Samsung Series 7 11.6" Slate: Breathing New Life Into Tablet PCs

[freggo]

Clearly better performance that a designer iPAD. But, at that price point, also with some limits I'd rather not have.
The resolution could be a bit higher, USB 3.0 would make it long term compatible and -due to the limited i/o ports- another $100 for a docking station is a bit much.
Still, an interesting alternative for those who can afford to shop for high end laptops on a corporate expense account

 

[Guest]

Not currently in the market at the moment but this gives me hope major hope.

My dream tablet PC is:

Samsung Brand (Outstanding smartphones and tablets with excellent form). Galaxy SII, Nexus, Note, Tab)
Ivy Bridge
Windows 8 (Assuming it's not a failure but a lighter, faster, windows 7)
SSD
WiDI/WiFi/Bluetooth
USB 3.0 + HDMI
Good Battery Life
High resolution display with excellent pressure sensitivity

With the success of Samsung's Slate I have high hopes that they will destroy the tablet and phone market in the following years with the Galaxy SIII, Galaxy Tab revisions, and a Windows 8 slate.

 

[nforce4max]

Anyone still remember the Compaq TC1100 and the Fujitsu stylistic series? It is more possible now than ever before to make great performing windows tablets.

 

[scout62]

Makes me miss my GRiDPad.

 

[amuffin]

Wait wait wait don't these processors have intel hd 3000 graphics in them? So shouldn't we be able to play certain games just with very very low settings, also with ivybridge coming out with hd 4000 graphics...

 

[ravewulf]

What I really want is a convertible tablet pc (laptop with a screen that rotates/flips into slate mode) that uses one of AMD's APUs. The only ones out there today use Intel CPU/graphics with the exception of high end ~$2000 ones that use Intel/NVIDIA.

HP had a good one (tx2500 then touchsmart laptops) but they got rid of it in favor of their (fail) Touchpad.

 

[shafe88]

[citation][nom]bear95[/nom]A very nice tablet! Hoping that ivy bridge will allow faster processers without creating too much heat and saving battery. I'm really looking into getting a tablet in the future to replace my notebook and this looks is very reassuring that things are improving .[/citation] Why use an Ivy bridge when you can have an apu from amd. So what if ivy bridge is faster than an apu. With a tablet people aren't going to care too much about video encoding or heavily cpu intensive task. What they are going to care about is it's cheap, their programs work, the can surfing the net and that video and light games play smoothly. Which the ivy bridge will be able to play video smoothly no problem but when it comes to gaming the apu hands down has the upper hand.

 

[fb39ca4]

Epic Games should put infinity blade on this...

 

[notsleep]

my ep121 looks so pathetic compared to this samsung slate.

the ssd on my ep121 sucks monkey balls. i got the 64 gb version. i'll never buy another sandisk product. the wei is actually worst than a hdd if you can believe that.

besides the crappy sandisk sdd, the ep121 is a bit on the heavy side and i find 2 usb ports really restrictive at time. the digitalizer isn't very good either. it has a problem with annoying stalls. whenever this occurs, it freezes the input (mouse or pen or touch) for several seconds. i'm curious if the samsung slate exhibits this problem too?

 

[Guest]

7Keypad : using this on tablet we can do cut-copy-paste , select word-line-all , del , backspace, function keys
type english + 9 indic languages , rich symbols with just 8+8= 16 keys
for using 7keypad softwares are:
G7 -> for touchpad/singleTouchResistiveScreen
G77 -> multitouchpad/multitouchscreen
K7 -> external 7keypad , Thumbonly mode
K77 -> multikey combo press mode (like ctrl-alt-del)

 

[Maziar]

This is exactly what I want.I need a tablet with a more productive OS rather than iOS/ICS. But the problem with current Windows 7 tablets is their battery life isn't great and the OS isn't very touch friendly either. Hopefully W8 will change that and brings better battery life/UI for tablets.
IMO,this Samsung tablet is the sign of good things to come

 

[pucidalucida]

I just hope any developer will make any program that have all functionality of Mocrosoft Office software for ARM based tablet!!!
We are dying! Buy 1000$$$ tablet just for the office productivity T.T & blah blah blah software that only works in x86 and x64 architecture
Sure, if there are any tablet (not tablet PC) that have all of those productivity software like in Windows OS it will worth to buy!

 

[KentC]

"...tablets just can't provide the same functionality you'd expect from a device able to replace more powerful notebooks."

Could authors of tech reviews stop repeating this lame insight? Of course they don't provide the same functionality, but do you think that people have bought millions of them because they just aren't as smart as you and you need to remind them that a laptop is more powerful?

I was at a relative's home over the holidays. We wanted to see a movie. She has an iPad, a windows laptop and a windows pc. Which one did we reach for to make a quick check of movie times? Later another relative arrived with his iPad and showed us some family photos. He also has a laptop but never lugged it around to show photos. And finally a third relative is a technophobe who has never owned a pc and never wanted one no matter how hard we tried to convince her she would find it useful. She now has an iPad, uses it constantly and loves it.

Your comparison is pointless, these are two completely different types of devices that address different markets. It is tiring to still be reading such lame comparisons as if the author were revealing some hidden knowledge for the uninitiated.

 

[falchard]

[citation][nom]acku[/nom]Um? What? The A500 is a Tegra 2 and the W500 is Brazos.[/citation]
Thats why they are better. They coulda packed a Core i7 on this thing and it doesn't mean *** when its paired with an Intel GPU. The Iconia's also sell for half as much.

 

[cablechewer]

It looks like Samsung has done a good job, but I see no mention of a TPM or a smart card reader. Are these only in business laptops and the older style convertible laptop/tablet PCs?

 

[Guest]

I have 2 of these in our IT department for 'testing' purposes and 2 out to executives. I wiped the drives to reclaim the recovery partition and installed Win 7 Pro using a external DVD drive. Added back the niceties that Samsung has created, attached to our domain, added VPN support, A/V, etc. On the IT test models I've installed dual boot Win 8 & Win 7. Win 8 boots in about 12 seconds (all totaled - if you are quick on the OS selection screen - POST, OS Selection to Login screen).

Since no one will be using Win 8 in production for the next 8 months or so, let's talk about Windows 7 on the Tablet. The OSK is useable, more so with the stylus if you have fat fingers - and I'm a bit on the portly side. The integrated digitizer is very accurate and responsive. When the digitizer is close to the screen, the capacitive touch is disabled (palm rejection). This is fully functional, superior hardware, in a small package.

That said, it's all but impossible to find a stand case at this time...out of stock everywhere. The stock AC adapter is a brick, literally! A 3 prong power cord, really Samsung? The tablet is .5 inches thick with a 1.1 inch thick brick adapter for 19v 2.1A! These are about the only gripes.

I've been ordering the Wenger SwissGear The Carbon case (about 60 bucks) for them. It's designed for the MacBook Air 11 but fits the Slate nicely, stylus holder and business accessories.

I've also been ordering the Rii wireless mini keyboard for it. It's compact, travels easily and is great for presentations.

Speaking of presentations, the Intel WiDi technology works really nicely with a Netgear WiDi adapter with HDMI out. I haven't used the HDMI port on the device itself yet, but I have used the Slate with the dock and an HDMI monitor, it's fantastic. The Samsung bluetooth keyboard is also small enough to put into the Wenger case for road warriors.

The supplied stylus feels a bit cheap, but order an aftermarket to suit your tastes.

The battery life is really good. The screen brightness (set to about 25% - it's still really bright...this has an an extremely bright screen at 100%) and normal use gets close to 6 hours of useable battery life.

When ordering a business or personal tablet/slate, consider this: With the Slate, you can do EVERYTHING that you can do on your laptop/desktop. With any alternative (Droid/iThing), what can't you do? How about print? Access network resources? Unzip files? Use SharePoint workspaces? Etc., etc.

Also, think of the cost of integration for things like Droid & iThings...added servers, additional licensing per device, more security holes...more types of devices to support, less standardization in your enterprise, etc..etc..more training, different capabilities, you don't have active directory integration, now you're setting up more terminal servers to fill gaps...the list really goes on.

These Slates are real winners for the road warrior.

 

[Guest]

Personally I think all the tablets are nothing but toys that do nothing well. The one requirement that is missed is the media player. Of course they all play media but with no memory on-board (largest I've seen is 64 GB) you have to have an external drive of some sort, not very portable nor convenient. The only tablet that has this is the Archos with a 250GB drive but for some reason this will only be available in the next few weeks. Also the Archos uses generic formats and files so you can drag and drop files to or from a PC without a lot of conversion problems. That is the one I am waiting for.

 

[xtreme5]

wow! good job by samsung.

 

[jsjacobsny_00]

Many/most (including vendors) missing the point of tablets. I bought a Nook Color for my kid. $140 refurb. Cyanogenmod7/Gingerbread went in effortlessly and it became a full Android tablet. Paired it with an Apple wireless bluetooth keyboard and mouse. When LibreOffice is ported to Android (soon), I'll have an AWESOME useful device that will serve my (and most peoples') needs 99% of the time. Can I do serious content creation? Of course not. But I can edit large docs./spreadsheets, e-mail, web., stream movies, etc., and it fits in a large pocket. I have not put it down. (Kept it and bought another for my kid.)

 

[sactownbwoy]

Why was the Acer A500 included but not the Acer W500. It is more the direct competitor to this Samsung. I have the Acer W500 and like it alot. For me Windows tablets are better. I have had an iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

 

[zonemods]

This maybe one of the best tablets out there. And I think that there is only a few ways to improves this thing. It is pretty high in the price chain though.

 

[themothman421]

Awesome, me want!

What's the diff between the A01 and the A05 though? Looks like both are readily available, but the A05 is $100 more..

 

[Zetto]

Please, couple hundred bucks more I could have a sweet Lenovo X220...

 

[freggo]

Has anyone had any practical experience with this tablet?
Especially regarding battery performance.
Factory specs are always overly optimistic in my experience.

 

[johnmorrison]

I've been rocking one of these for a few months now and I have to say that the build quality is one thing that lets it down, that and the very very short battery life!

You also really need some protection to keep it from falling apart at the slightest knock! I was very worried about this but then came across http://justslates.com who make a really cool leather folio for the slate that has a built in USB keyboard!! It's great it makes it just like a laptop but with the ability to decouple and have just the tablet...