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Are table PC's ready for primet time?

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by gmgardner

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I'm an independent consultant and I need to buy a new laptop for myself for business purposes. I want it to be small, 4+ hours of battery life - useful for note taking. I'm really thinking along the lines of a "super" PDA. I already have a Palm TX which is ok but I'm not crazy about it.

I can't decide if my next laptop should be a regular small notebook style or a tablet pc. I like my PDA for the ability to write on the screen. I'm probably just going to be using MS office applications on it.

Opinions?
Thanks,
Glo

2 replies

by jdmercha

Are tablets ready from prime time? - yes
Are tablets worth the money? - no

The advice I always give is - you get the for your money with a desktop. Don't buy a laptop unless you absolutely need the protability. And then buy the largest laptop you can manage. The smaller laptops are slower and more expensive.

That same advice applies to the tablet PC. Don't buy it unless you absoluteley need it.

by tig2

Since most of my clients are MS XP/Office environments, I currently have a Dell D600 that I truly despise. Reliable it is (now), but the BIOS had me reimaging the thing for a solid week before Dell was finally convinced that they needed to fix it. *Geeze- two years later and I am still irritated!*

I will be purchasing a new laptop in the next few months. Having considered all of the options, my choice is going to be one of the new Mac PowerBooks running OS X. From there, I will create a partition that will- with the help of Boot Camp- run XP.

In this way, I can use the computer for business and keep the XP partition for that purpose, as well as use the OS X partition for personal use- I LIKE command line Unix.

I use an iPAQ for organisational needs and found a great wheeled computer case at the local Wal-Mart. I don't worry about computer size as I don't carry it on my shoulder.

For note taking, I pull out the iPAQ and use mobile Word that I can synch with my computer later. I have been using Transcriber as I can quickly write on the face of the iPAQ and the iPAQ will transform it to print. I find that I can take notes as quickly with this method as I do with a pad and I have my notes electronic and publishable.

This is the soultion that I think is best for me. I don't care for tablet pcs as I can do the same job with a smaller tool (the iPAQ).

Good luck with your choice. I know you will find the right thing!

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