The quest for the holy grail of tablet PCs

I’ve been looking for the perfect Tablet PC. It’s something that enthusiasts like Fred have also been searching for. I’d love to have one in my hands so I can make an educated decision, so while in Sydney I went to visit a computer store on George Street (opposite Myres).

I aksed him about the Toshiba R400 and he looked at me, quite confused, mentioned R meant some retail version of the M400, and said they didn’t have any. They did have the Fujitsu Lifebook, though, and it was chained down with all sorts of alarms and the like. When I asked the store assistant whether he could remove them so I could pick it up, feel the weight, etc, he looked very concerned and said that the manager would be very angry if he did that. I sighed and tried to move the cables out of the way but it was still near impossible to pick up the tablet. At least I could swing the screen around, but it was then that I noticed that the pen was missing. I alerted the store assistant who, after searching somewhere for a little while, came back and simply said that it seemed to be lost. He then just stood there.

Obviously, service was not high on their list of priorities. If I could remember the store name I’d recommend you not go there.

I only wish that there was a place like Allegiance Technology Partners in Australia so I could make the best of their 48 hour test-drive. At least they would be able to offer me real help by letting me play with a tablet so I can make an informed decision about which tablet is right for me. In the mean time, though, I feel a little bit in the dark.

I think I like the ASUS R1F, but note that it’s maximum RAM capacity is only 2GB, so it’s unclear whether it’s ok for Vista. The Lenovo has been on my mind but I think it’s ugly. The HP looks like a good Media PC but I am uncomfortable with the robustness of HPs. Then there’s the Toshiba - pricey and reviews say it’s a touch low on performance.The only consistent measure seems to be the PCMark05. Here’s what I found:

Model	OS	RAM	CPU	Weight	PCMark05	My Comments
Samsung P25 [1]	Windows XP Pro	1 GB	2 GHz Pentium Mobile	2.6 kg	1412	Runs XP well at these specs and will even play Civilization or Enter the Matrix (both very important)
Toshiba R400	Windows Vista	2 GB	1.2 GHz Core Duo 2 Low Voltage (U2500)	1.72 kg	2187	Very pretty, but will it run Photoshop and everything else with relative ease???If I buy one now it won’t work with the wireless dock that comes out Q3 2007.
Fujitsu LifeBook T4215	Windows Vista	2 GB	1.2 GHz Core Duo 2 Low Voltage (U2500)	1.9 kg	2215	I played with one in Sydney and it felt too plasticy for my liking.
ASUS R1F	Windows XP Tablet Edition	1 GB	Intel Core 2 Duo T5500-T7400	1.98 kg	2724	Only a max of 2GB RAM? That makes me a bit nervous with Vista.Otherwise it’s pretty good bang for my buck.
HP Compaq Pavilion tx1000	Windows Vista	1 GB	AMD Turion 64 X2 dual-core processors	1.7 kg	3025	I’m not sure I want a Media PC for my laptop

I found a great Tablet PC review site with pages of comparisons of stats between tablet pcs, but had to go to cnet and zdnet to find the benchmarks to make a better, objective comparison between the models I was looking for. Of greatest concern to me was whether or not a tablet would run Photoshop, and Axure, and Word, and Visio, and several windows of IE and Firefox.

If you use a Tablet PC with Vista and run very memory intensive software I’d be very interested to hear from you.

If you’re a technology vendor then let me know what you can do for me, because, if I can have a play for a day or two, and I like what I see, there’s a lot of people who are waiting to hear what I have to say, and see what I buy, before they buy them as well!

M
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[1] My current laptop purchased in Hong Kong in 2002.

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