My wife and I are both kind of tech geeks. Come evening time, and we both want to use the computer – for whatever reason. With a little baby, time on the puty is limited even more. As a result, I have little time to post here… Until now. This week, we splashed out on a new laptop.

To date, we’ve been using an 18.4” desktop replacement – an Acer 8930G. It’s an awesome system, but it’s heavy, and so not very portable. thus, we decided to get something more portable – but we also wanted something a little different. So we bought a tablet – HPs tx2-1316au, a multitouch Touchsmart unit. and it’s awesome.

It’s good because it’s a small notebook – just a 12.1” screen. It’s fairly light (but not light enough – more on that below), extremely mobile, and the keyboard is an excellent size. I can now post from the couch (and am doing so right now). On top of that, it’s a tablet, so I can fold the bugger up, and read PDFs, comics, Google Reader, and so on, all with the flick of a finger. For me, the artistic functions of a tablet are not something I really need, but hey – it’s a bonus. I just want to navigate by touch, baby!

And I do… and it RULES. And I feel awesome because of it. It’s going to mean a lot more internet time, and a lot more reading, which isn’t such a bad thing.

But what ARE the bad points? It is a little heavy to use a a dedicated tablet for reading. It’s OK when leaning on a leg on the couch or what-not, but it’s a little unwieldy in bed (but I found a workaround for that already). Typing on the on-screen keyboard is not much fun. In fact, it sucks a fair amount of ass. And the screen itself feels a bit wobbly and fragile, but it’s pretty well tethered to the system in reality. Lastly, the screen isn’t optimal for portrait mode, which is the best way to use it for reading PDFs and the like. The resolution is best for landscape, but such is life.

Overall, it was a worthy decision. It’s only a cheap tablet ($1700 RRP in Oz, I believe, but I was able to source it cheaper), but it’s got a bit of grunt behind it, and it does all the things I wanted it to do… but a little heavier than I had planned. But that’s life. I’ll have bulging biceps by New Year.

If you’re in the market, it’s well worth considering, but keep in mind what you want to use it for. There are cheaper systems if all you want is an internet machine.