My Latest Adventure

Until the iPad came out I didn't know anything about tablets at all and like many others I thought the iPad was the first. The fact is tablet computers have been around for quite a while.

I was tempted by the iPad but being a PC user rather than Mac I decided to wait until there was a nice tablet that interfaced with Windows more seamlessly. I read all about tablets and paid close attention to what artists had to say and the one thing that continued to come through was that there was no pressure sensitivity. It seemed to me that without pressure sensitivity a tablet wasn't really going to be much more than a toy for me. I already have a Droid X phone with a multi touch screen, I didn't want a tablet that was basically a little bit bigger version of that without the phone capability.

A few months back at the big tech show in Las Vegas they debuted the ASUS ep121, a tablet with a Wacom digitizer screen with pressure sensitivity, this looked like it might be what I was looking for.

I watched and waited and it was finally released and it did look very interesting if a bit pricey, and just try to find one, they were grabbed up the minute anyone got stock. While waiting I began to think that was a lot of money for something with only a 32 or 64 gig HD, but it appeared that those were my choices.

One day someone posted a link on the Concept Arts forum to a place called TabletPCReview.com  and I went to have a look around. I found a forum there with a ton of information and discovered that what I had been looking for had been around for years. I discovered that there were tablets with no keyboard, tablets with a detachable keyboard and convertible ultra portable laptops. The convertibles have a rotating screen that you can rotate and fold down over the keyboard to use as a tablet when you don't want to use the keyboard.

These convertibles are really a full laptop computer with powerful processors and real hard drives that you can install Photoshop CS5, Painter 11, and ArtRage on and actually use. You do have to be careful though as the digitizers in these are not all created equally. There are 2 types of digitizer screens, Wacom and N-trig and while the N-trig digitizers are getting better they aren't quite ready for prime time for an artist. They are good for note taking and maybe quick sketches but for an artist you really want one with a Wacom digitizer.
The tablets with a Wacom digitizer come in two different types as well, active and dual.
The active only works with the pen and the dual has both active and a capacitive screen with multi-touch.

These can be quite pricey as well, but you can find some good deals on ebay.
I decided on a Fujitsu T730 with a dual digitizer screen, it has an intel i-5 processor and a 320 gb HD so it will have space for my art programs and the power to run them.

Fujitsu has been making laptops for professionals for many years and is considered one of the best quality with a very low failure rating and best of all their outlet store is an ebay store. You can get brand new in box discontinued models and manufacturer refurbished models for half or less than half the original price. Many of the people on the TabletPCReview forums are using refurbished models that they purchased there and are very happy.

HP and Lenovo also make convertibles with Wacom digitizers and many really like them.
They do have a higher failure rate, while in the acceptable range.
Having just gone through a year of nightmare computer crashes with a high end HP I'm still a bit gun shy though so I decided to go with the one with the lowest failure rating.

My T730 shipped this morning so I will let you know more about it when I get it, but in the meantime you can go to "forum.tabletpcreview.com"  and see what people have been doing on their tablets if you are interested. The forum is The Tablet PC Life/ Post Your Tablet PC Art.

Claudia