Thinkpad Tablet?

[opilion]

I am considering buying a Thinkpad Tablet. It stands out among the crowd of fairly generic, similar featured Android tablets on account of its NTrig digitizer and active stylus. This makes it a useful tool for note taking with handwriting recognition, sketching, etc... Reviews are somewhat mixed, but they all seem to agree that it is a solid piece of hardware.

At around $330 (+ $30 for the stylus), I think it is well priced for what it is. My only concern is that it is a dual core Tegra 2 based tablet. The newer tablets are Tegra 3, which seems to be a substantial improvement, but I question whether that difference really shows up more in general apps or just gaming. Lenovo has committed to an ICS/4.0 update this month. At the pace this market is moving, will purchasing older technology bite me in the long run?

On the other hand, Samsung will release the Galaxy Note 10.1 with similar stylus capabilities in the next few months which is rumored to be quad-core, but I can't imagine that it will be cheap either.

What do you think? Should I go for it or just resist the whole tablet trend and spend the same money on an ultra-portable notebook?

[netusername]

Windows 8 is just coming out and from what I've been reading, it seems like it will not run on Tegra 2 processors and might run on Tegra 3.

[aximrocks]

I'd get the lenovo yoga tablet/ultrabook if you can wait till october

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1QkscGrO4M

[opilion]

Windows 8 is just coming out and from what I've been reading, it seems like it will not run on Tegra 2 processors and might run on Tegra 3.

I think I read that Windows 8 for ARM will not be installable - only available pre-installed on new hardware. I guess someone could build a custom firmware, but you can bet that Microsoft will have product activation features to prevent unofficial ports.

I'd get the lenovo yoga tablet/ultrabook if you can wait till october

Agreed - it looks sweet. It will be interesting to see how they price it.

[gnuman]

For that kind of money why not get the Asus Transformer TF300 series then? You can also have the dock so you can type as well.

[opilion]

TF300 is still $400 or $520 with the dock. I guess what attracted me to the Thinkpad was the active stylus/digitizer. I guess in many cases, a keyboard might be more efficient than hit & miss handwriting recognition - I'll think about it.

[icemasta]

I'd get the lenovo yoga tablet/ultrabook if you can wait till october

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1QkscGrO4M

Really not liking the keyboard being accessible when the ultrabook is converted. I'd rather a smooth back since I'd rest my hand behind the tablet. It would be better if it had a slide keyboard similar to EEE Pad Slider.

[cwb27]

Really not liking the keyboard being accessible when the ultrabook is converted. I'd rather a smooth back since I'd rest my hand behind the tablet. It would be better if it had a slide keyboard similar to EEE Pad Slider.

I'm wondering if the keyboard becomes deactivated when it's in the converted position.