Tablets have been around for a while, but with a new breed emerging that rival ordinary laptops, these convertibles could represent the new standard. We examine five of the best.
Contents
Introduction
Fujitsu Stylistic T4020C
Lenovo ThinkPad X41
Acer TravelMate C310
Toshiba Portege M200
Hewlett-Packard TC4200
How we tested
Specifications
Editor's choice
About RMIT
With wireless technology beginning to infiltrate business, the possibilities that these devices offer are only beginning to be realised and tested. Manufacturing floors, sales reps, even the 2006 Olympics or anyone giving presentations have seen an advantage in being able to carry around a laptop and interact with it easily. With a wireless network, imaginative new business possibilities are emerging, and it will certain be interesting to watch where this technology gets applied in the next year or so.
Previously cost has been a limiting factor for many businesses who couldn't justify the excessive price when a regular laptop would be almost as good, but as prices have slowly begun to drop away, and functionality, weight, comfort, and battery life have improved, these funny looking twisty-flip-top laptops have developed a genuine market.
Most of the major laptop manufacturers now offer a model or two, and since our last review they have been refining the specs and designs. This month we looked at five including models from Fujitsu, Lenovo, HP, Acer and Toshiba.
When it comes to high resolution (ie DPI, not total pixel dimensions) LCDs, I fail to see the problem. Just turn up the font size, or inform Windows that it has a high resolution display in the display control panel.
This should be done automatically by any OEM with half a brain. I would think that enabling "large fonts" is simply not that big a deal.
With that setting, you can get lots of screen "working area", plus readable, smooth, clean looking text.
There are a few broken apps out there that can't cope with non-default font sizes (this appalls me) but they're not that common, really. The worst problem with Windows its self seems to be somewhat ugly quicklaunch icons and the XP Pro login screen background image being too small for the dialog. An OEM could trivially fix both of these.
I'm one of the frustrated community of users who /want/ high res LCDs, because I like smooth readable text and the option to fit lots on the screen when I need to. It's frustrating to see reviews like this panning a laptop for having a good display.
I'd be happy to hear from you if you have any particular views on this - craig@postnewspapers.com.au .