They sound attractive because they run full Windows. But what are the catches? Do they make it worthless or is it still a useful tool?
Are these issues to consider?
- finger touch inaccuracy (and slowness) compared to mouse input
- high battery consumption and slow recharging
- low RAM on affordable ones (just 2 GB)
I'm really tempted to buy one so I can get it out of my backpack and do some work (even just a little) while commuting. In this situation I can't just take my laptop with me. But is it worth it? Surface Pro is out. It's expensive like a MBA.
They are DEFINITELY good for "real" work, but it depends on which variety of windows tablet you get and what you expect out of it.
-finger touch accuracy is excellent, as good as mouse input. The only caveat are the very high resolution screens like the surface Pro 2, windows has poor scaling so you get tiny UI elements on the desktop which may be a pain to touch/click on. You would be surprised at how accurate it is to touch a tiny UI element, but it's still not optimal IMO.
-battery consumption, I'd point you to the Atom powered windows tablet, all day (10+ hours) battery life.
-RAM doesn't seem to be a problem with much I throw at my tablet, although I don't run high end stuff like Photoshop. Photoshop, for example does run, but I don't know how it would handle large graphics files and such.
So it all depends. You say you cannot carry around a laptop, so what alternative do you have to get "work" done? I'd say your only alternative is a tablet, and in that arena IMO a windows tablet utterly trounces any other tablet out there. Of course YMMV and if you are only doing light word processing and consumption then any tablet would be good for you. I suppose it would be important to define what "work" means for you for us to give you suggestions. Are you a graphic designer, engineer, doctor, etc etc? What windows programs would you use on a laptop and would you rather have them natively on a windows tablet, or would you rather shoehorn them together on iOS or Android?
In summary the Atom powered windows tablets are pretty amazing. You might want to look at the Asus T100 as a very cheap windows tablet which brings a clamshell keyboard to make it a laptop for when you need it and has the most modern Atom CPU. it also has lower resolution which is a plus IMO in terms of wi ndows awful scaling.
The other thing that is nice about a windows tablet is y ou can dock it at home/office and have a FULL windows computer if you have a larger screen, keyboard, mouse, etc. No compromises.
