Slashdot Mirror
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I wrote a tablet PC review which might be interesting in this context.
Summary: for anything other than truly unique situations, it's not worth it.
D
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 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?
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
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?
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