ASUS Eee PC T101MT (10.1" - Atom N450 - Windows 7 Starter - 1 GB RAM - 160 GB HDD)

Pros: - Excellent display
- Great tablet functions
- Fantastic handwriting recognition
- Easy of use
- Speed
- Price

Cons: - A little heavy
- No 3G/4G support

Summary: This is the best travel computer I ever had. I travel basically at least once a month to Asia, EMEA or Africa. This tablet is inexpensive, fast for the price and the handwriting recognition makes interactions very natural. After training you can write the stylus and with a little more training with you fingers. This gives you a key advantage over other laptop replacement options like the iPad.

The Asus t101Mt is the perfect replacement for a laptop if you have to do some heavy office tasks, but don't need all the graphic design and high-end computing capabilities. I'm working with Office 2010 and use Word, Powerpoint and Excel frequently. On all this you have to compromise some speed, based on the processor. However, it beats the iPad hands down in 80% of my travel office tasks. This does not mean the iPad is not a great device, I own one and it is a great web browsing device and OK e-mail device, but if it comes to other tasks I have to perform daily it is not sufficient, what is mainly related to web editing, flash and powerpoint, as well as word documents (try to open a 80 page document on the iPad and edit it without loosing more complex formatting...).

The far best feature is the display and handwriting recognition. Especially because it keeps you very focused in portrait mode and simple respondses are a breeze with the excellent handwriting recognition of Windows 7 and the Asus touch screen. This productivity plus actually makes up for other performance limitation when working iwht office applications and I have caught myself using it constantly at home to work thru e-mail quickly in the morning instead of my quad core macbook pro as it keeps me more focused and the responding in handwriting is actually much more fun.

No doubt I would not give up my MBP for this, but it is the hands down best travel laptop replacement I could find that meets all my needs. That for under $500 in comparison to a $5000 price tag for the MBP.

The only thing Asus could do better on this is add 3G or 4G directly into the machine for wireless freedom (like my iPad), even so I solved this issue with a clear wireless 4 G/3G account.

Another thing to think about, the replacement cost for this machine is very, very low, trust me I know as I lost my MBP during a trip in EMEA, and you can get the machine litterally everywhere and restore it from the included online cloud backup ASUS provides with the machine. Needless to say I have become a fan.