14 DAY TRIAL // The tablet PC industry has reached the boiling point last year, and the multitude of configurations and systems are here to prove it. Last year brought us some really interesting and powerful models of tablet PC, such as Dell's XT Tablet PC or even the clean-slated and extremely elegant Amtek iTablet T221. The picture is completed with Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows Vista.
Axiotron has released yet another tablet PC to join the existing horde of such ultra-portable computers. Or maybe not. The Modbook is completely different from all the systems I have reminded you of above. It is different not in terms of elegance or aspect, but in terms of operating system and thus, of performance. The Modbook is one of "those" portable computers to run the Mac OS operating system.
Don't bother looking for the keyboard, as you're only wasting your time. There's no such thing and there is no need for it, since the touch-sensitive screen might do just without it. The company's primary targets are artists, designers and professional photographers, specialists that are required to interact directly with the screen or even draw on it. Of course, there is a wide range of available graphics tablets, such as Wacom's products, but the Modbook offers a plus of portability and autonomy.
Axiotron's Modbooks are the result of an unholy union between Apple's MacBooks and Wacom's pen computing technology, that allows real-time interaction with the screen (such as drawing, clicking, writing or dragging objects). The absence of a dedicated keyboard is compensated by a virtual, on-screen keypad, but a real, standard keyboard can be attached at any time via a spare USB 2.0 port.
The Modbook tablet comes with Mac OS X pre-loaded and features either a 2.0GHz or 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 processor. It's rigged with a 13.3-inch, 1280x800 screen, Inkwell handwriting recognition software, a built-in iSight camera, a DVD Combo drive or SuperDrive, and a GPS hardware system for on-the-fly location operations.