[Galaxy Note 10.1 General] hanexs:
Hi everyone, I've had a problem over the last year or two, habitually testing out tablets and returning them. My wife has gotten concerned that my tablet buying would beome obsessive, but I really was just looking for the right tool for me. I have finally chosen the Note 10.1 as my preferred choice thought some forum posters might want to hear my thoughts on a variety of tablets and why I chose the Note.

My use case - I'm sort of a techie, I go to a lot of meetings, I have a wicked awesome x100e thinkpad netbook that I absolutely love and that I use for casual and work, and I have a media center computer at home for watching xvids on my TV. But I've wanted a tablet for meetings and other times when pulling a laptop out would not be acceptable. I also really wanted a wacom pen for electronic notes, I seem to believe that might help keep me more organized. One last thing I wouldn't mind from a tablet is learning games to play with my daughter.

I used to have a thinkpad windows xp convertible, which was nice, but heavy and the battery died. So last year when the thinkpad android tablet came out, I jumped on it. But it didn't live up to the hype, too big, too slow, android wasnt really ready and frankly the ntrig pen on it was horrible, the battery on the pen died twice in the month I had it. Returned.

I bought a blackberry playbook, was sleek, ahead of the times, fast. But too small, not enough apps, and no wacom pen. Returned.

I bought a ipad 2, was pretty impressed with it actually. Really great selection of apps, jailbroke it and was quite excited about it, but it really wasn't suitable for notes no matter what I tried. Why doesn't this thing have a microsd port? And the Apple ecosystem is hugely frustrating. And as a techie, I can't really walk around holding an iPad, just way to emberassing I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror. In the end this was a great purchase as a learning tool for my daughter with lots of learning games we play with at night, but it wasn't really suitable for what I needed.

I was really eager when the note 10.1 came out, preordered it and got it in september. Fast, perfect size, speakers are awesome, and the microsd port was really appreciated! But it didn't have USB, android can be pretty quirky and Windows 8 was coming out. I had some problems with polaris office and thought to myself I have to give windows 8 a try before I commit.

So I bought the Microsoft Surface RT. This was an impulse buy, mostly cause I couldnt see it in the store and I had to know what it was like. Frankly its awesome, sleek, quick, the keyboard is amazing. But... not a lot of apps, no wacom pen, pretty much its a netbook with office, and I already have a wicked lenovo netbook, so it went back because what I really wanted was the Samsung Ativ Smart PC!

The samsung Ativ Smart Pc with windows 8 was pretty impressive. This atom cpu flies, I mean flies for office use. It was quicker at reading pdfs then any other tablet I tried including the Note 10.1. It had a wacom pen that worked well. It had a USB port and a mini-hdmi! It has windows 8, which is by far the best windows I tried. Things are so much simpler, sleeker and logical in it. The OS is a joy to use, and the best part it runs ALL of my intel x86 programs so I can load it up with virtually anything. But its still windows, so be prepared for Norton, daily updates and the usual Windows annoyances that I have come to love, this wasn't really a negative for me, but I could see how it would be for my wife. The main problems with this tablet:

1. It couldn't connect to my work wifi. Some windows 8 bug that aggravated me, I'm sure they'll fix it... eventually.

2. Its 11.6 inches, its huge and more to the point it's widescreen. The widescreen aspect ratio is too wide, hard to read a pdf, its a joke to hold this thing in portrait mode.

The Ativ Smart PC is an awesome low power windows ultrabook/tablet, but not a good tablet for occasional use when a netbook won't suffice, too big, too wide. (PS I live in canada, and in canada the ATIV Smart PC does not come with a smart pen, so I returned it, bought the american version....... and returned that).

So I rebought the Note 10.1 on a cyber sale for 449, saved myself 50 bucks from my original purchase and you know what, I'm loving it. I think Windows 8 has a bright future, but not right now. And android is getting better every day :)

The only cons to the Note I know of for me are:

I am missing audio recording while writing notes, snote and lecture notes can do this but they won't play and fast forward the notes like OneNote or Livescribe do, oh well.

I'd also give props to the niche area apps available on the ipad that has tons of learning games for my daughter that no other platform can rival.

Sucks that it takes so long for samsung to update, Android is finally going to have multiuser ability, and I doubt the Note 10.1 will ever see it. Oh well, wasn't really all that necessary anyways.

The note can do virtually everything I need it to do. Since I last used the Note I have come to see Polaris office is actually pretty good, and I am impressed with Astro file managers improvements. I love how dropbox works with my note, and I have a microsd 32gb card ready to hold all my work files from dropbox on it. I love being able to pull up a doc during a meeting and append, highlight and make notes, thanks polaris office for that. Right now I'm connected to an adobe connect meeting for my work through my tablet, and I'm loving it, switch windows to skype my wife on my tablet, and I marvel at how powerful this small tool is. I just bought a case for the note, I'm keeping it this time, I better or my wife is going to kill me lol.

Edit - Oh yeah, I just have to add this cause other review sites mention it. The whole "thing feels like cheap plasitc" is a bunch of bs in my view. The note is slim, light, and awesome. The screen is also bright and crystal clear.