Tablet PCs have never quite taken off the way that laptops and PDAs have in the portable market, but convertible devices such as Gateway's new C-141X series may be the way that tablets can finally find their niche.

A C-141X serves as both a laptop with a full-sized keyboard as well as a tablet PC, which allows you to write and draw on the screen with the included stylus. The 14-inch display swivels and then flattens against the keyboard, transforming from one device to the other easily.

A C-141X weighs 6.5 pounds, which is fairly light for a laptop, although it's definitely on the heavy end for a tablet PC. Most users will not be able to stand and hold it in one hand while jotting down notes with the other, but it should work fine resting on your lap.

That extra weight stems from the more powerful laptop components that are inside these portable computers. The units' standard processor is a 1.60GHz Intel T2330 Dual Core CPU. Gateway includes a hefty 2GB of fast 667MHz memory with these laptops, so their core is powerful enough for multitasking. They ship with Windows Vista Home Premium edition, which has numerous multimedia applications.

Storage is a respectable 160GB on a 5,400rpm hard drive, so you'll have plenty of room for application installs and space to house lots of multimedia files. The swiveling display actually works quite well for sharing images and video, although it only swivels in one direction; it offers deep 1280X768 resolution, so pictures and text look crisp.

The optical drive is an 8X dual-layer DVD writer that also supports DVD-RAM disks; these can be rewritten to up to 100,000 times, so they are great for scheduled backups. What's more, the Spare backup utility comes bundled with these laptops. The dual-layer capabilities of the drive means that you can burn to extra-large DL media, which can store up to 8.5GB of data on a single disk.

These laptops also include a 7-in-1 media card reader, so it's easy to transfer files and photos to and from your PDA or digital camera. There's also a FireWire port and three USB ports, so you can hook peripherals up to these laptops as well. Additionally, the computers' Bluetooth connectivity gives you a wireless synch-up option for your cell phone or PDA.

Internet connectivity includes 802.11a/b/g wireless, a modem and gigabit Ethernet, so you can connect these systems to your high-speed office network without any slowdown.

The only real weakness of the C-141X laptops is the integrated graphics, which share video memory with the main system RAM, so these systems aren't gaming powerhouses.

These computers start out at a decent price for a laptop with its components, but an excellent price for a system that also serves as a tablet PC. If you're an artist or writer who needs to be able to input to a portable PC via stylus but doesn't want to give up the performance of a laptop computer, a Gateway C-141X offers a great convertible option.


Pros: Excellent combination device, good components and price
Cons: Integrated graphics, heavy for a tablet

Warranty
1 year, limited