Let’s face it, Apple doesn’t care about artists anymore. If they did, they would have released a Tablet PC many years ago. The closest thing you can get to a Tablet PC in the Apple world is Axiotron’s Modbook, a $1849, made to order portable Cintiq. Just for reference, the EP121, Asus latest slate Tablet PC sells for $1,100 with an i5 processor and 32Gb SSD hard drive.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfB8_fL9mIc[/youtube]

I am a Tablet PC fanboy and I have owned 4 or 5 HP and Toshiba Tablets in the last 6 years but with my recent travels I had to cut down on the amount of electronic I carry with me. Currently I have in my bags a two years old mid range HP laptop (DV7) which I use as a workstation, and a Samsung N110 Netbook for my web browsing pdf reading and light computing.

With nearly 10 hours of battery, the netbook is great for train/plane trips but I am really missing digital sketching and a proper ebook reader like the Kindle would be awesome so what is the solution? Well Asus came up with a new device called the EEE Note or EA800.

So what is the deal with the EEE Note. The EEE Note is $200 only, can be recharged through a mini USB cable (no extra charger needed) works as an eBook reader and hides a Wacom board which makes it a great digital sketching software. It can sync with your PC and can also be used as a Wacom Tablet when connected to a Windows 7 computer.

Check out that really interesting post on TabletPC review
Asus EEE Note review by an artist. She also posted a video showing how to draw with the EEE Note.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9pmk9pTYrw[/youtube]

The device doesn’t seem to be available outside Asia for the moment but if enough people show interest, they might change this.

I also wanted to talk about eBook readers today. My friend Richie just bought the $130 wifi version of Amazon’s kindle and it is a really sweet device. There is also a $180 3g version that could also take a huge market share thanks to its free 3G connection. Yes you read it right, there is no rip-off monthly fee but obviously that’s only to download books from the Amazon website or check Wikipedia.

I have had the silly idea of starting to read Leonardo Padura’s latest 600 pages novel and an ebook version would have been much easier to carry around, along with my other favourite books.

Also, if like me you tend to write a lot of notes or highlight text in your books this is not a problem for the Kindle supposedly. I was watching Tim Ferris latest random show and realised it is possible to highlight text on the Kindle and share this with your friends. Pretty cool I have to say.

So…. Kindle 2 or Asus EEE Note 😉

Asus EEE Note Cebit presentation

Tim Ferris random show

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Tablet PC category