has a detachable keyboard, and a docking station option which is quite nice. I use it as my primary work computer now. (For home, though, I do have a machine with a bit more juice for gaming.)
Good luck!
I am presently a happy owner of the Acer C111TCI Convertable which I bought at a 40 percent tertiary discount.
Wifi/12.1"/1.4 kg/
I am in no way justifying my purchase as I didn't fork out a hand and a leg to purchase it.
I would like to point out the most of the negative feedback highlighted by the community are from non-tablet owners.
As with everything else, it is a tool, you'll have to LEARN how to use it before it becomes usefull to you.
The tablet PC is essential to a student. You need to have one to appreciate its benefits.
For example, I could create Data Flow/Entity Relationship diagrams on the fly compared to my notebook counterparts by using the stylus.
When everyone in lecture is tying away, I'll be scribbling in notes preissued powerpoint slides.
Space constrain in the lecture theater? Notebook and reference materials overflowing the lecture/tutorial table? No problem, convert the convertable to a tablet and place your reference notes on it. (Watch your friends put their notebook on their laps while they reference notes.)
There is something that I can't tolerate about my tablet PC though, it has a terrible battery life of 90 minutes, even though it is of the CENTRINO line.
However, do not that the situation above may not hold true for you. Do look into your learning environment and your education undertakining. It may differ for all of us.
has it occurred to youthat if they're still in their infancy after this many years, it might be because they really suck and no one wants to waste time making them or developing for them?
Get a small notebook instead: this one seems to be well-reviewed.
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
The older clamshell CE Devices such as the Sharp Mobilon Tripad might be more of what you need.
They are cheap, so when they fall and break, get lost our stolen you aren't out major money. The Tripad can be had on eBay for under $200. The batteries last forever since there are no spindle. I got around 8-10 hours of use out of my Tripad when I had it. They have the touchscreens that allow you to scribble notes and diagrams
Now they aren't full fledged computers and you won't be playing Halo, GTA3, Wolf ET (insert you favorite game here) or storing much on them, but with the money you saved compared to getting a tabled PC you can get a pretty nice desktop system to do all of that on.
Enjoy -jim
It looks like I'm the only Slashdot user that likes tablets. I used to have a laptop that I used primarily at work and then I got a tablet. It changed the way I use my computer. I don't carry a notebook around work anymore. I read e-books now. I sit on the couch and surf the web. i may not be paperless but it's a big step in the right direction. By the way I'm using the Toshiba Portege M200 and my only complaint is the touchpad, I hate touchpads. i considered the smaller HP (can't remember model number but it didn't have a full size keyboard, trust me, you want a full size keyboard. Oh, one other complaint - The cd burner/dvd is external.
Sheesh, this place is like having parents, you ask for some advice about a shiny new toy, and all you get is a stern, "you don't want one of those... you want an etch-a-sketch."
Anyway.... I sprung for the overpriced Toshiba Portege M200. I don't use the tablet functionality very much, but there are situations when it's perfect... watching sports on the couch while you keep the live stats handy, operating the GPS in the car, and other vital geek functions. Overall performance is as good as I've ever had in a laptop, battery life is reasonable, better than a standard laptop.
Mostly, I use it as a small laptop; my old one was a monster, and I found it just stayed at home most of the time. This is my fourth Toshiba; I'm not sure they're as good as they once were, but the M200 is pretty well executed for what it is. The most notewrothy feature is the UXWGVA screen or whatever it is; 1450x1100 resolution or some such allows room for plenty of windows to be open.
Also appealing is the cheaper Fujitsu 3010, and Acer has a nice Centrino-powered model, as well.
Centrino systems are definitely the way to go if you want power, they're far more energy-efficient than P4's or AMD's. Transmeta might have better battery life, at the expense of speed. The P-III solutions seem pretty underwhelming, though the old Toshiba Portege 3500's are currently getting closed out; refurbs seem to go for $1200-$1400.
Check these guys out:
Element Computer
They sell computers/tablets that natively come with linux only. So you never puchase the windows tax.
Not only that, but currently they're openly adopting Debian has their main distro (this must bode well with the Debian bigots, heh)
Sounds like solid Linux stuff to me
Sunny Dubey
And I think this problem is only made worse by the increasing number of applications that adopt a "cool" skin style with that one particular designer's idea of the world's best color scheme--and then neglect to provide the most basic standard GUI skin. By "standard", I mean one that will automatically follow the global GUI changes I might make in, say, Windows' Appearance tab, to select a very high contrast scheme for just such outdoor, high-glare situations.
This was brought home to me years ago when I took my laptop, a camcorder, and that then-cool Snappy parallel port dongle up to Dante's View in Death Valley to take a full-circle pan. In all that sunlight, I could pick one of the high-contrast schemes and easily work with any normal app. But Snappy's "ultra-cool" but inflexible gadget style skin was practically invisible. RealOne Player is one current example, but more appear daily.
I bought a toshiba 3500 tablet about 1 year ago. I paid 2800.00 for it. I don't really like XP, but overall, it's been a good machine. I like windows journal. I use it to take notes so I don't have to take a whole bunch of paper files with me.. that's really the only reason I bought it.. it works for the purpose that I bought it for. It never crashes.. and I've got a million programs loaded on it. If it weren't for the taking notes part (windows journal) I would have bought a much more powerful machine with that 2800.00 ! The performance is pretty good.. PIII 1.33 ... But I don't play games on it.. I use it for business. For a college kid though.. definately I'd buy a powerfull machine and save your money.. cause all your really paying for is windows journal.. I use this machine kinda like a giant pocket pc.. it comes out of sleep mode pretty fast .. just my 2 cents..
Not until we have PC's in the shape, mass, and durability of a piece of paper (hopefully a little better) will a computer be able to take place in the class room and for general use.
That being said I'm going to call my self a lier and say this: a tablet that is small enough and knows what it should do would also work. A little pad with wifi (about the size of a couple TI92's stacked long end) with the primary interface being a touch screen. I personally like the philosophy of things being good at what they are intended to do, instead of everytthing doing everything. In this light I'd say a bare minimum OS just capable of importing and exporting text, text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and the ability to be directly plugged into a network/printer. That's my dream note taking machine. To keep costs low (and battery life high) throw out color-- a nice black and amber screen would be perfect. I don't need color to take notes on paper so I don't expect color on a machine designed to help me take notes.
Heck I've thought of building one myself but I can't find a decent screen, let alone touch sensitive.
I rather hoped that /. was rather open minded, and tried to show both sides of the story, but in the expanded articles only ONE is pro-tablet pc, and 2 or 3 are pros/cons. Every other one demonstrates the negative comments on tablet pc's.
I do not have a tablet pc, however I am really excited about them, and the potential that they have. Having said that, my "ideal" tablet pc is not yet on the market (I don't even know if it's in development). The ideal one would be a convertable and detachable tablet pc with a DVD-ROM/CD-ROM built into the screen, all very light weight, and with a long lasting battery. Ideally, the detachable part is beneficial in either carrying it around for classes, etc. and then for home, when setting it up on a docking station.
Given I'm currently a part of the "starving student" crowd, I don't anticipate getting a tablet pc (or any other large-priced product, like a printer) until it's perfect, or until I graduate and find a valid one. HP had some detachable ones that looked interesting, but I don't believe they've developed them much further.
I ended up selling it to another that thought it was a great idea and I bought an ultraportable. (fujitsu lifebook P) with a huge battery and I am extremely happy with it. Now it's just a problem of converting linear notation in my head.
If you really feel the need to input handwriting, OSX has a pretty good recognition feature called "Ink". A Wacom tablet (with a pen instead of a mouse) and an iBook could be worth considering...
I dunno, I'm not too satisfied with my iBook. I've had it for just over a year, and already:
-The power supply died. Not in the laptop, but the external one atached to the cable. Nevertheless, the Apple store wouldn't replace it, making me either give them my whole laptop or order one from Applecare, which I did and had a bitch of a time returning the old one to them, and ended up having to pay at least $20 for, even though it was still under warranty.
-The display flickers. This may or may not be the logic board, and may or may not be free to fix. A bit of research leads me to believe it's shoddy wiring.
-And just last week, my battery died. No warning, just died. As in, I may as well be trying to store a charge in a block of cheese, cause it's just not happening.
I want to love it, but I'm sorta just pissed off. If I was gonna recommend a laptop, I'd say, fork over the extra $600 or so and get the 12" powerbook. But maybe I just had some bad luck.
c-hack.com |
i like the toshiba.durable construction and descent warrenty.
So if I try to install any game more advanced than Interplay's Descent series, do I void the warranty?
"I'm going to be attending college this fall, so I have been looking into a mainframe to use about campus. My preference has been to looking at IBM's range of iron, although they are a bit out of my price range. I have been looking at a multitude of vendors. I'm looking for something that will fit within a small cargo van, has a decent support contract, and only needs one or two gas-powered generators to keep running. What are some of the better models on the market with these characteristics?"
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I've had an HP/Compaq tablet for about a month and love it.
There is a tremendous variety of things called tablets and they can be very different. For example, mine is very lightweight (3 pounds?) and the keyboard detaches so the tablet can be a true tablet. The built-in wireless and excellent battery life are significant parts of what make this useful. I go well over 3 hours with wireless on. Would I have been equally or more happy with a 3 pound laptop -- maybe.
I know people who have purchased much more powerful tablets (mine is only 1GHz) with permanent keyboards. They have a machine which is heavier with a fraction of the battery life. The result is that they aren't happy.
I'm a professor and I can wirelessly control PowerPoint while writing on slides while walking around the lecture hall. I can hand it to a student to write something for others to see. In that mode I leave the keyboard off and it is easy to walk around with it in one hand and the pen in the other.
I do use it for notes in meetings and I like being able to use handwriting to mark up documents.
The true test seems to be at home. My kids want to use it all the time. Curl up by the fire with the tablet and surf the internet. My son's teacher requires a handwritten first draft so he can write it and then convert it to text for the later draft.
Would I recommend it for college? Well, for my kid going off to college I'm getting a lightweight laptop. However, by the time my other kid goes to college in a few years, the choice may be a tablet.
For the record, I'm not a gadget person who has to have the latest thing. For example, I never figured out a use for a PDA (yes I do know how it is extremely useful for some, but not for me).
We use and sell with out product a bunch of Panasonic Toughbook 18s at work. These have been my only real experience with covertable tablet PCs, but we really like them. The have nice batery life, but this is probobly due to the relatively slow pentium M proc.b ook/lea rn_more_tb18.asp</a>
<a>http://www.panasonic.com/computer/tough
I am currently researching which TabletPC to purchase for a good friend of mine. He is an advertising agent at a TV station and likes the "style factor" and pen capabilities versus a traditional laptop. The essential things that he needs are the ability to play dvd's and burn cd's on the spot. I have reccomended two convertible models with 14" screens and centrino configurations from acer and gateway.
The fisrt is the Acer C300 found HERE.
The second is the gateway M275X found HERE.
For the price and style versus a regular laptop i think it's a decent value for him! Of course I am very open for suggestions as well! Thanks Slashdot!
I'd love a cig!
You rape trees?!?
And, contrary to proper opinion, it rarely crashes (I've had it since Nov '03, and I honestly can't remember it crashing or locking up) and the battery life is over 2.5 hours, and this certainly beats my previous laptop.
Of course, it is running a centrino, and I turn off wireless whenever I am not using it.
I have a docking station and I use it as my primary desktop at work, where I am a system administrator/departmental manager.
It kicks ass during meetings for writing notes and diagrams. When someone sends me anything in electronic format, I "print" it virtually to the journal writer, and write all over it when I am in meetings with them.
I did a lot of research, and the Acer series are really good, and have a larger screen than the tc1100 by HP that I am using right now. I kinda like the HP series of notebooks, and I read really good reviews about this Tablet. I also read a lot of good reviews about the Acer series, but have heard horror stories about their support.
I think one of the things that has held them back is that there really isn't a "Killer App" for them yet. But it seems like MS may have come up with one-- they came out with this app called "OneNote" and it organizes your notes in a very good way. I friggin love it.
Recommendations from experience: Centrino is the way to go. Get a screen protector. It will work well as your primary pc-- it is just as fast or not faster than my previous PIV 2ghz. The keyboard is definately too small for daily use on this one, but it can be replaced with a USB keyboard for daily use.
Right now I wouldn't consider running Linux on it, but there is a project out there to get that all worked out.
I read a lot of complaints from people knocking them in the thread, but I can almost gaurantee that in the future all laptops will be built like this as the technology gets less expensive.
"Look! There! Evil, pure and simple from the Eighth Dimension!" --Buckaroo Banzai
As a graphic designer, I can say that the prospect of drawing directly on the screen is a holy fucking grail. It would make so many things so much nicer. I don't care if it comes in the form of a laptop or just an LCD that you plug into your desktop that you happen to be able to draw on, but dammit, I want one.
Gabe of Penny Arcade got one (hp, IIRC), and he loves it. His workflow is now entirely digital.
In theory at least, that's a very compelling reason to get one.
c-hack.com |
Laptops are both cheaper and more powerful. Get one with built in 802.11, add an AirPort/Linksys/Dlink/NetGear Access Point/Router for about $50, and you're all set.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Ok, you guys are totally missing the point of taking notes on a tablet PC. Since it's totally digital, sky's the limit as to what you can do with your notes.
o dd etails.asp?system_id=m275xl&seg=hm
For instance, I use my tablet for notes in physics. It is great to be able to take notes in as many colors as I would like. For instance when I draw an object I use blue, then when I draw force diagrams, I use red. Or for Physics 2, I'm using blue for the charge, and red for the flex lines, etc.
I also have a system down where I use blue/red/etc for what the teacher draws on the board and then I use purple for what he says as he draws stuff on the board. It's invaluable for when I go back and read the notes, I can see clearly what the notes mean.
Then, if I need to send some notes to any friends in the class that need them, I can simply e-mail them the Journal doc and even if they don't have tablet PCs they can view them.
Also, if we are talking about an asignment on IM, I can simply IM them what I did for it.
I know that it doesn't run linux, and believe me if I could I would run linux. Don't knock it til you tried it. It is amazing.
PS. My vote for best tablet PC is what I have, the Gateway M275
http://products.gateway.com/products/GConfig/pr
The reason I chose it is because of the combination of power, screen size and features for the price. I had a toshiba M200 on order when I first saw the gateway and I Cancelled the order I was so impressed with what I saw (I went to the gateway store to check it out).
4/5th's hours....that's what...48 minutes? - Seems to confirm the crappy battery life.
If Apple made a Tablet PC I would buy it without a second thought!
I have used a compaq tablet at work for some time but once the novilty wore of it got shelved! I like the idea... hated the OS!
I write software for doing inspections. We've used tablet PC's for about 5 years when they used to be about 5 grand and run windows 98. Since then we've gone to PocketPC's which are much nicer.
... the bad
Anyway, Compaq T-1000...
The good.
* Built in WIFI, Ethernet, Most any port you want
* Very cool flip/fold keyboard that is detachable for true tablet PC usage
* Decent handwriting recognition
* Fast processor
* Change between landscape and portrait mode was very nice for notes and reading.
* Screen sucks outdoors - total washout in daylight. Pretty good under indoor flourscent lights.
* Heavy. After several hours cradled in one arm so you can write with the other it a pain. Only useful in laptop mode or on a flat surface. Walking and using not gonna happen easily.
* Battery life averages 3 hours of constant usage with WIFI enabled.
* The Pen. Only the magic pen works on the screen. You find yourself wanting to write on paper, or tap the screen with your finger, but have to constantly switch back and forth. The spring on the pen holder is quite strong and can launch the pen if you bump it in certain positions. Never would slip out, but could shoot out wrong. Don't lose it or your tablet PC will be just a laptop. Replacements are only mail-order in my area.
I checked a few out at best buy, etc but they seemed the same.
My opinion would be to get an ultralight laptop the 1" or less thick kind with serparate CD and floppy drives. They have a nice keyboard, long battery life, light weight, better screens, networking, etc. The other stuff you need like CD burner etc are in your base station.
TabletPC's are not worth the money, and don't seem to have much of a future. To big to be portable, to flaky for a laptop. You have been warned.
Just get a laptop.
There isn't anything the Tablet PC's are doing right now that make them worth the price/performance cost. The Handwriting thing is cool, but not yet up to snuff compared to just straight typing. The detachable/rotatable is, again, cool, but more of a gimick in real-life use. Outside of that the big feature is wireless connectivity, but these days that's not that big a feature for a laptop (perhaps even getting close to standard).
Tablet PC's tend to be underpowered, and have a "unique" (read, difficult) form factor when using one. For the price you can get a tricked out Dell that has twice the power, twice the battery, three times the screen quality, and probably about 5 times the useful lifespan.
Don't get me wrong, in another 10 years the Tablet PC's or something very much like them will probably be the best thing going, but right now laptops are still where it's at.
scribbler sc2010
9 hour battery life (no joke - Super Polymer Lithium Ion)
Not a single "crash" since I've had all 6 of the ones I gave my employees nor mine...
crash is in quotes because I dont know what the hell you intended to say when you said it.
XP has yet to even load something slowly on mine... and I use it all day every day including for gaming.
There are a number of reasons that CS majors generally don't need particularly powerful machines. For most work in CS, you simply aren't doing masses of computation. If you're writing something that does, you can generally run it on a powerful machine somewhere. Contrast this with, say, a mechanical engineering student, that may want to do stress analysis on their home computer to avoid having to go to a lab to do so.
Compiling code isn't a real-time, interactive task, and generally doesn't take all that long. We have pretty good systems to cache built components of software.
Furthermore, I've found that a lot of CS students know how to poke their system to run pretty efficiently, so they don't need a really jacked system.
If I had to recommend a college system...hmm.
First, laptops are popular right now, as in they're selling really strongly. Laptops can be nice, but neither are they necessary -- they tend to be more fragile, more easily lost or stolen, not very upgradable, and less comfortable to use for extended periods of time. I don't know a lot of people that do serious note-taking with laptops, though I have seen people playing games in classes with laptops. Oh, and they don't tend to be as nice for game-playing, and college dorms are a fun place to play multiplayer games. They don't seem to be a particularly necessary item. On the other hand, they do easily let you move to a lounge or library to work with someone else, they let you take advantage of more and more common wireless compus networks, and they're much easier to take home with you during the holidays.
I think that most people are going to want to upgrade their computer. They're probably going to want to upgrade at least hard drive and memory, some time in college. Since you're likely to do some upgrading, buying the fanciest system you can afford right at the start seems like a bit of a waste.
I'd recommend a quiet keyboard. Some roommates can be irritated by constant clicking. The same goes for a good pair of headphones with a long cord. College dorms are a place where you want to play speakers, but you're surrounded on all sides by people and likely have a roommate. You don't have to worry about rules about playing music too late, and it's much easier to afford really good quality headphones than really good quiality speakers.
I'm dubious about the story submitter's intention to get a tablet PC. If they're sure that that's what they want, well and good, but if they just really like the idea, I dunno if they'll be that happy with them. Tablets are expensive, less powerful than similarly-priced computers, aren't upgradeable, and really haven't caught on because folks don't seem to like them that much. The only real reason I can think of for getting a tablet is if you really want to use drawing input as a primary form of input. Frankly, for almost everything, drawing is a lousy form of input. It's slower than just about anything else. If you're taking art classes, a stand-alone drawing tablet (Wacom or similar) is inexpensive and mature.
May we never see th
The tablet computer is not in its infancy. Apple "invented" consumer-oriented tablet computers years ago with the Newton (though tablet computing was by no means a new idea at the time). It's only *windows* tablet computing that is the stinky messy infant.
I'm starting college next year, and for less than the price of a tablet i'm getting a killer desktop and i already have a $200 laptop(p1-233mhz, 64mb ram, 4gb hd...) that i dont really care if it gets lost, broken or stolen. Desktop for power/gaming etc, and my tiny 3lb laptop for portability. Those and a wireless router for my dorm (laptop on lap in bed while watching a dvd or tv on the desktop...) total less than $3000, which i've seen as the average price for a tablet pc.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Taking notes in class should be done on paper. The retained knowledge far surpasses typing for me and many of my peers. When I type, I sometimes can't tell you what I typed a minute ago.
As for a tablet as this article is stating, I see the electronic resources in class a bit rediculous. The people with this powerful computing solitaire playing machine gets used about 50/50 for notes and solitaire. It also distracts me to see someone on the 2nd row playing since January and still not win a game.
im replying on it now. its the best purchase I have made in a lon time.
Get a second battery. Read comic books, markup manuals for changes, read book [MUCH better the a laptop]. its among the lightest-and the make or break for these-the other tablets are too heavy ussualy. and thats why you see peope saying don't.
the m1300 im o ow has been totaly stable, sometime the back is warmer then I would like but not ussually.
and cool factor is nice too. but for me the usability is awesome
Pr0n. Pr0n, and more pr0n!
ii) Browse in a comfortable position, while watching TV
More comfortable for chicken choking.
iii) Take Notes in a meeting / classroom.
Play solitaire and surf for more pr0n.
iv) Pass it around easily to show something
Look at the size of those HOOTS!
v) Design/Architect solutions while not having to worry about transfering it to PC(the monkey coders at
"Architect" a visual basic recipe keeping program. Design a wicked new jpg flipping program to make chicken choking easier.
vi) Reduce endless clutter of sticky pads
God damn, why don't you just use tissues. That's nasty!
Visit the Tablet Sites and don't bother asking here. Unless you expect and want any answer but silly answers. Go to these three top sites and ask the members there. TabletPCQuestions has a really good spreadsheet on the different models and they answer questions fairly quickly. It's sorta like the LinuxQuestions site but for tablets.
P CTalk.com
TabletPCBuzz.com
TabletPCQuestions.com
Tablet
Why use Wintel at all? Do what I did 6 months ago and switch to Apple. I'm in Australia where Apple has a discount policy for college students (it also exists in Canada), and you can get a laptop with 14" screen, 40Gb HDD, and 3-4 hours of battery life. It can also support WiFi, DVD-burning as extras (well-worth it) All for US1299, but I think this is even cheaper for students.
Apples are more stable and robust, virtually immune to viruses, and are built on top of a industrial-strength OS: UNIX.
That rubbish about compatiability is just that. I've had no problems whatsoever, and I deal with Apple, Unix, Linux and Windows.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the m200 here. I got one for school and was addicted in no time flat.
It has GREAT battery life (4.5 hours in its long life mode), and GREAT screen (1400x1050, and the extra resolution REALLY counts for the look and feel of the electronic ink), 40GB drive, 512MB memory, 1.5GHz P-Mobile, built in modem-ether-wireless, and comes with OneNote.
I hate saying anything good about M$, but OneNote is the ultimate electronic legal pad. It even indexes your handwriting for text search! I use it exclusively for note taking in class now.
Don't knock the convertibles. The m200's ability to be a tablet and laptop makes it extremely versatile.
If you've got a pile of money laying around (yes, it's expensive), this is the only Tablet to consider. Nothing else on the market holds a candle to it, if for no other reason than the fantastic resolution of the screen.
S.
I know-did no one else catch this? This guy is shoving his dick into trees!
Indeed, but if and when it does take off you can be sure of three things:
my bad, bonerator. I was solving for the = 1 bit and screwed up.
Thanks for being pedantic and noticing.
I'm currently using a tablet PC to run psychology experiments. It involves a bit of moving about, so it's great to be able to use the tablet mode.
However, the Toshiba I'm using is kind of crappy in terms of battery life. Takes forever to charge if you're using it at the same time.
You read /. but don't know how to use Google to shop for a computer? And you WANT a tablet PC?
For shame, poor child, for shame....
Someone should tell him there's an easier way to get paper than sexually forcing oneself onto a tree.
But I'm going to bet you have not really used one. I use mine (HP TC1100) all the time for everything from note taking to gaming.
It is true that it is early in it's stage but even so the TabletPC is very impressive. It's one of those technologies that is hard to 'get' until you really use it.
I'm going to be attending college this fall
Egads, man! Why don't you hold off and ask this question again in July? You've got several months' worth of new features to wait for and hear feedback on before you need to purchase this thing for school. When do classes start, the last week of August? Order sometime in July, you'll probably get more for your money then (bigger harddrive, faster proc, maybe more ram, 802.11g instead of b, etc, etc). Good for you for planning ahead, but for things like this, you gotta hold off until it's almost time!
Isn't it interesting how you come to recognize posters based solely on their sigs???
That's not a but, it's how you reboot it.
I have been eagerly awaiting the release of a Tablet Mac for some time. My thinking on this point has become quite definite (some would say, "stubborn") after reitering the following chain of logic in my head for nearly a year now:
Now let's think about laptops from the gaming angle:
I want a portable computer, but I don't like being slave to the keyboard. I'm willing to sacrifice gaming for the privilege of being portable. I'm also willing to sacrifice gaming, and pay a steep hardware premium, for the immense privilege of using OS X. All signs point to a Tablet Mac in my future; problem is, there is no such animal! My ideal computer is alas little more than a gleam in Steve Jobs' eye.
Oh, Steve, why are you so cruel? Why do you taunt me so with your shiny-pretty OS and your beautiful (ok, annoying) brushed metal windows only to slam the door in my face when I try to buy into your dream? *sob* WHY!?!?
I'm a MessagEase fan - use the STamp version on my Palm Tungsten T, but haven't used it a whole lot yet under Windows (I always have a keyboard around so far, and it's been a while since I broke my wrist and used Dasher for a few weeks).
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
Unless you buy something HIGHLY COLLECTABLE, your computer will be next to worthless in 4 years.
As for Tablet Computers, the new Toshiba with the centrino processor is a great cross-over laptop/tablet.
If you pace while you think (which I do a lot, the wear trails in the house and at work are noticable) nothing beats the table PC's
Avoid Sager, their driver updates are non-existant and their warranty process sucks. I'm typing this from a POS Sager laptop right now.
I am a medical student and I love my Tablet.
Pro's:
Very stable platform.
1.6 GHz P4, 512 Mb Ram, 60 GB HD, CD-RW/DVD,
14" LCD, WiFi, ~5 lbs.
Good battery life w/ hibernation.
Paperless note-taking and patient physicals.
Convertable, so I can quickly fall back to "laptop" if I need to.
Internal optical drive - no wires.
GW service replaced LCD, Keyboard and returned it in 5 days total w/ overnight shipping.
LCD hinge is rock-solid.
Con's:
GW's intial shipping was delay, delay, delay....
Dead pixels on LCD when Tablet arrived.
Key hinges on keyboard flimsy and two keys came loose.
Audio drivers need refinement - sound is either blaring or off when using headphones.
No built in eraser on pen.
Comes w/ MS Works w/ no option for Office when ordering.
I wish it had a touch stick in the keyboard.
Highlights
When I take anatomy notes, I draw conceptually and I can easily switch colors and move objects around. If I get crowded on the page or the prof is disorganized in lecture, I can move ink around to make room or re-organize. The library has wireless, so I can run down there between classes and get my e-mail. I haven't written on paper for school-related reasons in several months. The equivalent of several notebooks and folders full of notes is on my HD and I only carry around one "notebook". I back up everything on my internal CD-RW often.
Goals for 2011: 1. Stop plate tectonics. 2. Prevent animal predation. 3. End supernovae now. 4. Rid the world of evil.
(Apologies for some redundancy, but not many people know this exists and is available on the Windows platform.)
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
Even after my initial research, I wanted to see what others who were more familiar with the technology had to say. After all, it's not like I hadn't completely done my homework.
How about a sub-notebook? Nice 'n' lite, they usually boast better battery life than regular notebooks and are typically powerful enough to run any modern OS. A sub-notebook would be much more convenient for carrying from class to class. Some of them even fit in large coat pockets.
Get a cheap external CRT monitor for your dorm room for gaming or movies if you don't think the screen's big enough...
They are a bit pricey for a college student, but so is a tablet pc...
I particularly like the JVC Interlink
http://www.dynamism.com/7310/gallery.shtml
Mobile computers e.g. laptops and notebooks without keyboard but a touchscreen and running Linux or other operating systems have been available long before Microsoft invented the so-called TabletPC specification. Not all devices fullfil this specification and therefore are often called similar e.g. WebPad, NotePad or Pen PC. Even for the operating system there are alternatives , see Linux on Tablet PCs. There you may find a survey of commercial solutions for Linux on TabletPCs as well as links to installation reports for the usual Linux distributions.
Try Newsstand.com. Many newspapers & magazines are available in Newsstand's pdf-style reader.
I'm a college student too, and the main attraction of tablet PC's is the ability to take class notes in a form that's compact, easily searchable, and easy (and cheap) to share. If you're like me, you might want to check out the Logitech io Digital Pen. I haven't seen it in action, but it seems perfect: take notes on a normal pad while the pen stores everything you write so you can archive it and search for information later. It's also much cheaper than the price difference between a laptop and a tablet - only $175 or so.
I worked on the Tablet platform for 2.5 yrs. Contrary to the claims of earlier posters about business uses, it really has very little to do with typing vs non-typing. Most of my notes are for my use, and have lots of diagrams, tables, flow-charts, arrows etc that are hellish to accomplish in real-time with keyboard and mouse. I annotate documents electronically, and avoid reams of paper print-outs over my desk. All my notes and annotations are backed up and searchable. I do light weight email and web-browsing wirelessly in front of the TV, using my slate Tablet and pen. Very comfortable. Reading is quite easy on the higher-res screen. I edit and compose music with Finale and similar programs. For a look at how cool pen-editing of music is try the free Music Composition power-toy. I do free-form screen-capture of document fragments, maps, diagrams etc for data-gathering, and personal annotation. Again, all easy to email and back-up. I do ink-based messaging as needed, it's easy to sketch an onject or a map and send it to someone else. On road-trips, I have mapping software running, and I just leave the Tablet on the passenger seat. There's plenty of other stuff I do with it, beyond the regular laptop/PC, but my last observation is that a Tablet is more accessible than a regular laptop. I get a greater bang for buck out of it because I can use it in more places. If you're a boring old text-centric person then you won't find any of the above compelling. Yes battery life could improve and a many other things can and will get better. Out of the gate though, it is the best computer investment I have ever made. I'm proud to have worked on it.
i'm going to be attending medical school this fall. i'd really like to have a laptop to speed up notetaking, but i'll need to draw various figures, chemical diagrams, etc. does anyone have experience with laptops and/or tablet pcs at med school? thanks, keith
Seriously. I've had one and tried two others. I hated them all. Well, I'll be kind and just say they didn't meet my expectations (performance, quality, stability, etc). I finally bought a nice sub-notebook that is working out nicely. I recommend you forget the tablet thing unless you have a specific use for it (e.g. medical or something). If you do, try for a Fujitsu tablet (at least they are not total garbage, imho)...
Before buying a tablet PC, please remember that they have touchscreen. Due to this, the displays look quite bad. On some models, if you hold them upright (like you would hold a notebook), you see different colours with each of your eye! I've read a review about them in c't 1/2004, not sure if you can buy the article online. They tested most up to date Tablet PCs. Oh, and one model you didn't list is Fujitsu Siemens. They haev the Stylistic ones, really crap, and a Lifebook T or something, which is quite ok. I for myself chose to buy an Apple Powerbook, which a) has a better Display, b) has a better OS, and c) attracts more women.
This sig is stolen from someone who had a much better idea than I had.
Forget about the Tablet PC:s, you don't want to take any notes with pen anyway. I think that iBook G4 12" might be one of the most viable options currently: robust build, excellent OS, 6 hours battery life and cost effective price.
Vaadin - the best open source framework for building web applications in Java - no plug
Cool idea, but news is best online. I read scientific journal offline and I have to write on them to make sense of it and refer back later.
Only in Canada...
STYLISTIC ST5011D:
1.54 kg
Up to 6/8 battery hours (depends on the battery model)
From 40GB to 80GB HD
From 256 to 2GB DDR333 SDRAM
And more...
You need a reliable computer for your dorm and apartment.
Maybe you should use the computer labs at school anyway -- this is a good way to meet people, and get help in your class by talking to people working on the same projects.
So why do I want you to be a cheapass? Because you should be spending your money on ONE thing - alcohol. No other time to waste it on booze than college. You got all the rest of your life to waste it on technology that you WILL be able to afford later one.
Berto
the only reason im considering a tablet PC is so i can draw on it in a good art program.... maybe also a more hands on approach to 3d modelling... anyone has had experience with art/graphics programs on tablet pc's? is it worth it?
A laptop with a good battery & bluetooth, throw a decent PDA with bluetooth... or wifi on both, and get some ad-hoc action going on.
Or, you can do like I am, and build a database box with a 250gb HD, boatload of RAM, rip all of your CD's / DVD's / everything, get top line sound / video cards, dolby 5.1, put it next to your TV (or even in the closet, if you're feng shui), get the PDA wireless in, and have the most badass HTPC setup in creation.
But maybe that's just me...
I suppose you could try re-channelling the secondary (or tertiary, or more) personality responsible for the varying styles in your notes...
I can't believe after 350+ comments there are only 3 people who have said buy a Mac, and this is (as I write) the only one that says buy a G4 iMac.
1. They are very small (esp. thin), very light weight, and very powerful.
2. They have 54g wireless, firewire, usb, etc...
3. You WILL buy an iPod eventually
4. OSX is the best OS - Ever!
5. The body is pretty robust.
6. G4 iMacs are cool. This last one you will appreciate after about 1 month of uni/college.
I just wish this technology was around when I was at uni, and laptops were not soley for the students whose family ran small Gulf Nations.
That said, Mac software can be a bit limited in speciallist areas, but since you have not specified what your doing, I can't say you'll want anything other than a word processor.
Also, if you need to write down formulas, pen & paper are a LOT faster.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
I've got several people at work using the M200 and they're loving it. I've also used it myself and it's awesome. It's got great battery life, it's light and it's got the best screen of the bunch out there. I think a hybrid's the way to go as it can be used both as a regular laptop and as a tablet when you're taking notes. The only downside to the M200 is that is doesn't have a built in CD/DVD drive, but if you can live without that it's great.
I read that several people had problems with crashing applications/OS, but that's something I've never heard any of the people I know have complained about (could just be their luck, what do I know).
I have an older Sager - you can read the review here - but on the long term it had serious problems and I am still waiting for Sager to fix things :(
Now I ordered a Dell x300 (refurbished and at a very low price) and it seems OK.
HOWEVER if money are less of an object I would get the latest Toshiba for a TabletPC or an high-end IBM for a normal notebook.
I will NEVER AGAIN buy a notebook with less than 3 years full warrany!!!
I agree - Sager quality is not very good :(
Logitech makes a digital pen and paper thing, using Anoto paper. A very cool concept, not mature yet. A colleague has one, its cute. Notebook and paper is still superior, IMHO.
I've been using a Compaq TC1000 for almost a year now. In general I'd agree with the pros & cons. The overriding bad point is the poor performance. Even with max RAM the crusoe processor and slow disk make it really sluggish when starting apps. (I have an old P2 350 at home which is much more responsive - it's that bad.)
For my purposes the docking station is an essential (but expensive) add-on, with a decent screen and keyboard. My tablet spends most of the day docked. It's real handy to be able to pick it up when I'm heading for a meeting.
Personally I wouldn't go for a laptop. It's just not acceptable to be rattling away on keys when somebody is talking.
Don't be fooled into thinking it is like reading/writing on a book. It is heavy and totally inflexible so it is quite difficult to get comfortable when using it in front of the TV.
It's handy for keeping all your notes and papers in one place. But practically speaking I doubt whether you will bother converting all your hand-written notes into text. It can be fairly painstaking.
In short, the tablet concept is good, but wait until you can get a half-decent processor at least.
ST-PAD ROXOR !!
I love my old HPC Pro, though it's getting more than worn around the edges. I bought a Hitachi HPW600-ETM around 2000, which I still use as a word processor running full VGA (640x480) with no moving parts. That means I could accurately gauge my document length, I never had to worry about a hard drive (instant start-up!) and my battery life at its prime averaged 6-8 hours. Most of all, I still detest typing on Chiclets, so I bought a cheap low-power USB keyboard to hook into the device. At the time, it ran me $600 off of eBay. I'm not sure I like the current crop of tablet PCs because they have added features (like swiveling screens) that compound form factor problems.
Go out and get yourself a second hand HP Jornada 720 (or 710 or 728). It's smaller, lighter, and the battery will last around 9 hours. OK - it is WinCE, but it's good for taking notes and keeping a calendar and address book.
You can then copy files to/from your normal desktop computer. There is communication/sync software for Linux available, but I haven't tried that yet. You can also connect to Linux via PPP (eg: with the serial cable) - that I have tried, and it works well. For Windows, there's ActiveSync of course.
I like these better than the smaller palmtops, as the screen is much wider (640x240) and it has the built in keyboard as well as the touch screen. Trying to use Excel on the small screens is a real pain, and I can type on the keyboard much faster than I can accurately scribble.
I use the Jornada as an alternative to a laptop. My laptop weighs 4.5kg, and I don't want to lug it everywhere to meetings; the weight of the Jornada is negligable in comparison. The laptop battery lasts 3 hours, the Jornada 9. The Jornada's instant on/off works that much better than the laptop (no drive spin up/down time etc), and it gets used all the time, thus saving more - I have to recharge mine every couple of weeks, and I use it a lot. Apparently, the 728 has a battery that lasts 14 hours.
I got my Jornada on Ebay for 300 Euros - much less than what you'll pay for a tablet PC. The difference will buy you a reasonable desktop.
-- Steve
anyone knows an ascii art editing mode for emacs, just in case ?
I really used my Ti92 (the one with a qwerty keyb) to take some notes in courses. :-(
Though I didn't try that for long, the keyb is too small.
The real question is how to get the prof to train the voice recognition.
Option 1: Ask him outright.
Umm...no.
Option 2: Try to get him to do it in class without knowing it, "Sneakers"-style. "Umm, professor, since that memory chip's port passes data, I guess you might call it a...'passport', huh?" (The more I think about this, the more I'm certain this must be the explanation for some of the bizarre questions people have asked in the past. e.g. "Professor, what color is a transistor?")
I've seen a lot of people commenting on the battery life of tablets, but I havn't seen anyone mention Electrovaya yet. They're a Canadian company who specialises in long life batteries for laptops who are selling rebranded tablets. After much research I settled on thier heftiest model (the scribbler SC-2010). With a detachable keyboard stand and -9- hours of battery life it had everything I needed. All the advantages of being a slate, but with a keyboard if you needed it, and a battery that could go all day.
Some things that I've come across in my tablet research that might help: 1) 256 megs is not enough for XP Tablet. You'll need at least 512, so include the upgrade in any prices you come across. 2) MS One Note is a really sweet app. Multiple 'notebooks', several ink colours, and the ability to move around drawings and text. I've got it installed on my work laptop and found it did everything I needed it too (though it should have an 'convert this handwriting to typed text' option...)
Unfortunately for me I'm living in scandanavia right now. The price of the tablet itself is high-yet-doable, but combined with a 24% import tax it was too much. For the same amount of money I'm going to build myself a sick desktop and buy a tablet input device that I haul into work when I need it. Hope that helps some.
Wow. I guess I'm in the minority.
I've had a Motion M1200 for a little over a year now. I love it and use it every day at the office and at home.
Yes, you can buy a notepad and a pen for a couple of bucks. I went through a lot of those. I started to realize that there was no point in taking notes in meetings. I'd write it down and flip the page for the next meeting. Eventually, the notepad would be full and I'd put it on my desk or file the notes away somewhere. Then when I actually *needed* that info, it was either impossible to find or just not worth the effort. Maybe my organizational skills are just lacking.
With the tablet, I take notes using OneNote (yikes! a Microsoft product!). It has room for improvement, but since I've gotten used to it, I've switched to it as my exclusive note taking app. Many people also like the Franklin-Covey TabletPC vesion of their organizer app. I previously used Journal, which is a simple but very effective note taking program that comes with the TabletPC OS (a superset of XP). OneNote has a tabbed interface and makes it easy to create tabs for projects, with pages within that tab ('pages' can be of any length, it's just a term for the notes within tabs). I can also create sub-tabs, allowing me to create a tab called 'reference' which in turn contains tabs for specific topics, which in turn, contain pages). I can search my entire notebook from one location. It's great to be in a meeting when a topic comes up from a couple of months ago. Within seconds, I have the info at my fingertips.
The handwriting recognition is surprisingly good. A free 'Dictionary Tool' PowerToy from Microsoft allows me to easily add words and acronyms to the recognition dictionary. For the most part, I rarely 'see' the handwriting recognition in action though. Everyone asks if it can convert handwriting to text. It can, but for my notes, why bother? I leave my notes in my handwriting. The search engine still uses the handwriting recognition to enable me to search *my handwriting* for any word in my notes. It's not perfect, but it's better than digging through piles of paper and regular notepads.
As for the hardware, I would suggest deciding on a slate vs. a convertible. I went with a slate. Part of the appeal for me is that I can quietly sit in a meeting and take notes without pecking away on a keyboard. Maybe it's different at other companies, but whipping out a regular laptop and typing while someone is speaking seems a bit rude. Since I knew that the majority of the tablet's use would be in meetings, I decided to not tote around an attached keyboard. It's just a personal preference. Some people prefer the flexibility that a convertible tablet offers. They've really gotten thin and light so my next tablet will probably be a convertible. At my desk, I put the Motion in it's 'FlexDock' docking station and use it much like a regular computer with a mouse and keyboard.
My Motion has an 866mhz Mobile Pentium CPU with 512 megs of RAM. Newer models have a 1ghz Centrino CPU. I guess I won't be able to run Doom 3 on my tablet, but for everyday use it is plenty fast enough. Office runs fine, with no performance issues (and it's ink enabled, allowing me to mark up word docs and excel spreadsheets). Mozilla runs fine, with no performance issues. OneNote runs fine, with no performance issues. Same for solitaire, the Zinio reader and Alias SketchBook (which is where the pen's pressure sensitivity really shines). Maybe I'm not using my tablet for the same things that a lot people want/need, but for everyday use, it performs just fine.
The Motion also has built in 802.11b, which is great for sitting on the couch and surfing the web with the TV on in the background.
My Zaurus PDA is collecting dust. I haven't turned it on in about a year. My tablet wakes up from hibernate mode in a matter of seconds, so I don't really need a PDA anymore. Obviously this wouldn't be the case if I needed phone numbers or appointment info in my pocket, but that doesn't really apply to me. The TabletPC has worked out great for me.
What if the Hokey-Pokey really is what it's all about?
If you're thinking tablet, you have to consider the best one out there, the one you didn't list. That would be the HP TC1100 tablet PC.
Lucky you...
I for one am hardly able to read my own handwriting at half the speed i can read a decent font (read: not "comic sans" and the likes) from my screen or preferably from paper.
And don't give me jokes about paying better attention at elementary school!
Show a man some news, distract him for an hour. Show a man some mod points, distract him for the rest of his life.
I get it -- you're a tree hugger, not a tree raper: the Michael Jackson of trees.
go up a thread, the motion computing stuff mentioned is really this good. i've seen a professor proof/correct his grad students papers in the margins and send them back. it's fucking awesome. buy motion computing.
Notice he didn't ask for reasons NOT to buy a tablet.
*rolls eyes at geek snobs who can't read*
HP just came out with a Non-Transmeta Tablet.
Identical to the best seller, with a good processor, and a few kinks worked out.
I used one of their v.1s for 6 months, and loved it.
-Cheers
Prior to MS, tablets were (and are) primarily vertical market items (ie. healthcare). OTOH, I'm looking forward picking up a tablet when they're orphaned (like my Transnote). As an architect and artist, I could really use a pressure sensitive tablet computer.
Ebay for under $500
It is also somewhat useful for writing up homework answers for the students--certainly easier to draw state machines than using word. Sadly my handwriting is so bad it makes some of my answers hard to read. Example: Homework answers
As Nietsche famously said, "If you stare too long into the Abyss, 1d4 Tanar'ri of random type will attack you."
I've got the Acer Travelmate, a buddy of mine has the compaq. I like them both. We demo'd the Toshiba and the Gateway and didn't really like them.
I bought the Fujitsu T3010D last year. I got a great deal on it. The unit is very powerful and I don't know how I lived without it.
The pros:
Lightweight: It's about 3 lbs.
Battery Life: 3-4.5 hours in use depending on power settings which is more than what most laptops have.
Built-in Wireless & Ethernet - Very useful especially in colleges with wireless networks.
Sturdy - I've dropped it quite a few times and at worst it's a bit scratched up on the outside (not the screen)
Support - Surprisingly Fujitsu has one of the smartest support departments I've spoken too. I had a problem with my unit (which was a bios misconfiguration on my part) that they instructed me how to fix within 10 seconds of stating the problem.
Powerful - Uses the 1.4 ghz (if i'm not mistaken) Intel Mobile processor, I got a RAM upgrade included, and a 40 gig hard drive.
Price - The price was pretty damn good for what I got, around $1700. HP wanted close to $2200 for a model that was no where near from the power I got with Fujitsu.
Size - It's about the size of an actual 3/5 subject notebook with a decent sized screen at 12".
In tablet mode, you can hook it up to your computer to function as a second monitor or even as a WACOM tablet.
Cons:
There are pegs they use to "buffer" the screen from when you close it that fall out. In order to replace them, you need to bring it in for service. I was told it's covered under warranty though.
The screen doesn't automatically latch when you flip it to tablet mode. The service tech I spoke to said that needs to be serviced as well, but that's how I received it. I can latch it manually though very easily.
I opted not to get the CD-Rom attachment as the prices were a bit high for the attachments. I bought a Storix USB Self powered CD-RW/DVD rom drive and am able to watch a full DVD on a full battery.
The screen can be a little hard to see outdoors.
The necessary apps:
Microsoft Office 2003 & Microsoft OneNote
Microsoft Word - Write an essay and proofread it later. You can make ink annotations and notes right in the document.
Microsoft OneNote - while not all the features are there being a first version app, it's still very impressive. I've never been so organized in my life. I can search notes written in my handwriting (which is possible the worst ever)
Outlook 2003 - Forget the PDA calendar apps and stuff because most connect to a desktop comp with Outlook or some similar app, this is all you basically need to manage time. I love the redesigned interface as well.
Excel 2003 is useless with the tablet.
Powerpoint is useful when doing presentations, you can annotate and draw right on the slides. If your teacher uses them in class or you're in a meeting that has a set, then get a copy so you can take notes directly on the slides.
Zinio - Great for digital magazines.
Microsoft E-Reader - The best available e-reader for now IMHO. I personally hate Adobe now because they restrict me to one computer that I activate on (I found out the hard way and they wouldn't help me move the book to another computer). Microsoft has restrictions, but I've had no problem as long as I've used the same passport on the different computers.
What I use it for:
1) Reading e-books on my couch, while making notes on it
2) Browse in a comfortable position, while watching TV
3) Take Notes in meetings & in class.
4) Pass it around easily to show something
5) Reduce endless clutter of post-its and scrap paper.
6) Development - the laptop mode makes it easy to flip and code.
7) Drawing/Art - I use Alias WaveFront's Sketchbook Pro which is just like using paper to draw on. It works by the amount of pressure you apply to the screen.
8) Games - Simple games like spider solitaire and such relieve boredom in class and stuff. Have OneNote open and switch back and forth.
9) Organization - keep track of notes, ideas, schedule, etc.
Hope this helps!
Hear hear.
I'm going to end up back in school next year, and I've been reevaluating (it's been six or seven years since I've been in school) my strategy.
Unlike a lot of people here, for me a laptop for taking notes is a great improvement over the pen and paper way because I have small motor control issues that make handwriting a real issue.
And for this reason I was looking at tablets a few months ago. The conclusion I came to was this is still awfully young technology. Not worth it to me to gamble on it, either in terms of money or in terms of potential future tech problem headaches and time. I'll be using the updated version of the setup I've been using since 1991 -- Laptop computer (actually, I didn't get one of those until 1995, prior to that I had to transcribe notes daily, and borrow other people's or ask the teacher for help filling in the blanks if I couldn't keep up), desktop computer (for syncing and to run the heavy stuff), paper notebook and scanner. Type words in, lable where the figures go, draw the figures on the paper and scan them in later.
In this case, the laptop cost me $200 last year (it's not new, but it's an amd k6-2-233/64MB system -- more than enough for running a few editors. heavy processor stuff can be run on the desktop), the scanner $40 at Fry's three years ago, and my desktop, which i'd provide an estimate for if I had any clue (my desktop is always an ongoing project -- I'm sure there's plenty of folks here who understand how that works).
But the best part -- not only did all this stuff cost me less than a new tablet PC, but I already own it, would own it whether or not I go to school, and use it, so it's cost doesn't even really count.
So I can consider spending money on upgrades for the current system, like a flat panel monitor to replace the CRT, or a twiddler which I think might be more convenient for note taking in lecture, or a new motherboard/processor, if it turns out that the PIII with half a gig of RAM in the desktop isn't quite up the requirements of modern education (though I'm inclined to wait on that, simply because the system works fine now, and I don't yet see any obvious application that would require more power). Or I can spend my money on my secondary (because it's still experimental) solution. I already have a device with a touch screen -- a Palm VIIx. I've been wanting to outfit it with a keyboard. Unfortunately, the cheaper 3rd party ones that I've tried don't work with it, so I may end up forking out for the offical palm keyboard. But in theory, combined with a good palm drawing program (of which there are several) this would provide full functionality for note taking. And even if one doesn't have a palm (or similar device) now, one can be had for *much* cheaper than any tablet, and the technology is more mature and stable.
Not to mention, a palm (or similar) and keyboard weights far less than a tablet (or a laptop, for that matter).
from what I can tell-it looks as though it's a passive resistive screen without the Wacom drivers. Now if someone would make a TabletPC with a Cintiq display...
I don't know if handwriting recognition software has gotten better over the past 1.5 years but I know its annoying as hell to try and 'write' words on my palm at a fast enough speed to be useful. I can't seem myself buying a more expensive version of a PDA to put up with that.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
I've played with three or four of these devices, and have yet to find anything they're good for except reading the news, and even doing that makes the lack of a keyboard evident.
I thought it would be a decent way to design in Photoshop/Illustrator, but again I can't accomplish much of anything without the keyboard (I'm a shortcut whore).
Plus, the overall ergonomics prevent any lengthy tasks, at least for those of us with sore necks and wrists.
With the handwriting technology in OS X being pretty darn good, you could just buy a small Wacom tablet to carry with you. They're thin and lightweight and you could do everything a tablet could do, plus you'd have a real computer on the side :-)
I scribble all sorts of notes and drawings on my TT, and my only complaint is that the screen is too small. If the screen were the size of a notepad, and the machine were still instant-on, and it had similar battery life of the TT, it would be the ideal tablet.
It wouldn't replace palmtops, because of the form factor, but it would satisfy the need-to-scribble itch.
If you get yourself a notebook with a Wacom pen tablet or something like that, you could probably use handwriting (with recognition added somehow), drawing, etc. And you still will have a notebook with all the advantages of it.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
If you are not an IT Major, then a tablet can work for you, provided you are able to deal with the issues of owning a Tablet: /. while in class or get hacked.
1. Battery life is less than you'll want
2. Save, Save often and then Save your work.
3. Books, your ass and dropping it will bust it.
4. For the love of mike, turn off your built in wireless! Otherwise you'll just read
If you are an IT Major, get a laptop and learn to type. End of Discussion.
Well, I actually NEED a Tablet and I've been waiting for them for a very VERY Long time. Every since I saw them on Star Trek TNG, I've been waiting and wanting one.
:P) Could you image having these things stuck to the wall throughout your home, and if you needed the computer, you could just rip one off the wall (held by some kind of mechanism) use it, and put it back. Why It could be used for reading a novel, surfing, checking on the house temp, looking up a recipe, creating a grocery list, or a list of things to do, turning on the music for a particular room (you are in), Checking on the kids via video cam in there room without walking in, maybe watching a quick news clip while in the shower, bedroom, kitchen, etc. Getting the idea? Cost is just the factor for now. And I feel if the bugs and non-pleasures were worked out, yeah I would use my tablet for school, work, notes, etc.
:P) Now we are back to square one again.
:D
So why a tablet, for personal use I'd use them as integrated Home Automation Tools. (Assume were running Linux, not XP
Now that was just dreaming and future stuff, but let me now explain why I NEED one. I work in the medical community and I am currently finishing up an EMR Management Program. Here is the dilemma: How to you get people who don't like to use computer because "paper is faster", but yet expect to get results from charts, graphs, and reports that only a computer is capable of computer (or a lot of man hours). Obviously the quick answer is to get them to just "do it" and enter the data into the system. As the programmer, I can only create the best possible tools to do this with the available input devices, aka keyboard and mouse...and maybe a touch screen. Not getting to deep into this, but a doctor has issue with taking their laptop all over the place with them. It works well to a point, but if they don't like trackballs and touch pads, and they are not a very could typer, the doctor is just going to blame me, the programmer, for developing a stupid and cumbersome interface and will proclaim that paper is better. (Even though it's really not me, it's user error
As far as PDAs, whow, out of the question! Why? Simply the screen is just to small. That's another thing in the medical world, "How much info can I cram into a single sheet of 8x11?" I'm already trying to phase that train of thinking out, but the fact is we still need a large screen to display info on.
So you see, the paper notepad way of electronic information data entry is to encourage the tablet.
My boss's cousin has an EMR program that utilizes the tablet PC, and says it's made life easier. So I really really like to see this tablet thing work...especailly with Linux
Yeah, but is she hot?
I've been thinking about a tablet for the exact opposite purpose: reading eBooks on the run (well, actually on public transport). Palmtops have too small of a screen and lack features like font smoothing and pixel blending which should make reading on a monitor more comfortable (I have no idea if the lighting is comparable). Dedicated eBook readers never really caught on, so the last thing I'd want to do is tie my content into a proprietary platform. And I think the tablet/palmtop form-factor would be significantly superior to reading on a laptop to warrant the expense.
I think tablets have a lot to offer over dead trees, even if I don't get Wifi access on the subway. For example, the newspaper I currently read offers a PDF subscription for half the price of paper. Printing out RSS feeds is rather goofy. And on longer trips the tablet (especially if it transforms into a notebook) can be used to do real work.
My grade 1 teacher is probably turning over in her grave fast enough to power a small town, but it's true. My cursive writing got so bad that I stopped using it. I then switched to printing... that works, but I can barely read it. Based on my writing alone, you'd think that I'd be some kind of doctor -- no, a master brain surgeon, but alas, I'm only a computer geek.
I would imagine a tablet PC would be great for me because I could type things that I'd otherwise be illegibly scrawling, but when it came to diagrams or other things that are difficult to type, I could simply draw them onscreen. In school, I did a degree in Engineering Physics. Physics classes are something that would be very difficult if not impossible to take notes in without the option to draw. There are so many diagrams, equations, and funky symbols that would be really tough to simply type in. With a tablet, I imagine it could actually work...
Um, it CAN be done. I've done it many times. Yes, the penmanship isn't as good as when I keep my eyes on it, but it's still legible, at least to me.
Try it, it's easier than you think. Keeping the text from going up or downhill is the tricky part. You can feel the edge of the paper with the outside of your palm, so you don't have to worry about writing outside the paper. Just use the force!
Mooncaller,
Looking back at some comments you left in response to a thread long ago, I saw you were interested in manga and graphic novels, how's the art going? Anyways, I'd be curious to talk with you more about it.
Cheers.
Upgrade your grey matter, cause one day it may matter
I'm a senior in high school, and I have been use my Sharp Zaurus daily for the past two years. While taking classes like AP Physics and Calculus presents a challenge for taking notes as I am switching from text to equations to diagrams and problems, I find that doing it on my PDA to be no worse than paper, despite the screen is a little small. The advantages of undoing mistakes easily, drawing in different colors, and being able to create perfect geometric shapes vastly outweigh the extra 'effort' needed to do it on a PDA. It's essentially just another learning curve that you need to adapt to, but once you do I find my Zaurus incredibly useful.
On the note of tablets, I believe they are a good idea but are still to large for the portability I like.
Seriously. I have used the units by HP/Compaq and Gateway/Motion. The Gateway/Motion is better (lighter yet bigger), but both are totally anemic. Windows XP is a dog on either. Battery life on both, however, is excellent (even with WiFi in constant use).
I think a small laptop is a better value.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I discovered LaTex when I was a junior in College. I had an old laptop at the time; the battery lasted longer in text mode, so I usually just used vim to type my notes, instead of messing with X. After about two weeks of using it, I got to the point where I could key in LaTex equation descriptions almost as fast as the profs could write them on the board. After those two weeks, I could also read the LaTex descriptions well enough that I could read my notes without needing to render them to a page. Although, when it came time to put together a "single page of notes" for a big test, being able to render equations in small typefaces came in REALLY handy. More than once, someone else in the class would see my page of notes and want to make a copy, as it was more legible and more compact than anything handwritten. More than a couple of my professors were proficient with it as well (CompSci major).
Laugh all you want; it works. You just have to take the time to develop the necessary proficiency.
... by the Dew of Mountains the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning
Hold the triangle key down during boot to access the Setup Screen and give boot priority to the attached drive.
I can misspell words in 9 languages.
.nosig
--
You are so ready for IBM.
D'oh!
Stay away from HP/Compaq TC1000. Machine is a dog, locks up frequently. Processor is slow(er than rated). Even with max memory installed it can't handle more than a couple open apps on the desktop.
Maybe you should consider that, once in a while, the consensus about an idea or a product is actually CORRECT. Instead you seem to take pride in the fact that you disagree with whatever the consensus viewpoint is, which is just as the anti-MS people you criticize.
I also disagree that I didn't consider the Tablet's good points. I did mention that you can carry it anywhere! But, like I said, who cares? The disadvantage of a Tablet is that it performs like crap. So, on balance, I would say that a PDA or a laptop is better (including, you fucking slut, a Windows-based laptop.)
Overall though, I kind of think buying a portable anything is stupid for college. Unless you're in some kind of program where you have to take your laptop/whatever into a lab for data or something, then you're not really going to take your laptop with you and do useful work. It's just as bad as trying to be in a study group. Much more effecient to study alone.
The R series are cheap laptops, by IBM standards anyway, nasty plastic things
Have a look at something like the X31 or T41 and you'll find that they can make nice laptops, you just need to pay for it...
We have been evaluating Tablets in my company for a few months now. I have had the honor of using most of them.
I have a Toshiba M200. The newest model. Awsome machine. Fast processor (1.5 GHz). 1 GIG RAM. Did not get the 40 GB 7200 RPM drive, but hear it rocks. Over all the rest Toshiba is the best.
Fujitsu - All models slate and convertable suck
Motion - Excellent slate model, good power, screen, battery
NEC - Awsome slate model. Thin, lite, battery not to good, speed it not bad.
HP/Compaq - cute design, but they suck. Pen is huge and expensive to replace. Screen is to small. Battery not bad.
Go with the most recent model possible to avoid the bugs that come with new models.
I just wish this technology was around when I was at uni, and laptops were not soley for the students whose family ran small Gulf Nations.
Not to burst your bubble, but he was looking for a Tablet PC. If it were economically viable now, Apple would already have a model out. To address your other concerns...
1. They are very small (esp. thin), very light weight, and very powerful.
First of all, I can get all the power in a small package that rivals a lot of the fruit gallery. Hello, 600/600E/600X for a thin, and collegeworthy example, or a T40 for a modern example? That could have really outdone some stuff at your time, and (if you managed the battery right) still have something worth college work.
2. They have 54g wireless, firewire, usb, etc...
Big deal, can have all of those on pcmcia if not onboard (and I/they am/are not vendor locked to the builtin kind as well!) or via USB.
3. You WILL buy an iPod eventually
...to shoot at, since a Compaq H3650(mind that this was stuff out during your time, substitute modern equivalent) w/ dual pcmcia sleeve and Travelstar 25E PCMCIA drive might be big/expensive, but that pair isnt encumbered by any of the limitations of current Apple designs (Standard notebook HD? Touchscreen? No default vendor lockins? 2 way transfer of any file in any format? Audio formats limited only by onboard, easily reconfigurable software?)
4. OSX is the best OS - Ever!
OS wars are best left to other places. But I'll stick to DR17 if I want eyecandy.
5. The body is pretty robust.
Cant speak for having one in my hands, but I dunno if I want titanium flakes in/on a laptop.
6. G4 iMacs are cool. This last one you will appreciate after about 1 month of uni/college.
As for that, anything with on the high end ($2k+) wont have a problem in that department, not even with an IBM.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.