[caggles]

Hi!!

I'm looking at the different laptops available on the market today, and I can't decide whether a tablet or a notebook would be a better idea.

I have a notebook right now, and it'll be just fine for quite a while, so it's not like I'll be doing any buying for a while (probably a year or so) but I'm wondering which I should be looking it.

I'm interested in a tablet convertible notebook because it would be great to be able to take notes and things in class on my laptop, instead of using paper (which is easily lost) and I also love using photoshop to play with drawings, but as of right now, I'm stuck drawing with a mouse :(
However, I also require pretty high performance from my computer in terms of hardware. I like gaming, which is my biggest concern, since I'm not particularly familiar with graphics cards and I'm having a hard time determining if tablet PCs have decent graphics cards. Most of the games that I play aren't particularly hard on graphics, but I do like to play Oblivion (when I have access to a computer that can), so if I could get a machine with capabilities to play that, it would be amazing. I also run a high number of processes at the same time, so decent CPU speed and RAM size would be nice.

I've heard that tablets have lower performance and higher price, so I don't know if it'll be worth it to buy one.

My current laptop has 1.6GHz dual core 64bit AMD CPU, 1GB of RAM and an integrated nvidia graphics card (i'm not sure of the exact type), and about 90GB hard drive space. I got all of that for $999CDN
I'm fine with just about all of those specs, but a nicer graphics card would be ideal and *hopefully* a 2GHz CPU. What kind of price differences am I looking at for a tablet-notebook convertible compared to a traditional laptop, and what do you think will be available a year or two from now?

[link590o]

starting price for most tablet PCs is $1000 and above. under that, it's usually crap, or recertified or open box or something. there's a big difference there. just having the ability to write on the screen, and flip it around and stuff makes it that much more than a laptop of the same caliber.

here's a very cheap tablet.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834147560

it's fairly decent with what it offers.

since you mentioned you weren't very familiar with graphics cards, i'll enlighten you some. there are a couple of types for PCs. PCI, PCI-E 16x, and PCI-E 2.0. those go in order from worst, to best. the model in that tablet i showed you has a model that WOULD have been PCI. so given that, it's not very powerful at all. and sadly, it's the ONLY model that's offered in a tablet.

tablets were never meant to be gaming laptops. you can put OTHER nice hardware in there, meaning nice processor, RAM, and hard drive, but nothing else.

you have to sort of give and take a little. do you want the tablet feature, or would you like to game?

if the answer is yes to the first, get a tablet. yes to the second, laptop. probably not a very uplifting bit of news, but that's the hard truth. no point leading you on. the card that's in there, the geforce GO 6150, had a lot of trouble rendering things like Portal that weren't very rough on graphics. oblivion probably won't run. in order to play games like Oblivion on a laptop, you would need a model from the geforce 7 series and higher.

if i were you, i'd save the money, and get a very nice laptop. then just bring your laptop everywhere you go and type your notes instead of scribbling them. for the money you'd be paying for such a tablet, you could get an excellent gaming laptop.

[Cew27]

i have used one of those hps and i must say they are very good

[caggles]

Originally Posted by link590o

you have to sort of give and take a little. do you want the tablet feature, or would you like to game?

:( I was afraid you might say that. Ah well, I s'pose not much can be done...

But I really do feel that it would be worthwhile to take my notes in class on a tablet, so would it be feasible then to pick up a cheap tablet pc (no convertibility) for notes and things on the go, and then grab a desktop? I know you can get way more in a desktop for much cheaper. If I go that way, the savings on getting a desktop instead of a laptop would have to cover at least half of the cost of the tablet... you think that might work? If I was to do it that way, I'd need next to nothing in terms of hardware; really, the only thing I'd be looking for is a nice wireless card.

And actually, if anyone has used a tablet here, what is the writing surface like? Would it be close at all to using paper?

[link590o]

well unfortunately, the answer to that is as direct and a little unfortunate as the first one was.

there's really no such thing as a "cheap" tablet, because as i mentioned, the starting price for them all was at least $1000 cahones.

there are a few cheaper ones between the 750 and 1000 mark, but those are either open box, or recertified. meaning, it's risky purchasing them because they might not come with a warranty, or necessary equipment such as cables or discs or something. or they'll come with inferior parts. so essentially, you're looking at spending 1000 no matter what. which really sucks.

BUT desktops are fairly easy to make cheaply. you could get a top of the line model for about 800 bucks these days. that includes a nice graphics card such as one of the latest models, i.e. the geforce 8800gt 512mb, or the 9600gt. full specs can include a 160gig 7200rpm hard drive, 2 gigs of gaming RAM, a nice intel core 2 duo such as the E6750 or the E8400, a decent motherboard such as the p-35, a nice case with a few fans, a decent power supply, a 16x dvd drive, thermal paste, and any other bells and whistles you can think of. the desktop idea is very very doable.

MAYBE if you raised close to $2000 (that's US dollars btw) you could buy all the parts for the nice desktop, and still have plenty left to buy that tablet model i showed you.

but 2000 is a very tough mark to aim for and hit. i had to scrimp and save every penny i earned just to raise about 650 to purchase most of my parts. and my build still isn't even finished yet. i still need to get a new monitor and a graphics card. BUT i was working on handouts for the most part.

but at least it's doable, even for me. if you get a job, you could probably raise enough over a summer or so.

[caggles]

Actually, I'm very lucky that way. My university program is very heavily based on co-op experience, so while I don't have summers off to get a summer job (i have three semesters a year instead of two) I do spend half of my 5 year program at different co-op jobs (which, incidentally, pay better than a usual summer job at in retail or fast food :P). So raising $2000 shouldn't be all that bad, really.
I've also been checking out ebay. I've been told that a lot of people will buy a tablet, decide they don't like it, and then try to sell it off on ebay for sometimes even half the price they bought it for new. I'm not sure if I trust ebay, but it's certainly worth a looking into. The less money I can put into this, the better ('cause then I can spend more money on my tuition).
Now, you did say that the tablets available for under $1000 are crappy, but that's fine by me, I'm not exactly looking for a supercomputer here. All it's got to be able to do is run XP and OneNote (or whatever the tablet note-taking program is...). Even if they aren't nice machines, if you know of any 'crappy' tablets, I'd still like to check them out!!