tiglionabbit
11-26-2011, 06:24 PM
Yesterday I went to the Microsoft Store and tried out a few tablet PCs. The Samsung Series 7 seemed pretty promising, though I was disappointed that it had no programmable physical buttons on it like my old tablet. Also it's ridiculously wide-screen. I like the form factor though, since it's thin like an ipad and not chunky like the Acer next to it. Also it's quite fast and responsive to my brush strokes. They only carried two models at the store though. There must be better things out there!
Here's what I want:
- A thin slate. Pretty much an ipad with a wacom digitizer in it.
- Standard aspect screen, or at least more square than the Samsung Series 7. I need more space to draw.
- Decently fast. Comparable specs to the smallest, cheapest macbook air would be ok. Will mostly be used for Flash and Autodesk Sketchbook.
- Programmable buttons. I mean, I have to disable the touch feature if I want to draw without my hand confusing the thing, but if I do that then I have to hit things like undo, redo, forward/backward a frame of animation with the pen every time I want to use them. Maybe I'm spoiled, but my old tablet (that fell apart) had some programmable buttons on it. Alternatively, some way to disable touch for most of the screen but still allow touchable buttons on the side somewhere.
- Decent battery life. Something comparable to a macbook would be nice.
- Doesn't fall apart. No convertible hinge, no little plastic audio jacks that are easy to shatter, no shitty power port that gets all wonky and wont charge anymore after some use. I'm kind of rough on my machines and I've never had a non-apple laptop last me more than 8 months without breaking. I do have one of those tough motion computing things though, but it's just so heavy and slow I never carry it around with me.
Here's what I want:
- A thin slate. Pretty much an ipad with a wacom digitizer in it.
- Standard aspect screen, or at least more square than the Samsung Series 7. I need more space to draw.
- Decently fast. Comparable specs to the smallest, cheapest macbook air would be ok. Will mostly be used for Flash and Autodesk Sketchbook.
- Programmable buttons. I mean, I have to disable the touch feature if I want to draw without my hand confusing the thing, but if I do that then I have to hit things like undo, redo, forward/backward a frame of animation with the pen every time I want to use them. Maybe I'm spoiled, but my old tablet (that fell apart) had some programmable buttons on it. Alternatively, some way to disable touch for most of the screen but still allow touchable buttons on the side somewhere.
- Decent battery life. Something comparable to a macbook would be nice.
- Doesn't fall apart. No convertible hinge, no little plastic audio jacks that are easy to shatter, no shitty power port that gets all wonky and wont charge anymore after some use. I'm kind of rough on my machines and I've never had a non-apple laptop last me more than 8 months without breaking. I do have one of those tough motion computing things though, but it's just so heavy and slow I never carry it around with me.