PC tablets are as cool as ever, but prices still keep them out of reach.

Fujitsu's newest pen tablet PC, the Stylistic LT P-600 announced today, is the company's most recent attempt at a "full featured," keyboardless tablet PC. As a follow up to last year's LT C-500, Fujitsu has added capacity and speed to all the usual system component suspects. Users will find a faster processor, more video memory, larger hard drive capacity, and better battery life than the previous model.

The P-600 offers some usability features absent in the Stylistic 3500, but nothing significant. For example, Fujitsu puts a series of hot keys on the right side of the display for quick access to navigation and a keypad for numeric entry.

While the Stylistic LT P-600 is the most portable tablet PC we've seen, measuring 9.6 by 7.1 by 1.1 inches and weighing only 2.65 pounds, users will have to make sacrifices in return. A lack of VGA output, any legacy ports, or a network port in the base unit limits the pad's usefulness for presentations or in connecting to non-USB based peripherals. For these, users will have to first dock the P-600 in its mini-dock.

In terms of text input, tablet PCs in general rely on handwriting-recognition engines, PenX by CIC (Communication Intelligence Corporation) in this case, and touch-screen keyboard input. In our tests, we found the P-600 to have a responsive touch-screen display, but the handwriting-recognition engine was less than accurate. Users will find that they will have to spend considerable time training themselves to use the handwriting feature to move completely away from the onscreen keyboard alternative. The Transcriber text entry engine found in Pocket PC 2002 is much more accurate, particularly for spaces between words. While ideal for surfing the Internet, the technology doesn't fair well with text entry like email.

The small form factor results in an 8.4-inch display with a 800 x 600 x 32-bit color resolution. The screen is transflective, which means that you can use it outdoors with some success. However, we found that with indoor usage the screen is often too dull even at its brightest setting.

The bottom line for most pen-tablet enthusiasts comes down to price. At $3,700, the Stylistic LT P-600 is just too expensive to justify the fun of browsing the Internet in your easy chair or taking limited notes at meetings.
Summary: While the P-600 gets a performance upgrade with this new version, we still yearn for a good text input solution and a cost that does not bring on altitude sickness.

Pros: Very small and light, screen works outdoors, quick pad buttons

Cons: Difficult text input, tiny screen, pricey

Company: Fujitsu
Price: $3,700
Available: Sept. 10, 2001
Category: Mobile
Platform: Windows 2000 Professional
Specs: Intel PentiumIII-600 with technology; 128MB RAM; One Type II CardBus PC Card and slot one Type II Compact Flash slot; one USB port; 56K modem, audio input and output jacks