Weblogs: Gadgets and Stuff

Microsoft Tablet PC

Thursday, November 07, 2002

I've been keenly waiting for the launch of Microsoft's Tablet PC concept, and today is the day the concept is launched. Just a pity the marketing clunks show nothing more than laptops with swivle screens instead of pure tablets. Price ranges seem to be a well kept secret, but now vendors have no choice.

Pick of the tablets would have to be Fujitsu Siemen's Stylistic ST4000. Fujitsu have vast experience in pen-based computing. Their Lifebook B110 takes the pride of place in my collection of laptops - a subnotebooks with an 8.7 inch touch-sensitive TFT display is superb. Their Stylistic range is well respected and have been around for a while. I'm still keen picking up a second-hand Stylistic 1200 at some stage, but their Tablet PC offerings must now jump to the top of my shopping list.

A second pick - and one that actually mentions a price, is the RM Tablet PC aimed at students and teachers. The initial starting price is £799 and it claims a battery life of three to four hours. (That be one hour of use then). The Times carries an online review.

Over the past few days I've been really tempted to ignore the Tablet PC and revisit the IBM TransNote - a fantastic combination of laptop and digitised tablet. Since IBM have discontinued the range earlier this year, the second-hand prices have dropped on ebay from about £900+ to around £400, so now's the right time to pick them up. Whilst doing my research on the product, I stumbled across an indepth review by pencomputing.com.


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