Having been using a laptop for the past umpteen years I found it a bit strange not having one so, with the permission of the finance officer (AKA my better half, Mary) I decided to buy one.

I have been looking at the Tablet PC market for some time – all the advantages of a laptop plus the ability to take notes in freehand, draw diagrams and doodle in meetings – but I have not really seen anything up to my requirements – screen too small, not enough processing power etc., until now. The trouble is I need something that is effectively a desktop replacement for my development work.

I did a trawl and found the Toshiba Tecra M4 – 14" screen, 2GB Ram and a good sized hard drive.  The CPU is a bit on the slow side but it will do the job.

I am still learning the knack of hand writing to allow it to convert seamlessly to text, but considering my atrocious handwriting it does a pretty good job.