A bit of back­ground: I’m a big fan of the Tablet PC. I had a beau­ti­ful Acer C110 machine way that I got back in about 2003 which I used for a very long time. I loved that lit­tle thing – it’s still mostly work­ing although the screen isn’t pres­sure sen­si­tive in slate mode any­more and it’s painfully painfully slow.

I then got a lease on an “upgrade” – a Fujitsu P1610. This was even smaller – it has a 9.8” screen – and so very cute. I thought it was going to be all love and hap­pi­ness again until I twigged that some­thing wasn’t quite right about the screen. Although it was pen sen­si­tive and, once I upgraded to Vista, actu­ally responded to your fin­ger as well, it was not pres­sure sen­si­tive so hand­writ­ing notes etc was really out of the ques­tion. I hadn’t realised what an impor­tant fac­tor that was on my pre­vi­ous Tablet. I started to use the Fujitsu in a dif­fer­ent way – always with the key­board out, but jab­bing at it with the pen or my fin­ger in addi­tion for a kind of hybrid tablet experience.

I got kinda used to that but as soon as I saw some­one using a pres­sure sen­si­tive Tablet PC – I think it was Donna Maurer’s Toshiba – I realised that I really missed being able to scrawl and scrib­ble when I was tak­ing notes or what­ever. Also, the tiny screen was really screw­ing with my abil­ity to read web sites – I was con­stantly hold­ing the stu­pid thing up to my nose. How­ever, with the lease not up on the Fujitsu until Feb­ru­ary 2010 I fig­ured I’d have to just suck it up. I picked up a hell-cheapo 15” Com­paq note­book to use around the house when not at my desk­top as a com­pro­mise for the screen size problem.

But then… on Fri­day Dave sent me a link, as he often does… to the Toshiba R400 prod­uct page – a 12” con­vert­ible Tablet PC. Look­ing at the $4500 AUD price tag, I was just shoot­ing back to him “why are you tor­tur­ing me?” when he said that because it was an end of life model, a dealer in the East­ern States had them on sale for $1500.

OMG.

To cut a long story short, one is wing­ing it’s way to me next week (end of finan­cial year tax bonuses, I love you). There’s a review of them here http://www.ruggedpcreview.com/3_notebooks_toshiba_r400.html and it sounds like it could be another love affair (dou­ble and triple checked and yes it DOES have a Wacom-produced pres­sure sen­si­tive screen). I may post a full review when it arrives and I have fin­ished drool­ing on it.