It's not a toy, it's for business

My wife and I got Tablet PCs for our business. We've been wanting them for a while. We decided to pick up a couple HP Pavilion tx1420us models. These are considered "home entertainment" models, not business models, but they had decent specs for the price.

The screen isn't as big or as fine as I would like. This replaces a Thinkpad T40p, which had a nice large screen and a 1400x1080 resolution. This tablet has a relatively small screen with a lot less real estate at 1200x800. Also, I've found that the pen takes a lot more pressure to use than I would like. It's quite tiring to write with for long periods of time, and it has a tendency to "stutter" when drawing over any distance.

But I definitely like the tablet. I've wanted one for a long time, and I'm glad I have one. They are fun to use, not to mention pretty easy when "point and click" is literally pointing with a pen and physically tapping it. There's something rather satisfying about being able to move things around screen by grabbing it with a pen and pulling it around. It makes it feel a little more "hands-on" than like I'm using a remote control (i.e. the mouse or touchpad).

It comes with Vista, which at the moment I have this sort of love/hate relationship with. I know the UI enhancements are all eye candy, but honestly it makes the computer "feel" next-gen, like we've finally progressed. However, it is very different than older versions of Windows. When I first sat down in front of XP, it didn't take long to find my way around, because it was so similar to Windows 2000, which was similar enough to 98... In Vista, I'm still trying to figure out how to do tasks that were second-nature to me before. So far, though, it hasn't been "too bad". I haven't run into any driver or compatibility problems, and I found the dialog box that pops up every time you launch a program easy to turn off (convenience trumps security, for now). I'm sure a big part of this is I'm running on all-new hardware that came with Vista — I still have no intention of ever trying to upgrade my older machines to this OS, even if they're still running long after XP is dead and buried.