I’m starting to become A Little Bit Fed-Up with Microsoft.

One of the best pieces of kit I own is my Toshiba Portégé 3500 Tablet PC. Quite why Tablet PCs never really set the world on fire is frankly beyond me: the never-ending notebook* for you to scribble on when you’re making notes or suggesting a layout to a client is just fabulous. (*OneNote – the ‘killer app.’ for the Tablet PC which isn’t too bad on a regular lappy either).

Until…

Until it decides to get a bit tired and emotional and Windows XP SP2 Tablet PC Edition (phew!) throws up yet another BSOD every time you try to start it up, blaming the (unchanged) video drivers.

My main work machine is a three year old, dual-screen PC that was many thousands of pounds to buy and is still super fast and super-spec’d. Except that it takes 15 minutes to start up from being turned on or restarted to have the desktop and start-up apps. loaded and the PC usable. 15 minutes. Try timing that yourself – it’s longer than it takes to go and make a cup of coffee and come back to my desk.

I have Windows Vista ready to roll out. Except that it tells me that my sound card drivers won’t work and because the sound card is three years old, the manufacturer has not written Vista drivers for it. The card and surround sound system is working perfectly here on XP Pro as are a number of apps. which won’t apparently work either. So no, I shan’t be running Vista here for the foreseeable future.

Office 2007, on the other hand, has been installed here. Some nice features for Outlook, but boy is that slow! Oh and it prompted me to download and install Windows Desktop Search which is a truly bizarre little app. which seemingly doesn’t understand what snoozing actually means (i.e. it carries on indexing even when supposedly snoozing) and can’t seem to keep track of how many items it has indexed (often counting backwards) and has still to index.

I also have an old iMac (the CRT TV type) which is ready to go in about a minute. Apparently, Office 2004 for the Mac (I presently have Office X) includes Word 2004 which includes similar functionality to OneNote. Hmm.

So, back to the Tablet PC. How to replace it?

Well Toshiba does seem to be soldiering on with Tablet PCs but we’re looking at £1,000 – £1,600 (plus VAT) for one of them. Pros would include being able to run Office 2007 including OneNote and using my Outlook post file on the PC and the Tablet. Cons would mean the same instability and slow booting time.

Or I could always get a new Apple MacBook. Prices are more or less comparable and if I chose to use Parallels or Boot Camp I could even run Windows XP on it. The downside is simply the lack of the Tablet PC functionality.

Or I could simply buy a cheapo laptop from PC World for £500 and junk it from time to time. No Tablet PC functionality and probably a tad heavier.

Decisions, decisions..