Tablet laptops, anyone have any experience/critiques?

[Crazy_pilot]

I need a laptop for school this fall, and since I'm doing a design course I was considering a tablet laptop for ease of jot-ability. I don't have any experience with them though and I'm wondering how well they actually work.

Specifically, how well does the screen take someone's hand rubbing agaist it all the time, and how well does the software actually work for handwriting recognition? I'm not too concerned about computing power, I mostly surf the web and work on things. The only power-heavy programs the thing might see are 3D design ones (Pro-E, SolidWorks type things).

The store I would likely buy from has two HP tablets listed: http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/sub...EN&catid=25317

Tech-gurus, waddayathink?

[ensteele]

I have one for work and it works great. It is a gateway. It has held up good.

[SomethingElse]

I had the gateway M275. It was good after I sent it back to gateway 3 times within 5 months for warranty work. It was nice though..stupid techs...screen was very sturdy and wasnt picky about smudge marks. only the pen would work on it so you can touch it all day and the mouse wont jump around.

[Hondasucks]

Toshiba makes a pretty good one (Portege I think) that is a regular laptop, but you can turn the screen around and fold it flat and it converts to a tablet. So you have the convenience of a tablet, but you also have a regular laptop with a standard keyboard. Check www.dealnews.com for laptop deals. You can look at the different models at www.toshiba.com but you can usually get a better price from like, Best Buy, etc.. (Mine was $450 at Best Buy, it's not a tablet though, it's a Satellite A205-S5825, widescreen LCD (720p), 120 GB hdd, 1 gig ram (upgradeable to 2gb), DVD-RW, built in media slot, ExpressCard54 slot, etc....

[Crazy_pilot]

Cool, thanks guys. The one I'm looking at is from Best Buy's sister company, Future Shop. It's $1100, 320 GB HDD, 4 GB RAM, 2.something GHz dual core CPU, DVD burner with Lightscribe, wireless N thingamabobber, plus the turn/flip tablet screen. I tried one out and was pretty satisfied with it's performance. I'll be using it mainly in laptop mode, but there are going to be a good number of times where I'll be able to use the tablet functions.

My only issue might be the size, it's only 13". I'm used to my nice 21" screen here, or dual 17" screens on my other computer. Ah well, portability will be awesome.

[RSVX]

I work in IT for a living.

We are a HP shop.

We were recently asked to evaluate, and begin designing an image for the HP nc2710p Tablet.

Long story short, we were very impressed.

It doesn't needs to recognize what you are writing if you are taking notes in Windows Journal. You just need to be able to read your own writing.

If you are trying to type/ write a URL, I would say its 95% accurate.