Galaxy Tab vs. Windows-based Tablet PCs

**lovelaptops** · 10-04-2010, 06:45 AM

Originally Posted by NamelessPlayer

And yet for the price premium in addition to all the other niceties, they can't be bothered to add a proper dedicated GPU. The T900 would certainly have space for one, and I'm also factoring the required cooling here, not just the GPU die itself.

I just wish they'd try to one-up the tm2 in that one regard so I wouldn't have to worry about making compromises like that, because I'd probably be flat-out sold on the T900 otherwise.

You are so right! If just one of the "business" tablet PC makers added a discrete GPU option, it would instantly become the market leader, likely forcing most of the others to follow suit. There is no conflict between a touchscreen and a discrete GPU and it is nuts that you can buy a $1,200 ultraportable notebook PC with a GPU, but you can't get one on ANY of the top line, $2,000 "business" tablets. The TM2, sadly, has a substandard GPU and other significant weaknesses as a product, though it is a great effort for an entry level convertible tablet. Why HP, Lenovo, Toshiba and Fujitsu don't have a discrete GPU option is probably best explained by the fact that the entire "convertible tablet PC" market is rather small and the engineering and manufacturing cost of offering a dedicated GPU option isn't justified by current sales, and the majority of the market interest in tablets for games or video-watching seems to be focused on $600 iPad wannabees.

**fgruber** · 10-19-2010, 09:03 AM

Actually there is one Android tablet that does a reasonable good job for note taking (although is not as good as a tablet PC).: Entourage edge
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It has 2 screens. One is a LCD with resitive touchscreen and the other is a eink screen with a Wacom digitizer.

It has a basic note taking program but hopefully it will get better in the near future.

That is what I'm using for now as a portable note taking device.

I'm hoping, however, that someday soon there will be a portable (<3lb) windows 7 tablet with dual digitizer and good battery life (>8h) with no grainy screen!. Wouldn't it be nice if it had a pixel qi screen? One can only dream...

Originally Posted by Frank

you said note taking, so let's take a closer look at this:
first, check the Tablet PC FAQ to understand the difference between capacitive, resistive and active digtizers.
Then take a look at all available media tablets, like the iPad, Galaxy Tab or all the other Android, MeeGo and Windows powered media tablets. They all use capacitive digitizers, which are USELESS to take notes with.

So, what you need is at least a resistive touchscreen, even better an active digitizer with a special pen, used by WACOM and N-Trig.
What devices use such hardware? Only real and more expensive tablets PCs, running Windows 7 on a x86 architecture (Intel/AMD processor, no ARM)

That's regarding hardware. Now take a look at note taking software:
What note taking/ink supporting software is available for Android? None!
What note taking/ink supporting software is available for MeeGo? None!
What note taking/ink supporting software is available for iOS? None! (ok, some joke apps are available)
What note taking/ink supporting software is available for Windows? Windows Journal, Microsoft OneNote, Microsoft InkSeine, Evernote, Bluebeam PDF Revu, Grahl PDF Annotator, Mindmanager Mindjet, ...

I hope you see the difference.

Future:
This is the current state. I hope this will change. Especially if we take a look at some interesting Android device, the Notion Ink Adam, which may support pen input, then it's very likely that they'll also add some note taking app with it. How good? Don't know.
Also if we take a look at MeeGo, then it's very likely that some great note taking apps will be available for it in the far future.

Yep, we're talking about the far future. Forget Apple and pen, at least they officially don't like pen input.
Android will get tablet friendly next year with Version 3.0, but this doesn't mean that pen software and hardware is available, too. Maybe by the end of 2011.
MeeGo, the same.

So to take notes, you must buy a Tablet PC, running Windows 7.