Tablet PC Talk

Student Lounge College Life
1

<p>I finally decided that I would prefer a Tablet PC over a Mac, and would like to know what the best one is. Here are my goals</p>

<p>40+ GB HardDrive
512MB Ram
1.4+ Pentium M
Bluetooth and Integrated Wireless
Decent to Good Graphics capabilities
Good Computer Name with 3 Year Service Plan
Windows XP Tablet Edition
12-14 inch screen</p>

<p>Should I buy over the internet? I've never actually seen a Tablet PC in use, but I have researched them on the internet, and they seem to be a lot of fun. If nothing else, if the pen-writing thing sucks, I will still have a perfectly decent laptop.</p>

<p>Price Range: 1000-1800</p>

<p>Thanks, any other Tablet Info would be cool too, although I know it has been touched on in other threads. Hopefully this will consolidate.</p>

2

<p>At that price point you're fairly limited as to your options.<br>
Check out:
<a href="http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/&lt;/a> and <a href="http://studenttabletpc.com/forum.studenttabletpc.com/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://studenttabletpc.com/forum.studenttabletpc.com/&lt;/a> </p>

<p>I'm waiting for IBM to release their tablet and may look at Motion's new one to be released in July. I'm looking to buy through my school because then it'll come with on site service, tons of extra software, 4yr warranty, and a little price discount. My schools does Dell and IBM but Dell sells the Motion tablets. I'm still undecided between slate and convertible... with slate you can have a full docking station, external drives, wireless mouse and keyboard, etc on your desk and then a really light machine for on the go. Downside: price... the base unit price is very comparable but with all the addons it get pricy very quick. Convertible models tend to be heavier, have bigger screens, internal drives, shorter batter lives, and they just don't have the 'Wow' factor for me. There's been alot of talk about the new HP convertible but like I said, I'm waiting for the IBM. Rumor has it there will be an official announcement on the 15th.</p>

<p>Go to Best Buy or Comp USA and check out their tablets. Most stores carry one or two models. Then you can look at the form factor and mess around with Win XP Tablet edition and see how you like it.</p>

3

<p>How bout a Toshiba R15? $1600 at Best Buy. Pretty much everything I wanted except no Bluetooth. </p>

<p>Concerns: Will the Tablet PC Edition run as well as regular XP?
How does the 1.6 GhZ M compare to Mac 1.5 GhZ, or Pentium 4?
Is the life of the computer decent? How are the graphics for low-mid level games? (Not a gamer at all right now. Just curious)</p>

<p>Pretty much it will be between this (or any other good Tablets, but this makes the most sense now) or the PowerBook 1.5 Ghz 15 inch screen by itself or 12 inch with LCD monitor for my dorm room.</p>

<p>Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!</p>

4

<p>Search for the thread "Best Laptops?" and find the later posts by michuncle. He made some really informative posts about Tablet PCs. I'm looking for one too, but am a total n00b. ;) </p>

<p>I don't know if you've decided yet, but I've agonized and decided on a convertible. This is because I need the keyboard for sooo many things (I'm a writer), and decided that the little more weight would be worth it.</p>

<p>Er, more later. Mother's Day stuff now.</p>

5

<p>jerew... go to the sites I mentioned above. Then do a search and you'll have more information at your fingertips than I could ever type out for you. </p>

<p>I've heard that the Tablet PC version of Windows is exactly like XP pro but with the added features for the tablet portion of the system. Pentium 4 is old news in the laptop world from what I've seen. M processors seem to rule now and 1.6 is one of the faster ones in the tablet pc market. Like I said, do a search and I'm sure you'll find all the answers.</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

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<p>are pentium M's considered better than P4's or just because they're new are they desired more/</p>

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<p>The top P4's are still faster than the top Ms but for many, that speed stops being an issue (or else the pricetag of the top P4s becomes an issue). </p>

<p>The P4M is a much more efficeint processor and is definately better than a P4 for a laptop. There are growing numbers of people who want them in desktops for the same reason.</p>

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<p><a href="http://www.tabletpcreviewspot.com/default.asp?newsID=235%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.tabletpcreviewspot.com/default.asp?newsID=235&lt;/a>
Comparison between HP TC4200 and Toshiba R15</p>

<p><a href="http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2005/04/fcc_pics_of_the.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2005/04/fcc_pics_of_the.html&lt;/a>
IBM Thinkpad X 41</p>

<p><a href="http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cmod.to?coid=-29325&ccid=1291041&rcid=-26367&seg=SMB%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cmod.to?coid=-29325&ccid=1291041&rcid=-26367&seg=SMB&lt;/a>
<a href="http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2005/04/toshiba_tecra_m.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2005/04/toshiba_tecra_m.html&lt;/a>
Toshiba Tecra M4</p>

<p><a href="http://www.tabletpcreviewspot.com/default.asp?newsID=229%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.tabletpcreviewspot.com/default.asp?newsID=229&lt;/a>
Toshiba R15 Review</p>

<p>Jerew: Given your budget, you do have a few more options than just a year ago. At the low end, there’s the Averatec C3500 which runs between $800-1000 to the Toshiba Tecra M4 and the IBM X 41 Tablet which run towards $2000. Note that the Averatec has some notable drawbacks: short battery life (maybe 2 hrs), .heat from the AMD processor and a different handwriting digitizer than used by other Tablet manufacturers. </p>

<p>In between are the new Toshiba R10/15 and the HP TC4200 that run around $1500+. Either of these Tablets will meet your needs. Bluetooth cards should be available for both at an additional cost. There are some manufacturer refurbished Toshiba M205 S810 Tablets available on the web for around $1400. This represents a great deal. Returned and store demo M205’s are sent back to Toshiba for any repairs and then sold with a limited warranty. </p>

<p>I feel your pain about not being able to actually see a Tablet at your local electronics stores. Here in Michigan, neither Best Buy nor Circuit City has either the Toshiba or Averatec on display anymore. CompUSA and Staples may still have the Averatec. To actually play around with a Tablet, your best bet might be Staples. You’ll probably have to ask the clerk to free the Averatec from its display “prison”…</p>

<p>Speed between a Mac vs. a Tablet? Direct comparisons between Apple and Windows based machines (even between Intel and AMD processors) are not a one to one measure. For most applications (web browsing, e-mail and word processing), speed isn’t that big an issue. Gaming is another matter. The Toshiba M205 has 32M of separate video memory that makes some game playing possible. The Toshiba M4 is supposed to have 128M of video memory which makes gaming a better, but expensive, experience. Most other Tablets aren’t really designed for games.</p>

<p>Tablet PC Edition is a superset of Windows XP Pro. You should have no problems plugging into your campus network. </p>

<p>There are lots of good laptops and Tablets. The questions you need to ask yourself is how will I use a Tablet or laptop in school. I started a thread about how students really use their laptops in college. So far, many students seem to under-utilize their laptops during the school week. Some students never or very seldom take their laptops out of their room. Some students really use their laptops all the time. </p>

<p>As you stated in your post: even if you never use the Tablet writing feature (which works pretty well after Service Pack 2 was released by Microsoft), you still have a good laptop! Most students don’t take notes in class with their laptops and might only use it for web surfing, paper writing and e-mail. So, if you can afford it, why not give yourself the extra advantage by being able to take notes in class that can be searchable and linkable?</p>

<p>P.S. Hello to Anovice, Aroundthecorner and Ottothecow!</p>

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<p>WOW! Thanks for the info. I noticed that with some of the laptops (and even only certain models within a company) I could add the Bluetooth option. How would I add this if it weren't available originally? There is one of the Toshiba's that doesn't have it, but the lower model has the option of putting it on. The top doesn't. Why? Can I solve this?</p>

10

<p>LOL... the more I think about it the more I want to just go ahead and order the Motion 1400. I'm so impatient and even if IBM announces their new tablet in May, it's not going to be for sale until late June maybe even early August and I just can't wait that long! The new motion isn't supposed to be out for a while too and I don't want to wait and wait and then be unhappy and have to be worried about returns/exchanges as I'm totally stressed about starting college. </p>

<p>Great info michuncle!</p>

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<p>The Toshiba m205 is probably the best on the market in terms of price/quality. It's a good quality notebook that just happens to have a screen that you can write on. The Toshiba R15 has a bigger screen and the DVD/CD drive is built-in, but it's lower performing. I'm waiting for the prices to drop a bit. Keep an eye on CompUSA.</p>

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<p>the Toshiba m205 doesn't have a built in DVD/CD option does it?</p>

<p>I looked at the pictures of the upcoming IBM tablet.. and its so uglyyyyy. i was going to wait to get a laptop after the IBM tablet came out, but i think i've changed my mind from seeing the pictures. i can't stand the little red button thing as the mouse</p>

<p>is the motion tablet a convertible or slate tablet?</p>

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<p>Hi michuncle!! :) </p>

<p>Hmm.. the HP TC4200 looks nice for me, someone mentioned Photoshop worked great on it. Anyone know how much it'll cost to put in a DVD drive?</p>

<p>(full review here: <a href="http://81.5.185.34/tc-one-thousand/tc4200-review.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://81.5.185.34/tc-one-thousand/tc4200-review.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p>

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<p>Hi Aroundthecorner!</p>

<p><a href="http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/tabletpc/options/multibay.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/tabletpc/options/multibay.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>According to the HP website, an external dvd/cd-rw drive goes for $169. It also looks like the drive needs an external shell called "Multibay II" which costs $79. Now it's starting to get expensive!</p>

<p>Undecided87: The Toshiba M205 S810 comes with an external dvd/cd-rw drive with it's own power supply. This is the system that my nephew uses at school. The M205 is available through Internet re-sellers who are selling the manufacturer refurbished model. The general selling price seems to be $1400. Toshibadirect.com still sells the M205 starting at $1799. Your call! </p>

<p>Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... IBM's never tried to compete with Apple as "eye candy". It's the guts that matter...</p>

<p>Jerew: The R15 has a standard PCMCIA slot for laptop peripherials. You'll need to find a Bluetooth to PCMCIA adaptor. Not an elegant solution, but probably cost effective.</p>

<p>Hi Anovice: I go back and forth about slate vs. convertible. I like having all the parts all together in the convertible Tablets, yet if I were going back to school, maybe a slate weighing around 3 lbs or so may be the way to go. No optical drive, no keyboard or mouse. Just a slate to write on just like my old paper legal pad. Less is more?</p>

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<p>I would just like to note that any graphics subsystem (especially integrated) with only 32MB of RAM will not be enough for games considered on even the low level of technology for this time (halflife and its derivatives will be hard pressed to run with steam on any integrated card much less a 32MB one.</p>

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<p>Ottothecow: All too true. My nephew's M205 with 32M of separate video ram isn't a gaming system for Half-life2 (not like he didn't try to run the game). Many games will run on his Tablet provided he turns down a lot of the game settings. The specs of the new Tecra M4 sounds like it might handle games much better...but at a pretty steep price for many students.</p>

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<p>I'm not even talking about HL2 (32mb integrated comes nowhere close to meeting the requirements). I am talking about the original HL and its derivatives (CS,DOD,etc). They used to run fine (install them from the CD and they will work) but with the introduction of steam, the minimum requirments definately went up and those games are definately not high-tech.</p>

<p>Graphics memory is important and not just for gaming but with the newer tablets you should be fine.</p>

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<p>I think I am going to go with the Toshiba Tecra M4. Little pricier, but the warranty/system guard is cheaper, and it has 64mb graphics. 1.73 Pentium M, 14 inch screen, internal optical drive, ood hard drive, one snap in chip for easy Bluetooth upgrade, etc. Just wish it were cheaper. (About 2200 with Bluetooth and SystemGuard) It will last a while and still be pretty good though.
Not 100% sure. Waiting for parent approval. Any qualms with this model?</p>

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<p>Not cheap, but still my nephew's M205 cost $2200 with a $100 rebate. And no bluetooth since he didn't need it. And the Tecra weighs a little more (6 lbs. rather than the 4 1/2 lbs of the M205).</p>

<p>Hope your parents approve! Did you look at the R15?</p>

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<p>That is about the range where the idea where the tablet PC would intrest me. Cheaper than that and you just arent getting everything you need. </p>

<p>You can still see how long you can wait before purchasing it as the price WILL drop and newer models WILL come out before its time for you to head out.</p>