Samsung Series 7 Slate PC

claiton 30 April 2012

Good: Great Display, awesome touch experience, Kit of pressure sensitive pen is great for drawings, batery life

Bad: Price, hardware itsnt as slick as an iPad

Comment: I own one of this and used just for a couple of days with the default installation of Windows 7. I quickly upgraded to Windows 8 Customer Preview and am very very surprised with the whole thing. Just by the hardware itself its really good, i have about 8-9 hours of batery life using both Metro Apps and old Windows appications like Office, Visual Studio, etc. The thouch experience is really good, the shape and weight is great to handle, and is great to carry only one device and be able to do all the browsing and consuming part of a tablet, but also can use to work if needed as i can install all my applications on it. Startup/Wake, sleep and shutdown times are great and the kit of keyboard, pen and dock that comes with it made me almost replace my current laptop completely (I have an i7 with 8GB so not exactly there to replace it yet =) ).
As from the software side, Windows 8 is still a beta, so there are small glitches, but overall am really impresed, all upgrade and install process was awesome and very easy, there is just one hardware drive that didnt install, but all the rest its a great kit if you are ok to upgrade to Windows 8.

Jordan-Findlay 19 November 2011

Good: Everything

Bad: The price

Comment: :)

davideen 30 October 2011

Comment: It's becoming a rather worn out assumption that WIndows 7 can't handle slates or tablets. In fact it can with a little adjustment and some intelligent tweaks. I concede that "out of the box" win 7 is not ideal. Windows 8 will completely address any qualms that currently exist. I must be one of millions who find android and mac 0s tablets almost universally useless for actually doing WORK on. They are largely consumer entertainment devices and it's extraordinary that there are so few decent tablets emerging for a windows os.

Hopefully the Samsung Slate, and inevitably subsequent (and much cheaper alternatives) will begin to emerge after frankly pathetic attempts so far with very few noble exceptions.

I particularly like the docking station which looks a lot more solid than other examples, and the i3 cpu plus half decent storage capacity should make useability a lot better than the current offerings in this field. We desperately need a decent choice of tablet-style machines on which productivity, not just cutesy entertainment, is emphasised, and that is the real reason why consumer take up of tablets has been android or Mac os based. With Windows 8 this slate (and the future ones emerging) will knock the ipad for six, and it can't come soon enough!

philtrum 20 October 2011

Comment: I use a Fujitsu ST5112 picked up on ebay for very little. It has a good sized 12" screen (important) and runs all my normal apps under Windows 7 with good performance. I'm on the road alot and use it for all my work. Pen (stylus) input is excellent for all my needs - miles better than fingers for navigation and control and I don't need a keyboard for typing when I can write notes, write music and fill in forms, etc (I'm a music teacher). Windows could be better (we'll probably always say that), but on a daily basis I have no issues. All I want is modern hardware which is lighter and has a longer battery life (and is preferably nearer the £500 mark than £1000).
Fingers were abandoned for writing and drawing in the caves, so why are we trying to use them to control computers now? The sylus or pen has been used for millenia and should surely be the tool of choice for controlling the computer as well. In this review, you were given a pen, but are still tying to use your fingers to control the small windows icons like the reception kids in primary school. For users like myself who need more finesse than fingers can provide on a tablet, please encourage manufacturers with reviews which at least consider how such a machine might be used.