Tablet PC for the girlfriend

LaCabra

Hi there G&T... or apparently just T, now.

My girlfriend, who has no computer of her own, would like a tablet PC. Our budget is one of those really slim ones. We've been considering this IBM X41, 1.6GHZ Pentium M, with a gig of RAM and a 60GB hard drive because it's pretty damn cheap, but obviously it's also going to be fairly slow. I don't know exactly how slow, though, so is it worth it for around $350 Australian? That's apparently 323 of your American currencies.

She's not a big gamer, though she got into Portal recently having never used mouselook before, which was pretty impressive. What she's more likely to be using it for is working with Office 07 (she is very specific about this as she loves Office 07, having had to use Pages previously), storing and playing music, watching movies, making a lot of use of the whole writing-instead-of-typing thing tablets are apparently good for, playing Peggle, and browsing the intertrons. Maybe a bit of photoshoppery now and then.

Her brother wants to sell her his Macbook Pro for $1800, which she's not too keen on seeing as
-she doesn't really have $1800
-she's very keen on tablets as opposed to regular notebooks
-he's probably screwing her over some way or other

So if we call $1800 our maximum expenditure, preferably far less, what's a decent tablet we can look into?
Preferably any links provided should be to Australian stores, like techbuy or i-tech for instance... We just aren't 100% sure what to look for in a tablet.

Inzigna

I'm using a Fujitsu Lifebook Tablet right now, and I'll say, a tablet with a screen to write on is just not worth the extra cost unless you really like to write instead of type, you really like to turn the screen to show someone something instead of shifting the entire laptop, or you really need to draw (even then, my tablet can't draw for shit due to its lack of comfort and sensitivity, and I recommend just getting an external add-on instead).

Other than novelty's sake, I don't think your girlfriend should get a Tablet PC unless she really needs the function. Otherwise save the cash and get a more powerful laptop.

12gauge

LaCabra wrote: »

Hi there G&T... or apparently just T, now.

My girlfriend, who has no computer of her own, would like a tablet PC. Our budget is one of those really slim ones. We've been considering this IBM X41, 1.6GHZ Pentium M, with a gig of RAM and a 60GB hard drive because it's pretty damn cheap, but obviously it's also going to be fairly slow. I don't know exactly how slow, though, so is it worth it for around $350 Australian? That's apparently 323 of your American currencies.

She's not a big gamer, though she got into Portal recently having never used mouselook before, which was pretty impressive. What she's more likely to be using it for is working with Office 07 (she is very specific about this as she loves Office 07, having had to use Pages previously), storing and playing music, watching movies, making a lot of use of the whole writing-instead-of-typing thing tablets are apparently good for, playing Peggle, and browsing the intertrons. Maybe a bit of photoshoppery now and then.

Her brother wants to sell her his Macbook Pro for $1800, which she's not too keen on seeing as
-she doesn't really have $1800
-she's very keen on tablets as opposed to regular notebooks
-he's probably screwing her over some way or other

So if we call $1800 our maximum expenditure, preferably far less, what's a decent tablet we can look into?
Preferably any links provided should be to Australian stores, like techbuy or i-tech for instance... We just aren't 100% sure what to look for in a tablet.

That price for the X41 is used, right? The cheapest I can find it around here is 1600€. My old laptop had about the same specs and ran office just fine.

ben0207

Man, take that X41 even if you just sell it to me, that is a fantastic deal.