New portable notebook. . . tablet?

C

cinohpa

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
288
Hey,

I'm looking for a new notebook highly mobile notebook for college. I currently have a G1s which fulfills all of my needs as far as heavy computing is concerned. What I am looking for in a second notebook is high portability for notes, music, internet, etc.

I saw the Asus R1e-b1 and it looked pretty amazing (although a little out of my price range). Basically I'm looking for something in the $1000-1500 range, probably a tablet with touch screen.

I was thinking of 1 preferably 2 gig ram, and a dual core between 1.2-1.6Ghz

Any suggestions?
 
well the lenovo x61 with 2gb ram 1.6 GHz is $1625. That's a little high, but workable.

Also, I'm open to nontablets for a deal.

. . . .
 
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/s...tegory&v1=Mobility&series_name=tx2000z_series

30% off Coupon if you raise the price to $1299 : NB3098

You can pretty much max it entirely out for about $1200 with the coupon

Operating system Upgrade to Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit) edit
Processor AMD Turion(TM) 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology Gold Edition TL-68 (2.4 GHz, 512KB+512KB L2 Cache ) edit
Display 12.1" diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen (1280 x 800) w/Integrated Touch-screen edit
Memory 4GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm) edit
Graphics Card NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 6150 edit
Personalization FREE Upgrade to HP Imprint Finish (Echo) + Fingerprint Reader + Microphone edit
Networking FREE Upgrade to 802.11b/g WLAN and Bluetooth from 802.11b/g WLAN!! edit
Hard Drive 40% OFF Upgrade to 320GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive from 250GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive!! edit
Primary CD/DVD Drive FREE Upgrade to LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW with Double Layer Support!! edit
TV & Entertainment Experience No TV Tuner w/remote control edit
Primary Battery 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery edit
Productivity Software Microsoft(R) Works 9.0
 
Used/NOS X60 or X61 Tablet. You can find them in the $1000-1500 range on eBay all the time. Lenovos are two or three levels above everyone else in quality.
 
I'm using an HP tc4400 for school. It's amazing...I added a 2gb OCZ ram set, and it came with a t2400 (1.83Ghz Core Duo). Best Wacom digitizer available, and with the extended battery pack, I get ~10 hours between charges. It's unreal how accurate the digitizer is, I have a friend with a toshiba...more like trashiba. This tc4400 is what hospitals are using, I can't say enough good shit about this laptop. Put Vista on it, XP tablet won't learn your handwriting, Vista will. After one semester, I can circle a whole page of notes and it will convert my awful handwriting with very few errors.
 
I don't mean to be a wet blanket but are you going to take any classes that would utilize the advantages of a tablet pc or convertible notebook?

I'm asking this because I have a convertible notebook myself. When I was a EE major during my freshman year I used to write notes in that thing nearly every digital design lecture. A semester later though, I switched over to computer science and now I just use it as a regular laptop, mostly due to having classes that are programming-oriented (less/no writing, more typing).

Plus, if you're getting a tablet pc as a replacement to regular old pencils/paper, forget it. I've been there and I would rather have to deal with refilling lead or manually flip through my notes than have a digitizer conk out on me (happened to me once -- set me back ~$50 to get a new pen :mad:) or drop and break a machine. Of course there are many upsides to having a tabletpc such as their light weight, internet-connectivity, and apps that are heavily involved in tracing and drawing, like photoshop (BTW look into tablets that use Wacom instead of Finepoint, etc.). But the thousand year old technology of paper still takes the cake in texture, availability (no batteries), dependibility, and directness (you don't wait for a piece of paper to boot or come out of standby :p).

I hope this has been somewhat of an informative post. Getting a tablet pc is really neat and there are plenty of classes out there that allow you to take full advantage of them, but don't be like the stupid freshman I used to be and expect the machine to replace everything in my bag.

EDIT: My lord! I've written a mini-essay. Sorry 'bout that.

Keep in mind though: Wacom, not Finepoint!
 
^^^ Mostly agree, but I've never had a power issue, even when I was just using the 6-cell battery that came with this tc4400...and there's nothing like having access to the online lecture materials during class...if your prof has them available for you. As long as you have it go into sleep mode, it's on instantly. I usually hit the power button as I'm opening the lid, and it's up before I get the lid all the way up, much less flipped around and dropped into tablet mode. I can see issues with EE classes, but this thing and OneNote saved my ass in English and Art classes.
 
I am finishing my junior year of my EE degree and having a tabletpc has been really nice. If you have classes where you have to draw images for notes than a tablet pc is the way to go. I recommend the X61 tablet by Lenovo if you can afford it. A tabletpc reduced my binders in my bag down to one and has reduced my backpack load by half. Tabletpc's are not noisy and do not disrupt other students when you are taking notes, and if you are allowed to use notes on tests most teachers will allow you to use your tabletpc as long as you are not using the internet. I highly recommend getting a tabletpc for college as it gives you the most potential of use in school. Onenote is a great program for notes and allows you to search your notes even though they are still in your handwriting. I also recommend getting Vista Ultimate as it will give you the most options for your machine. One other program that has a lot of potential is InkSiene by Microsoft research which allows you to do many cool things on your tabletpc. Best of luck finding the machine for college.
 
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