Continuing my laptop saga...

Toshiba announced its new Portege M200 Tablet PC, and it's just about perfect. One of the things I've been wrestling with about the Gateway is that it's big and heavy - 12.6" x 10.83" and 5.6lbs is a lot of laptop. The Toshiba is an inch smaller in each direction (though slightly thicker) and a pound lighter. Though smaller (12.1" versus 14.1") the screen is much higher resolution (1400x1050 versus 1024x768). It's faster, has more expandibility in terms of RAM and hard drive space, and has a much better video card, and has an 802.11g (faster than 802.11b) wireless option. It doesn't have an integrated DVD drive, which is a bummer, but if I'm serious about using this thing as a graphics tablet then that has to take highest priority. And I can always plug in the USB DVD drive as necessary.

So this may be the end of my laptop search for now. As announced this seems like the right machine for me. It's more expensive than I can really afford, and the configurations currently available (as opposed to announced) aren't ideal. So I may decide to wait out the holiday rush and hope that better configurations (and better prices) become available.

No promises, though.

[Update]: Forgot the other cool thing. The docking station lets you use the built-in screen as your screen. It just holds it up there - you can even rotate it portrait<->landscape. A 12.1" screen is small for a desktop, but if I can use it as a second screen with my current monitor as the primary then I'll be in geek heaven.