Having bought the Dell Duo a few weeks ago I’ve been giving its tires a good kick. The duo is a combination netbook and tablet. It opens and works like a conventional netbook but the screen flips round and so you can close the lid, have the screen on the outside and use it as a tablet.
As a netbook its great. 1366×768 resolution makes for a very sharp screen. Its fast enough for the applications I want to use – mainly Office & reading PDFs. Keyboard is OK and the touchpad mouse works better than my HP netbook. The lack of an Ethernet port and external video feed are irritants but they can be overcome. Performance is more than enough for what I use it for.
As a tablet it works. Windows 7 isn’t an iPad but it you want a tablet experience that runs your business applications and is good enough then its OK. I’ve found it especially useful in meetings for scrolling through notes. As the tablet is flat on the table there isn’t the feeling of anything getting in the way that you have when everyone has a laptop open.
All in all its a good buy and a useful addition to my hardware set. I’m tending to use it as a machine for work to carry all my reference material at which it is superb.