If you can't wait until next year for Windows 8 tablets, the Atom Oak Trail Windows 7 slates promised at CES are starting to hit the market now (and you'll be able to upgrade to Windows 8 when it comes along).
Fujitsu's Q550 is a 10-inch tablet with the same dual-digitiser N-trig screen as the HTC Flyer – and a copy of Windows 7 Professional to take advantage of the active pen. It also has a slew of security features that clearly mark it out as a business system (fingerprint reader, smartcard reader, TPM, whole disk encryption and theft-tracking).
The price is definitely aimed at businesses too; £749 for the Wi-Fi model with 30GB SSD, £799 for the 3G 30GB version and £859 for the 62GB system (those odd capacities are explained by the 2GB recovery partition).
You can add more storage with the SD card slot and USB port (or plug in a 3G dongle); there's an HDMI port as well as a docking port that you can use for a cradle or a promised clip-on keyboard.
The front-facing camera is at the top of the device in portrait mode but works just as well in landscape.
It has the usual low VGA resolution and the image was a little on the dark side in a dim room, but in bright light the video was clear with plenty of crisp detail; there's a 1.3 megapixel camera on the back, which is at the top when you hold it in landscape view.
The fingerprint reader is on the back so you can use it with your thumb without having to juggle the slate, and there's a row of handy buttons on the side, between the power and the Wi-Fi slider.
These take some of the pain out of using Windows without a keyboard; you can press Enter or Ctrl-Alt-Delete with a single button press, open the on-screen keyboard without fumbling to tap in a text field first or rotate the screen if you've turned off auto rotation.
What there isn't space for is the pen; you can hang it from the lanyard hole or keep it in the case, which also doubles as a stand (secure on a table slightly precarious on your lap). Unlike a Wacom pen the N-trig pen has a tiny battery in but otherwise it's very similar; there's a right mouse button on the side and writing with the pen is smooth and fluid.
That means you can take advantage of the excellent handwriting recognition in Windows (although it's a shame you don't get a copy of OneNote, just Office Starter) and you don't need to worry about resting your hand on screen while you write.
Touch the screen without the pen and you get four-point multitouch; pinch zoom, swipe photos, scroll in Internet Explorer 9 or tap in slight frustration at the tiny Windows icons. Selecting programs from the Start menu with a finger was easy, maximising a window by pressing the button in the corner was more hit and miss. This isn't quite as sensitive a touch screen as the Acer Iconia W500 or the HP EliteBook 2740, but it's immeasurably better than the Dell Inspiron Duo.
The N-trig sensor does give the otherwise bright and vivid 1280 x 800screen a slightly grainy look. The viewing angle is impressive though; you have to turn the screen a long way away from you before you can no longer read it, and the anti-glare coating makes it readable in quite strong sunlight.
Performance is a little less impressive. The 1.5GHz Atom Z670 in the Q550 feels sluggish when you switch between applications – more sluggish than you'd expect from an Atom of this speed. We suspect that's because the default power setting throttles the processor speed down significantly to get the promised 8-9 hours of battery life.
Let the processor run faster and you get a standard Atom system; nothing like the Core i5 processors in larger tablets from Asus and HP (or Fujitsu's own convertible models), but far more usable, especially for the kind of work you'll want to do with a tablet when you're out and about. (We're also looking forward to testing the performance without some of the pre-installed software, including Norton antivirus.) The battery also pops out easily if you want to carry a second to make sure you have all-day battery life.
We weren't at all impressed with the Infinity Lounge interface Fujitsu has come up with for viewing widgets and launching shortcuts; there's no SDK yet and it was unimpressively slow (although Fujitsu said a new version would be faster). If it does speed up, it would be a finger-friendly combination of icons and information, but with a very corporate look.
The case is sturdy without being chunky; there's a definite angle to the bezel and back but comfortably rounded corners. The ports don't make it uncomfortable to hold and the plastic chassis has enough grip. At around 800g (890g with the 3G module) and 16mm it's heavier and thicker than an iPad or Android tablet but it doesn't have a fan blowing hot air at you, and even though you can see exactly where the battery is, it doesn't make it feel unbalanced in your hand.
So what will you want to do with the Q550? Web browsing and catching up on email, especially with the 3G model coming next week.It's ideal for watching video and looking at photos, because there's no problem with any codec; after all, this is Windows. Looking up a map as you walk down the street? Any tablet is a bit big for that. Running your standard Windows apps; definitely, although you might have to pull out the pen for some icons and menus.
Filling out forms and taking handwritten notes in meetings? That's exactly what Fujitsu has designed it for and once you strip the extraneous background apps off it should do that extremely well. It's far more portable than the previous generation of convertible Windows tablets. That fact that it runs Windows is its strength – as a business machine – but it has the usual drawbacks of size, weight and the compromise of using a mouse interface without a mouse.
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