New tablet pc for college?

ingeborgdot

Golden Member
Jan 12, 2005
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My friend's kid is going off to college this fall and they tell him he needs a tablet pc. I am not in the know about the tablet pc. Can anyone make some recommendations. He has between 2-4k to spend on it and software. Thanks.
 

ther00kie16

Golden Member
Mar 28, 2008
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666th post, hmm...
Get the latest Lenovo. Dell, Toshiba and HP also have good ones but many people will recommend the Lenovo, especially for school/work.
 

Rottie

Diamond Member
Feb 10, 2002
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All I know HP/Compaq have Tablet but I am not sure about Dell and Toshibia.
 

kedlav

Senior member
Aug 2, 2006
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I have a tx2000z. Fairly cheap, works great. Just stay away from processor upgrades, as they overheat the thing regularly.
 

RESmonkey

Diamond Member
May 6, 2007
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Lenovo is coming out with a new X200 tablet series soon (faster than current). I'm waiting on that before I go off to college.
 
Aug 23, 2000
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Who says he needs a tablet. Tablets are horrible. DO NOT recommend an HP tablet. We have a few here and it literally takes a month to get HP to come out and fix something. We spend 10's of millions on hardware every year, and HP was trying to swoon us into giving up Dell for their products, but after the complete lack of customer service and support, we are cutting our losses on HP computer equipment and only keeping the printers. For some reason, we don't get the shaft when dealing with printers under warranty.
 

MrToilet

Senior member
Feb 28, 2005
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I use a Lenovo X60 tablet for medical school, and it's fantastic. I use it every day for school, note-taking, etc, etc. It's especially nice because you can take notes directly on the screen, which is great.

Any of the Lenovo X60 or X61 tablets are great - build quality is good, they're built like tanks. The keyboard is the best I've used on a laptop (including MacBooks). They're light, and with the extended battery I get 5-7 hours of use on brightest screen settings and wi-fi running.
 

Adn4n

Golden Member
Aug 6, 2004
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I had a tablet that I used over the course of 3 semesters and I just had to get rid of it. It's great for easy classes like Business where you take general notes, but my engineering classes left much to be desired. If he's going into anything Physics/math related, then I suggest Pen & Paper and a regular laptop with a powerful CPU (Thinkpad =)).
 

RESmonkey

Diamond Member
May 6, 2007
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Originally posted by: Adn4n
I had a tablet that I used over the course of 3 semesters and I just had to get rid of it. It's great for easy classes like Business where you take general notes, but my engineering classes left much to be desired. If he's going into anything Physics/math related, then I suggest Pen & Paper and a regular laptop with a powerful CPU (Thinkpad =)).

I'm going into Engineering Physics. What's the reason behind a powerful CPU? (shouldn't the CPU-intensive stuff be done on clusters or something?)

I'm leaning towards HP tx2500z tablet pc now (AMD PUMA based Turion x2 Ultra 2.4ghz, 4GB DDR@800mhz, Radeon HD 3200). Don't know if 12.1" is for me, though.
 

Wuzup101

Platinum Member
Feb 20, 2002
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Originally posted by: RESmonkey
Originally posted by: Adn4n
I had a tablet that I used over the course of 3 semesters and I just had to get rid of it. It's great for easy classes like Business where you take general notes, but my engineering classes left much to be desired. If he's going into anything Physics/math related, then I suggest Pen & Paper and a regular laptop with a powerful CPU (Thinkpad =)).

I'm going into Engineering Physics. What's the reason behind a powerful CPU? (shouldn't the CPU-intensive stuff be done on clusters or something?)

I'm leaning towards HP tx2500z tablet pc now (AMD PUMA based Turion x2 Ultra 2.4ghz, 4GB DDR@800mhz, Radeon HD 3200). Don't know if 12.1" is for me, though.

I'm not sure about that statement either. I just spent 5 years in undergrad and came out with a dual major in both an engineering and a science discipline. There was absolutely nothing that you couldn't have used a tablet for... anything computer intensive was done on the school's gear (and it's not like you need to do that a lot).

I certainly wouldn't be taking notes in an engineering/science class (most of them anyway) with a normal notebook. That has nothing to do with the processing power... and everything to do with how hard it would be to draw figures and enter equations.
 

Traveler

Senior member
May 30, 2000
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Originally posted by: RESmonkey
How many engineers actually bring their laptops with them to class?

I wouldn't.
Laptops are useful for homeworks and projects, which are not done in class time.
If you see someone brings a laptop to class and use, most likely he/she is doing away from an uninterested lecture.

Nevertheless, I would like to have some fun drawing on a tablet, though I have never had one.