<p>The one I referred to was a dual core. I know some of the Atom powered netbooks are dual core too, but I’ve read some real bad things about them. If I remember correctly, the dual core Atom was only about as fast as computers I was working on 10 years ago. Maybe I remember it incorrectly, but it doesn’t matter because as you said, it’s fast enough for Office applications and the internet. Hell, I’d probably still be using my old Celeron 266 Mhz if I could’ve replaced the video card at a reasonable cost.</p>
<p>I’m with you on the portability. I don’t really think tablets are worth all that much unless books are put on them too. Actually, I’ll add that the main reason I use a tabletpc is because I ride a motorcycle. There was absolutely no way I was going to ride a bike with a bag full of books. This is why I see the portability of a tablet being so advantageous. Portability is also enhanced by using a graphing calculator emulator (HP 50g) Getting textbooks into a pdf is a whole different subject, but let’s just say there’s a few different ways of doing it, and I’ve tried at least four of them.</p>
<p>I’ll also admit that the power of tablets was really bad about 8 years ago when I first started using them. I traded mine in for a dual screen desktop and surround system system, plus a pda. Those early tablets seemed really cool, but waiting 45 minutes to boot wasn’t bad at all. Besides, I was a programmer, and needed the screen real estate. All current tablets are much much faster than those I messed with many years ago. I believe the biggest bottleneck in the most portable of tablets is the 1.8" hard drive. Swap that with a fast ssd, and it should be more than fast enough for classroom and library duty. Gamers and anyone that does serious graphics work should be using a desktop or high end laptop, but something in that class of hardware will cost well over $500 as we both know. There aren’t any real high powered tablets, but the HP tx2/tx2500 and Fujitsu T5010 are pretty decent, especially when you compare them to laptops of similar price and size. The HP doesn’t have the greatest graphics card, and the Fujitsu only has integrated graphics, but I can’t see why anyone would want to do serious graphics or gaming on a 12" screen.</p>