What sort of Tablet should I get?

January 17, 2012 10:33 AM

I travel a fair amount, and present a lot of PowerPoints. For most everything I do, an Android tablet or iPad would easily fit the bill. Presenting and editing PowerPoints and using IE7/8 to do product demos (must be IE :( ) are the times I need a PC. However, I am constantly in cramped coach class seats, and need a tablet form factor due to not being able to flip the lid up on my laptop. What sort of clever tech might enable me to have a tablet form factor, and yet decent power full Windows capability, and a decent (6 hrs plus of continuous use) battery life?
posted by blue_wardrobe to computers & internet (11 answers total)

I can't vouch for this website or this particular computer, but something like this would probably work.
posted by Grither at 10:38 AM on January 17

(I just googled "rotating laptop screen" and clicked a couple links til I found one, but I'm sure there's a better search term out there!)
posted by Grither at 10:39 AM on January 17

My wife loves her Dell Inspiron Duo.
posted by MrMoonPie at 10:41 AM on January 17

If size is the only limitation, you should look into netbooks. The Asus Eee line, if you can get past the corny name, seems to exactly fit the bill. Some are Android tablets with keyboards, others are 10" Windows PCs, but they're all tiny.
posted by valkyryn at 10:42 AM on January 17

This Wikipedia comparison chart may be helpful.

The Lenovo x220 convertible tablets are pricey and not as lightweight as a "real" tablet, but they're pretty cool and weigh just under 4 pounds (or about 3 iPad 2s). And they're a real laptop, and thus can run windows, IE, Office, etc.

For PowerPoint (but not IE) there are rumors that MS Office is coming to the iPad.
posted by Wretch729 at 12:02 PM on January 17

My wife has an Inspiron duo its a decent netbook and a crappy tablet. She was in a situation similar to yours she needed to use IE for work but also want the tablet form factor and functionality. Windows 7 was in no way built to be used as a tablet that you use your fingers to interact with. The software that's bolted onto it to make it work like a tablet is clunky. The screen looks nice and it is a really unique design, so much better than the other windows convertibles I've seen but the touch response is very laggy. I've used it a bit and there were so many times I had to flip the screen back around and use the track pad to get something done that I just couldn't get done with my finger. Battery life is OK compared to a netbook but awful compared to the iPad. Its probably one the best netbooks I've used and if you have to have Windows its probably the best windows based tablet but using Windows in a tablet form factor, no matter what the hardware, will never be a great experience.

You may be able to get away with using an iPAd and Remote Desktop. Depending on how critical the IE part of your presentation is and if you know you will always have an internet connection you could always connect to a computer back at the office via RDP and use IE that way.
posted by jmsta at 1:24 PM on January 17

@Grither: I have one of these exact things - it's way too heavy and still too big. I would make do, but the screen and battery are dying (I have to use an external monitor and always have it hooked up to a power supply, which kind of defeats the purpose).

I looked at the EP121 from Asus, and it has micro-HDMI out - supplementary question: how might I convert that to the typical RGB connector used by most corporate projectors?
posted by blue_wardrobe at 2:30 PM on January 17

Honestly, it's impossible to get something that is satisfactory as both a laptop and a tablet. So... looking at your request, I'm going to assume that what you want most of all is a tablet form factor, and the only thing you want from the laptop experience is the ability to use PowerPoint and Internet Explorer.

In which case... there are a couple of business-oriented tablets which run modified forms of Windows 7, and are less pushme-pullyou than the Inspiron Duo. At 8.9" there's the HP Slate 2 tablet, which runs Windows 7 professional, and which also has a USB port, which could probably be adapted to an RGB-out with a generic external adaptor like this. Somewhat larger is the 10.1 Acer Iconia Tab W500 - which has an optional keyboard dock, if you want the netbook effect, and again a USB port, which is probably your best bet for connecting to a projector without a display port.

On preview: oh, yeah - the gigantic i5 Eee Pads. Not sure how their batteries last, but Intel architecture is always going to be a little power-hungry, so unless you're prepared to wait for Windows 8... you should be able to get a straight mini-HDMI to VGA adaptor - might want to test it in the shop, if you can, but in theory it should work...
posted by running order squabble fest at 2:59 PM on January 17

I have the EP121, and while I love it, its relatively short battery life might be a deal-breaker for you; I typically get around 3 hours per charge.

My guess is that we'll see more Windows tablets as Windows 8 moves forward, but right now there just isn't muc in the tablet realm that runs Windows 7.
posted by Kat Allison at 2:59 PM on January 17

I would recommend taking a long, hard look at the Asus Transformer, which apparently can run Windows through some remote desktop wizardry.

I would say you're going to have to look into a lot of details there (they definitely implied it was available only for Windows 7 and not XP, for example) and it looks like Asus is HEAVILY rumored to be coming out with a Transformer that is compatible with Windows 8 if you're able to wait for a bit (theoretically, sometime this year though some of these rumors look a little long in the tooth).

It's an option to explore, at least!
posted by librarylis at 5:19 PM on January 17

I would not count on the coming windows 8 tablets to run anything that you currently recognize as "windows". If they are ARM based (rather than x86) they will probably only run programs specially created for that architecture. IE7/8 will certainly not run, it'll only be 9 (or possibly 10).
posted by The Lamplighter at 10:14 AM on January 21