Samsung Series 7 Business Slate XE700T1A 128GB, Wi-Fi, 11.6in - Black (XE700T1A-A04US)

Pros: Light, easy to handle, Windows 7 (or 8!) on a true tablet, beautiful display, WiDi, Full USB2, micro HDMI

Cons: More difficult than an iPad, Widescreen may throw some off, relatively low pixel count compared to some other tablets of similar or smaller size, expensive

I'm very pleased with this tablet! In fact, I am writing this review on it. It's quite peppy for its size and does what I wanted it to do. I wish it had a little better resolution so I could view a little more of my Word documents, but it's really minor after a while. I wish it had come with a keyboard/mouse option, but since you can hook up any keyboard whether it be USB or Bluetooth to it, you can take any one that's just laying around if you need one. I even plugged in an unpowered hub and was able to work several USB sticks and a HDD off of it.

The touchscreen is quite responsive, and has been a pleasure to use. I did find that the touch apps that come with it were troublesome as they took a long time to launch and didn't work as well as their standard Windows counterparts.

I also tried loading Windows 8 RC on the tablet and had several glaring issues. Both Internet Explorer 10 and Windows Explorer crashed frequently; so much so that I ended up going back to Windows 7.

Speaking of going back, for some reason, the slate ships with DVD's even though there's no DVD drive. To restore it was a real pain. I ended up copying the disks to a network share, taking a second PC and making a bootable USB, and copying the OS from the disk to the USB stick. Then, since the drivers for neither the dock NIC nor the wireless were in Windows, I had to find and install those before I could use the netowrk location to rebuild the rest of the system.

Long story short... It's a hassle to rebuild should you need to. I will grant that in the move to Win8 I deleted the recovery partition, but there's still no getting around the fact that you would need an external drive to rebuild. It would have made a lot more sense to make a bootable USB stick and put in the box. It would have cost maybe $10 to the price, but made the process a TON simpler to accomplish.

Bottom line is that the device is great. It plays movies, music, and does everything my 8 lb IBM notebook did, but does it in under 2lbs. It's a pleasure to travel with, and I haven't looked at my notebook since I've had this.

It's a little bit heavier than the ipad2, the battery life does not last as long, its more expensive and you don't get as many admiring looks.

But this is not like the other slates on the market, it is a full-on PC with almost the portability and ease of use of other tablets on the market - it's close enough to be considered if you have reasonably big hands and you are not weak.

For my daily 1hr 30 min commute each way, the battery is good in practice for 2 days of work or play.

And you certainly can do both in a way you just cannot on an ipad or android tablet... I have Office 2010 Professional installed, plus for a little distraction Civilization V works a treat with the touchscreen interface!!!

If you just want to watch movies, surf the internet, use the wealth of apps available for android or ipad and are happy with the neutered games available for these platforms then this is not for you.

I would not advise buying the 64GB product as there would not be much hard drive space left for applications/storage, even though you may use the cloud but the 128GB here is sufficient and class-leading.

Sure this will get a turbo boost this year with Windows 8, but for now this is the only product on the market that does not compromise power for portability - and you can always upgrade the OS later!

My original plan was to replace my Xoom (Great tablet, but a little big for me to want to carry around) with the new Samsung 7.7. While snooping around and waiting for its release, I found this Slate on Ebay for a little over $1,000. Yes, it's expensive when compared to other tablets, but it turns out that it's so much more than a tablet. It operates on Windows Pro, 64 bit and with a switch it turns into a tablet, apps and all (Not Android, though) When operating in the windows mode, it is in every way, a computer. I've loaded Quicken, MS Office, Turbo Tax,Outlook..many other programs that I use on a regular basis. In addition to a 32 GB Micro SD card I also use Windows Skydrive For storage. I keep all of the files that I need on the cloud and/or micro SD, bring them up as needed, scan, print, fax, everything that I can do on my laptop, I can do on this Slate. It comes with some pretty cool apps as well. Now with this PC/tablet, I'm willing to tolerate a little extra weight while carrying it around. Also, obviously, you'll also need to be willing to tolerate the price as well. I use this now, even at home when my laptop is sitting next to me, just because it is that much more fun to use.I play some games on my 55" TV through the use of the built in HDMI input, attach a portable DVD to load programs and watch movies, the USB for fast file transfer to others' computers, or when I want to talk to my laptop and I'm in kind of a hurry. I'm absolutely convinced that, had this been on the market 5 years ago, we would never have seen the enormous sales in most of the tablets in use today. I guess the Apple Dumpling Gang would still buy the Ipads, but the rest of us would need nothing more than this Samsung Slate. I'm not down on the tablets, I love my Xoom and I also have a Samsung 7.0 Plus, for use when I'm traveling light. I wouldn't be willing to part with either...that is, unless I had to get rid of something, say, with a gun to my head. In that case, the Slate would be the last to go.The Android tablets are great, and plenty of fun to play with. For anyone who likes that, and would also like to have the power and versatility of a Windows laptop, so far, there's nothing on the market to compare this unit.
Now to be fair and honest, it's only right that I acknowledge the 'Cons'. No machine is perfect.So, here goes... Yes, it's expensive. 128 GB storage..well, I'd like to see a little more...The stylus, which is only necessary when typing on the smaller keyboard or writing (They have a great program to convert writing to typed words, very accurately) anyway, the 'special' stylus, my first one of which was eaten by my dog, costs $55. at Samsung. I'm hoping that the generic versions will be out soon. All other accessories can be purchased on the cheap through generic manufacturers. One last thing, though most of the tablets have this problem, it's a fingerprint magnet. Get a sheild right away. That's it. Can't think of another thing that I don't love about this thing. I'm taking very good care of it so that I can get a good price for it on Ebay when Samsung comes out with a 500GB model

This slate is awesome. It came with Windows 7 x64 on it which performed well. I installed Windows 8 on it and it is unbelievable now. Much faster boot up, performance and response time. Haven't used my iPad 3 since getting it. I added a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse which allows me to easily use it comfortably. Highly recommend!

I Love this thing...

No bloatware, but still filled with tons of toys.
Great touchscreen with samsung and windows point gestures.

Don't waist your time and money on Android OS's or Tablets without some universal ports (ipad)

Control your Win world from a fast strong slate.