TDavid has recommended that people in the market for a Tablet PC today either hold off or buy an older model for now. He writes:
“Sacrilege, I know, for a guy like me that buys most things on the cutting edge. However, consider what you can do with a buffed older model vs. buying a model that will probably be outdated in a year when Vista comes out?”
He raised a number of points and I’ll address several here. A number of bloggers have chimed in on the subject – such as Warner, Marc and Lora – and their posts are worth a read as well.
I have to say I disagree that you should hold off at all. In my opinion if you are due for a replacement you should just find a new tablet that suits your personal working style and buy it. Regardless of when you do this the tablet you buy will be out of date very, very quickly. There is always going to be something – a new OS, a better technology or a new feature – that will come out just after you buy a new tablet. Deal with it. Though frustrating when you have just upgraded I for one love the rampant rate of innovation in the mobile computing world.
When it comes to Vista let me say this. If you buy a new tablet now it will run Vista provided you put enough RAM in it. I am Running the Vista beta on a Motion M1400. Apart from some well documented bugs in the TIP that make it hard to actually use as a tablet it is fine. When docked – for instance – the performance of Office 2003 is similar to what I experienced of Windows XP 2003. What may not run on most tablets you buy today (or most laptops for that matter) is the new Aero Glass visual effects. Let me be clear on glass – pun intended – Aero Glass is eye candy. It looks great but it adds no real functionality. The limitation is that Aero Glass requires quite a bit of grunt in the graphics processor and this generates a prohibitive amount of heat for most mobile devices.
Some of other TDavid’s comments don’t strike a chord with me. For example weight – are most tablets overweight? Device selection is and will always be a series of tradeoffs. There are some heavy tablets and some light tablets – find the one with the most acceptable tradeoffs and go for that. The Motion LS800 is only 1kg (2.2 lbs) but the tradeoffs include screen size, resolution, and no PCMCIA slot. The Acer C200, Motion LE1600 and the Sahara tablets seem to be nice portable devices to name just a few (I left off the TC1100 as it is discontinued.)
Tablets do still carry a premium but waiting for the price to come down is like waiting for the latest technology. You will be disappointed because pretty much any time you buy you will find that a better machine will be cheaper in 12 months. That’s just life in the computer world. The question you should be asking is “Does the flexibility offered by the Tablet functionally add sufficient value to justify the cost.” For many people it does – for other is does not.
I would also add – don’t feel you need to upgrade just because Vista is coming. If you are not due for an update consider jamming more RAM and a faster drive into your existing tablet. I think you will find that it handles Vista just fine.