Hi,
I'm disappointed in your comments. They do not reflect the new series of
machines that have been shipping with the latest Pentium M processor.
Vendors such as Gateway have understood that price/value are important and
their pricing is similar for Tablet (M275) vs Notebook PCs (450) with
comparable specs. The prices are easily under $2,000 which used to be the
pricing for the high end Tablet PCs.
As for size, the Acer and Gateway have 14" displays. The Toshiba has a 12"
high resolution display - clearly the Tablet PCs are making strides in the
screen size beyond the original 10" displays that were common with first
generation Tablet PCs.
On the ports, the Acer and Gateway units have USB 2.0 and Firewire as well
as a PC Card reader as well as vga, modem and ethernet and optical drives
(including DVD/CDRW options). The Acer even has a smart card reader and
gigabit ethernet. Other Tablet PCs have USB 2.0 and FireWire as well.
Finally on the battery life side, the Acer TMC300 claims 5 hours with the
standard battery. Clearly this is beyond the 2 hours you described.
--
Chris De Herrera
http://www.cewindows.net http://www.tabletpctalk.com
"Aram" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:50709DFE-1F9D-49C0-A109-68D296C91278@microsoft.com...
> If your question is "is it usable?" then answer is yes, it is. If your
question is "worth it additional money I have to pay over the regular
notebook?" then the answer actually depends on what you expect from
TabletPC. If you are a businessman, willing to eliminate paper and user
computer only, then the TabletPC is the only way to go, as you may use it to
take notes during meetings, and it's much more affordable than regular
notebooks for that. It is also convenient to read internet sites laying on
the sofa. However, there is a price you pay besides additional bucks. First
of all, be aware that TabletPC has to be tiny, otherwise it will be to heavy
to keep on one hand when using another for writing. This means it has a
limited battery capacity, which means that you will probably get at most 2
hours of continuous operation. And secondly, they have limited set of ports
and relatively small screens.