My First Tablet PC!

I bought my first tablet PC a little over a week ago to start out law school with. My Sony is acting up again (it takes 8 minutes to start-up and nearly as long to come out of hibernation) and I have had too much trouble with their quality and tech support to risk not having computer access as I enter a new academic program. I will contact Sony to try to troubleshoot it and get it repaired (it has a defective monitor among other things) and will either keep it as a backup or try to sell it. (The Sony is a great size for traveling light.)

For my new system, I decided on the new Lenovo X61 ThinkPad Tablet and bought it at MicroCenter in Fairfax after having some issues trying to order one directly from Lenovo. Everything I read about it had been superb and I echo most of the positive reviews I've read. While I was mulling over the notion of buying it, MicroCenter dropped the price by $400, so I decided to go for it. Here are a few impressions of it so far:

• Being able to interact with the computer with a stylus adds a whole new dimension to computing. It will be hard to go back to a non-tablet/touch laptop in the future. I especially love how OneNote works with the stylus.
  
• Being able to swing the screen around and rotating it into a portrait orientation in tablet mode makes for a great PDF and Word document reader. It is also great for surfing the internet.
  
• I am absolutely amazed at how well this thing can read and translate my handwriting into meaningful text. That's something most people can't even do!
  
• The computer is slightly slower than I had originally anticipated after reading many reviews. Regardless, it is much faster than my Sony had been.
  
• I am thankful I didn't need to go through an on-line ordering and waiting process with Lenovo. It was great to be able to walk out of the store with this in my hands.
  
• It was 100% the right choice to buy a machine with extra-high resolution (1400x1050 pixels). It has 87% more pixels than the standard version (1024x768)! This is higher resolution than many large widescreen monitors. While text may sometimes appear small, almost any program I use allows me to adjust the text size and the extra amount of information I can display on the screen at once is invaluable. The extra resolution also makes reading documents all the more paper-like in the detail it can show.
  
• The keyboard on this is simply superb! I have used ThinkPads in the past and they have the best keyboards in the industry by far. My typing speed is much higher on this machine than on any other non-ThinkPad I've used.
  
• It did crash with a "blue screen of death" yesterday while I was typing an e-mail. I hope that's a one-time event.
  
• I haven't played around with the power settings much, but it seems to get significantly less battery life than my Sony did. I need to play with the power settings more to see how much I can stretch the battery life.
  
• I notice I have a tendency to use this mostly as a laptop and secondarily as a tablet. Whenever I remember I can pop the stylus out and write on the screen, it blows me away.
  
• I bought Microsoft Office Ultimate (student version) but haven't purchased any additional software for it yet. I am also thinking about getting a Mind Map software package at the campus bookstore. Does anybody have any recommendations for any other software packages that would take advantage of the tablet functionality?
  
• I was disappointed to find out that one of my profs won't allow the use of laptops in the classroom. Unfortunately, his rationale actually makes sense.
  
• I have mixed feelings about Vista so far. I speculate it caused the aforementioned crash and it does give me far too many warnings to 'cancel or allow'. On the other hand, the tablet features of Vista are great (particularly the handwriting recognition) and I really like some of the visual aesthetics of it such as the glass and how it toggles through windows. (Although I still yearn for something like Expose on the Macs.)
  
• The ThinkPad is significantly larger and heavier than my Sony and doesn't have a built-in DVD drive (it did come with one in an external expansion base) but the gains is performance, screen resolution, and tablet functionality make the trade-offs more than worth it to me.
  
• The build quality on this thing is superb. It is built like a tank. My Sony TX750 had a wafer-thin screen that I was always concerned was going to break. I have no such fear with this machine.
  
• It's so refreshing to have a computer that actually works!
  

All in all I am extremely pleased with this laptop so far. Other than the "blue screen of death" yesterday, it has been a great performer and hasn't let me down on anything. I used this for taking notes during law school orientation this past weekend and it worked like a charm. This is the happiest I've been with a computer in many, many years. I can't wait to explore more of its features and functionality. I expect to have more posts on it soon.

P.S. - Laptop Magazine lists five reasons students should consider getting a tablet PC.