Opinions/experiences with a tablet notebook?

I'm thinking of buying a tablet notebook, possibly one of these:

xxod 120r (sorry, dutch only)
ASUS R1F A2
hp Pavilion tx2100


But I hear various opinions from people about those things

Positive opinions:
They look great to work with and handy for presentating/sharing your screen with other people as well, as the screens are freely rotateable to all directions. The touchscreen feature increases workflow of graphic design and project teamworking. Multiple people can interact without the need of handing over a mouse, turn the whole notebook the other direction etc. Just lay it flat (screen up) on the table and go! .

Negative rumours:
Some say they are very fragile, and break off / take damage very quick and easy (considered I'm not thát careful with my stuff either hehe). The hand-touch feature is not nearly as good as it is advertised (often inaccurate or fails to recognise your finger movement at all) but the pen-touch versions, on the other hand, do very well. I do want a hand-touchscreen instead of just a pencil, so this inaccuracity is something I take in my concideration.

I wonder if people here have experience with them and can extend, verify or prove the contrary of the things I described above.

Or drop a line with just your opinion .

Thanx

Are there really so few opinions?

My dad has a tablet notebook and although it looks fragile, it never broke. Still, you do have to be careful with it, more careful than with a normal laptop. As for the inaccuracies, those critics are probably exaggerating. The accuracy on the tablet my dad has is very good and honestly it's a pretty old tablet notebook (read: year or 2 old).

They are great to work on, the only thing I didn't like was the fact that it was a 12" inch or so screen. WAY small.

Apart from that, pretty cool computers. HP and Acer have a pretty long history making them and generally those are very good.

Thanx for clearing that up

I thought ASUS was the one with a long history, and HP is only making them since a short time? ASUS does have alot of models already, whileas HP I can't find alot about it other than the most recent releases...

I own a Fujitsu/Siemens LIFEBOOK T-series for about 3 months.
LIFEBOOK

My first choice was also ASUS bacause of the lower price but the LIFEBOOK's not much more and I've good experiences with Fujitsu.

I like it very much and it's very robust.
Sound is ok and battery lasts for ~2h playing (~3h programming).
GFX is fast but has no shader-support.
Tablet only accessable by pen (not by finger) but thats not a problem for me.
The screen is very good and has a wide angle of view.


Most benefit of a tablet pc for me:
- designing games concepts for touch-screen-systems (this is the future of mobile gaming!)
- texturing/painting is very easy (->ArtRage)

ASUS is one of the bigger players as well, but always has been less popular (at least as far as I know).

Yeah, HP tends to clean up their discontinued products from their sites for marketing purposes. They are in the tablet PC business for a LONG time though.

The info on Wikipedia on tablet PCs has some more information on which companies made or make tablet PCs;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_PC

Sorry Joozey... didn't see this thread.

My First: Toshiba Portégé 3500/3505 (still my favorite!)
My Second: Toshiba Portégé R400/405
My Current: Toshiba Satellite R10/R15/R20/R25

I've had a tablet for about 5 years. Yeah, pretty much since they came out. I bought a TOSHIBA once, own a toshiba now, and will buy another in the future. Can't speak to the other brands but toshiba was the first to have the swivel screen and they are still the best IMO.


Fragile? Hmmm... I've taken mine to the top of the andes, to the deserts of atacma, to the depths of patagonia, and the the wet virgin island. In the last two years, my current has been my main computer, has had wine spilled on it, hot ahes fall on the screen, been used as a coaster, and has been dropped innumerable times.

Still works fine.

Oh, and when doesn't, buy into the 300 USD or so "replacement" warranty... it's basically a free tablet every year if you know what I mean.

Tablets are great and once the form factor perfects (better battery, smaller weight, better on board bus, etc), they will be serious competition to the pda/mobile market. I use mine to sign signatures on invoices, draw sketches for my projects, control ppt presentations, and more.

Can you tell I'm as much as fanboy of tablets as I am of GS?

(PS: I have no experience with the touchscreen. It sounds very neat but I would not be surprised that it's not all it's cracked up to be. And for the most part a pen is preferable since your fingers will never end in a sharp tip. Like the tablet pens, the second generation of touchscreens should be significantly better than the first. But even then, for the way I use it, it is still very much a novelty and not a huge improvement to the tablet experience that I'm aware of.)

Thanx alot for your inputs that sure helps me alot and pushes me in the direction of what to buy (and what not :P). I was thinking of something small and quite solid-looking, because those seem not too fragile hehe, but I might need to adapt my view there.

@mercuryus:
According to the specs of the fujitu notebook, it does support Pixelshader 2.0, don't know if you have a different version? It's a very nice notebook but over 1700 euro is a little bit over my budget. Perhaps they will release some new models somewhere soon and drop the price of this one ^^. I'll keep track of it.

@PHeMoX:
About ASUS, I don't know about their tablet notebooks, but their normal ones are pretty popular here (where here is my school :P) together with HP and Acer, most people seem to earn an ASUS. But as I said, might be a different story with tablets.

@fastlane69:
Either you are unconsciously very carefull or it really is a strong notebook . I definately put toshiba on my list to check out their models. 1300$ for the satelite R25 sounds like a very reasonable price. Maybe I should just look for a pen instead of a touch, saves alot in price as well hehe. Point is that I don't like the dependency of taking that pencil everywhere (even if you cán store it inside the laptop, it's still a 'third pary' object, if you know what I mean :P).

And yes, tablet notepads sure threaten the PDA, they already should on gameing area ^^. But the mobile will never extinct. I wouldn't walk over the street with a 15 inch notepad against my ear... ^^. Fun to speculate what the future will bring us though.

May still take a while before I buy one (probably after summerholidays, but I hope a little earlier) and just hoping that this laptop keeps it up till then .

Well, 3 months later I now purchased my tablet notebook ^^.

It's this same Asus R1E that I bought (not my video):


Until now I'm very content with it. It's a tad smaller than my current (non touch) laptop, which is actually very comfortable . Kicking of windows Vista and install XP first, then time to install and transfer all my programs and projects, and see how much better it works ^^.

Thanks all for reviewing you opinions here! It definately helped me on my search.

I would stick to Vista, getting the right drivers otherwise could be a nightmare... but do keep us posted.

Theres a special XP recovery cd delivered with it . I'm pretty sure all should go fine.

In that case, no worries I guess.

Yay, driver horrors...
Back to Vista :|

Seriously? That's too bad.

Glad to have you as part of the Tablet Army.
Honestly, you may never go back!

Trust me, I am NOT unconciously careful with my Tablet... I take that guy to the bar all the time, it's had wine spilled on it, and it's been dropped in 3 different countries... and it still works perfectly.

One thing to try out is to use the pen instead of the mouse. What I like to do is to use the pen to tap links and lead me where I want withou using the mousepad. You'll find that it's more efficient and effective since you don't have to "find" the mouse and then "lead" it where you want... true "point 'n click" is acheived only with the pen.

No experience with the touchscreen so if yours has it, please report! I'm very curious!

It could be that they did not gave me an XP tablet edition for some reason. While vista immediately recognises the pen, XP did not. I'm not going back with XP again though, I decided to settle with Vista.



It has no finger-input touchscreen if that's what you mean, it works with a stylus pen. I have read that the finger-sensitive screens are more inaccurate. They are usually used for GPS and PDA systems as the inaccuracity is not really noticeable on those small screens. I've seen some finger-touch laptops nevertheless, but didn't want to take the risk ^^.


It works great so far, especially the ability to fold the screen up on the keyboard and be able to put it on my lap is very comfortable. And the stylus touch experience is, err, awesome .

I'm a littlebit concerned about the seemingly unstable rotation hinge. If it happen to break off within 2 years I send it straight back to Asus .

Did you get the extended warranty?
True Story: I bought my first tablet 5 years ago with a "anything goes" warranty. After 3 years my tablet "accidently" was destroyed and they sent me a new one. A year later, my tablet was in the car with me during an accident and the insurance paid for a new one, again with warranty. In conclusion, I paid 2k USD for my tablet 5 years ago... and too date I've not had to spend a penny more!
If you don't have it, get it... the warranty if offered is worth the 300 USD or so that it should cost.

Hmm, haven't got the extended waranty yet, might indeed be wise to do so. :P

I have had a touch screen for about 9 months or so, its an HP tx1000. I got it as an excuse to draw in photoshop. It is fine as far as gameplay (reminds me of the touch screen games at the bar). I run Vista Ultimate on it, 64 bit.
I have been seriously thinking of installing XP Tablet edition since I can grab it from MSDN, but if you are having issues I will probably too.

Well, after testing a few weeks, I came to the conclusion that this latop lacks alot of stuff. Partly from ASUS, partly from Vista, but both don't offer the drivers and upgrades to fix this. Anyone noticing the same problems, please tell! Then I know which are general problems (from vista or ASUS) and which one are specific for this laptop type.

Heres the list of cons so far:

• No modifyable pen buttons
• No modifyable monitor buttons
• No turning off of the automatic-screen-rotation when folding the screen down
• Mouse keeps hanging for a short second due to enabled mouse gestures and right-mouse-hold checks, making drawing awkwardly annoying after a while
• Mouse pointer movement acting different in some applications and games, more like dragging than moving
• Mouse click often not registrated in all tested applications, alot of tapping is required for one click
• Mouse gestures do not work in some applications like Photoshop, but do in others
• Mouse pointer is very inaccurate in the corners and sides of the screen, making clicking on close buttons harder than normal
• Scrollbars on the right side are very annoying for left-handed people, as the hand is constantly blocking the screen
• Selecting multiple files in explorer is much harder with a stylus than in XP, and I'm clueless as to why Vista does not have a clear white side in explorer so you can easily drag a selection box

Are you sure about that? I'm currently not in the vicinity of my dad's tablet pc, but I'm pretty sure you can change this. I'll get back to you on this, not 100% sure though.

Yeah I searched everywhere. There is an option to turn the rotation off totaly, but that also takes off the quickbutton on my monitor screne for rotating the screen manually .

Oh I see, mmmm, maybe that's the same option I was thinking of changing.