My tablet PC is being fixed at the moment and boy am I missing it, but strangely for all the wrong reasons.
Keyboards
You never realise just how used to a keyboard until you use a different one. Now I normally use two a day, one on the work PC and that on my tablet. Since my tablet has a US keyboard and everything else is UK I already have to do things differently, but today I'm struggling. The big reason is that I borrowed Melissa's Dell XPS M1330 and the keyboard on that is just not right.
The first difference is that the keyboard has keys in very different places, and I've been coding all day. Home, End, Page up, just aren't in the same place as anything I've used before. That includes Toshiba, IBM/Lenovo and normal desktop. Worse the key width is just a little bit bigger than a normal keyboard such as the one I'm using right now. The number of times today I've type *( instead of ().
However the greatest problem I've had is with the Shift and Ctrl keys. These keys are a bit wider than most other keys and unless you hit them in the centre, they don't go down. I've typed and corrected [ more times than I've typed {.
Widescreen
I bought the last non-Widescreen laptop that Lenovo make, and with Visual Studio as my primary application I have my windows docked just where I want them. I go for a two column, with an extra row across the main window [At this point I would scribble a little diagram to show you I mean if I had my tablet]. It just doesn't fit on a Widescreen machine. Maybe I've got spoiled by 1400x1050, but 1280x800 just doesn't allow enough vertical space to have the errors or a callstack showing at the bottom while still seeing a useful amount of code above. Strange really since my previous laptop was 1024x768.
Weight and Balance
The nice thing about a tablet is that the unit is a single flat piece of technology and so (convertibles in tablet mode, slates all the time) the balance is much easier than using an opened laptop on your knee. I've got so used to relaxing in the evening with my tablet on my knee, I'd forgotten that the screen helps those normal laptops topple backwards. Fortunately I didn't drop it though.
Tablet
Yes I miss the pen for pointing, clicking and hand writing, but it these other factors that caught me by surprise. Hurry up Lenovo. I really love my Tablet.