Tablet PCs are enjoying a great renaissance lately, thanks to Windows 8's new touch-friendly features and the general trend towards slimmer, lighter laptops. If you're looking for a penabled new laptop hybrid (one that has an active digitizer for writing and drawing on the screen with a stylus), this chart from Tablet PC Review forum member JoeS is incredibly useful.
Using your laptop with a stylus has several advantages: you get precise navigation control, can scribble notes quickly in apps like OneNote, and indulge your inner artist. I've always been a huge fan of Windows tablet PCs, which is why I've been holding out on a penabled laptop.
There are more than a dozen such laptops, now, in varying form factors--slates like Microsoft's Surface Pro, sliders like the Sony VAIO Duo 11, and hybrids (slates with keyboard docks) like the Samsung Ativ Smart PC Pro 700T. These vary in size, storage capacity, and processor type (Intel Core processors are more powerful but have less battery life, while the Atom processor have awesome battery life but are not as powerful).
You can make sense of what's available now and upcoming with JoeS's shared spreadsheet. It details the major specs of each laptop/tablet that is optimized for stylus use, and highlights the features that stand out (for better or worse). There's also a linked list that includes non-penabled tablets.
I used it to decide on buying the Samsung Ativ Smart PC Pro 700T, which I hope to review as soon as it gets here.
Here's the link on Skydrive and my overview of the new tablets, hybrids, and convertible laptops running Windows 8. Which one are you eyeing or using, if any?
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Comments
really waiting for a penabled tablet/convertible that has 1080 resolution, 8gigs ram and a dedicated graphics card. as of yet, this unicorn doesn’t exist
Wow you almost answered the question I’ve been searching forever for. I am looking for a list of all newer active digitizer windows 8 tablets. You posted a picture of them, but it’s completely unreadable due to the low res you posted as. Please post a link to where you found it or at least a higher res image.
Thank you very much, Melinda! This is exactly what I was looking for.
@Tony: She does have a link: See the last paragraph where she says: Here’s the link on Skydrive.
I pay a visit day-to-day some websites and blogs to read content,
except this web site gives feature based posts.
Are you going to update the chart?