Tablets forum: Tablet advice? Uni, drawing.

Hi thanks for replying.

None of the others on the course have a tablet, only one other who has an ipad. the majority of them have macs, but I want it for drawing and sketching aswell as note taking, as they use theres do animation work whereas I hae my laptop to do thatm I just want to carry around with me.

the ipad was my first choice, though very expensive, but I just hear negative reviews from alot of people who say I can get a cheaper alternative that has better pen pressure sensitivity @___@

honestly everytime I see someone asking about tablets Bob seems to steer them in the wrong direction.

Asus is a good option (tho I am pretty sure the major makers all will do what you want). One thing to note is that the majority of the tablets released last year have the same guts (processor, ram, storage). Depending on your price range I would get the Asus Transformer Pad 300. It looks to be a very good tablet, I myself owned the asus transformer tf101 and loved it.

You should get the Asus because you can get the optional keyboard dock for $150 more and turn it into a netbook with extra features.

Here is a link to a guy drawing on the first generation Asus (TF101).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BcIupysnpzM

The one I am saying you should get will be released on 4/22. So it will be better than the TF101. If you have any questions about tablets feel free to email me directly (I dont check cnet often) at firstcorinthians1013@yahoo.com. I have been doing alot of research so I should be able to help you.

-Dan

Keep in mind that tablets are generally modelled on the iPad. iPads are meant to be for "content consumers" not "content providers". In fact Steve Jobs has said "Sylus? Why would anyone want that?". I remember something buried in history most people don't. Steve Jobs said about the original Mac "Hard drive? Why would any one want that?". Death may have saved history from repeating itself.

The thing is you don't really detail how important your uses are. For example is drawing a big desire? When you say note taking are you talking handwriten notes or typed? Do the notes include sketches.

You mention in one reply that pen pressure sensitivity is important. That suggests to me that you are looking for something with a "digitizer/digitizer pen". Similar to graphic tables made by wacom/genius/vistablets etc..

Frankly what I see of your descriptions, almost any tablet that can take an external keyboard ( the other content consomer thing, that stupid screen typewriter-- makes the people at geekhack shudder ) will satisfy most of you requirements -- except for a pen. So that's what I will deal with.

At the moment there are three are three and a half tablets which support "digitzer pens".

* Samsung Slate
* Asus Slate
* Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet.

The half a tablet is the Galaxy Note 10.1 which is supposed to come with a digitizer, but doesn't exist. In fact Galaxy just announced they will delay the release, presumably to beef them up a bit.

The Slates are expensive > $1000-$1500, mainly because they are Windows laptops ( laptop CPU, 4G ram, 128M SSDD, full Windows OS meant for a laptop ) crammed into a talet form factor.

That leaves the Lenovo Tablet. I hear there are quality problems with the tablet, ask for more info in a Lenovo forum. Lenovo (used to be IBM) is new to tablets and may just be ironing out the bugs.

So it looks a little glum, but ...
ICS aka Android 4 is going to come with built in support for digitizers so there will probably be a few pens that eventually come with one. So if you are willing to wait a couple of months the picture maybe brighter.

Which reminds me, you cannot just buy a digitizing pen and expect it to work with your tablet. The tablet has to be designed to be used with one ( just like you need to write on the surface of a graphics tablet for it to work ).

I am looking at the ASUS TF300T model and the one thing I like to know is if this unit will and/or how it would work on a 4G Network. Any thoughts on this? Thanks