Samsung ATIV Touch Screen Smart PC 500T

10 years of waiting for this tablet/pc

I've been a PC user all my life. The Windows 8 Convertible Tablets are what I've been waiting for for over 10 years. In 2002, I had the Toshiba Portege XP Convertible Tablet with...Read complete review

I've been a PC user all my life. The Windows 8 Convertible Tablets are what I've been waiting for for over 10 years. In 2002, I had the Toshiba Portege XP Convertible Tablet with Pen input. It was a great device at the time but had poor battery life and no UI enhancements for navigating the OS with the pen and no touch. The Windows 8 Convertible tablets change all that. The Samsing Ativ Smart PC is the first Tablet/PC to include both pen and touch input and has a detachable keyboard. The Lenono IdeaPad2 will also have pen input but no keyboard that I've heard of.

My wife and I each have Windows 7 Laptops. We each have iPads for browsing and FB'ing and watching movies. The Samsung Ativ will combine the best of both worlds. Be warned, though that buyers should make sure they need the power of the Windows 8 desktop and can handle the associated maintenance responsiblities. If you just want a Windows metro device to replace your iPad, go for an RT tablet instead.

Here's why: The RT devices only let you run Windows Store apps and Office. You can't really mess up the device. With a Windows 8 Tablet, you can install (willingly or unwillingly bloatware or drivers that can degrade your system performance.)

For example, not having the proper drivers or running bloated apps like Norton AV (that gets installed by the Samsing update if you use default settings) can dramatically decrease your battery life. These are all things that savvy PC/laptop users have learned to do. You cannot get away from doing this with a win8 tablet. If you don't want to use desktop apps, then get an RT tablet instead. Fortunately, Windows 8 has enhanced power and CPU usage stats to help you find any resource hogs.

After spending hours finally getting all the updates installed, including having to do a factory reset, the device behaves like a dream. The Windows Store apps are really power
efficient. I played Jetpack Joyride for 2 hours straight and only used up 10-15% battery life!

I haven't installed any desktop apps yet since I'm waiting to get the Keyboard dock to finally use it like a laptop. I'm also waiting for Office 2013 to come out in early 2013 since it's optimized for touch. Office 2010 can run with keyboard and mouse but the next Office will make this even more fun to use. I did try a wireless mouse and keyboard via the USB connector. They work ok but without a dock, you can't really prop up the screen on its own.

The bundled pen is also one of the reasons I chose to buy this particular model. Samsung has a free app called SNote. It it the same app on the Galaxy Note, I believe. You can enable/disable touch and use pen only mode for certain pen tasks where you don't want your palm to act as an input device! That really gives you the power and precision of digitizer tablet at the push of an onscreen button. The Pen is also not just a replacement for your finger. I think it's a wacom digitizer. When you hover over the screen, there is a little pointer to show you where the pen will land. Depressing the pen tip will let the "ink" flow. Since you can't really find this device in stores to try out at this time, I figured this description will help those wanting to learn more about the pen.

In summary, this is the device with the best combo of features to date. My wife is claiming this for herself so I might check out some other Windows 8 Pro devices coming out later this year and early next year. Samsung will also launch Core i5 and i7 versions of this device as well.