Are there cheap/small Tablet devices out there? Recomendations?

In My Humble Opinion
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Couldn’t decide if this was GQ or IMHO – apologies in advance.

With all the talk floating around about the maybe-this-year Mac Tablet, I’ve been thinking how much I’d like – any tablet. I don’t like laptops, but I use (and enjoy) PDAs, and have since the original Pilot (wait, earlier! Zaurus!). I’ve used full-sized tablets, and I like 'em. Only problem is the price, which tends to be up there, for laptops. Another thing is, I wouldn’t mind having a small (think “netbook-sized”) tablet; I’m currently using an iPod Touch as my PDA, and its not really big enough for WWW viewing and such…but something between that and a “full” laptop would be perfect.

So my question is, does anything like this exist, and does anyone have any recommendations? I’m quite willing to accept something low-powered (indeed, this would bring down the cost), and operating system truly doesn’t much matter to me (I can use Windows, any Unixey/Linuxey variant, OSX, or even weird custom things if its good). Also, if it comes to it, I’m perfectly capable of assembling computer parts, so I wouldn’t mind something like “check out this case, you can put this motherboard in it and…” situations. Cheap and usable are my main concerns – and a touchscreen of some kind is the key difference here, vs. simply a netbook. Multitouch, pen, or both…its all good.

I’ve done a bit of websearching and haven’t seen much like this, so it may be a have-to-wait situation…but if anyone has any recommendations, I’m all ears.

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Lenovo: ThinkPad X200 12.1in notebook P8600 2GB 160GB 11n $719 shipped

Act fast, expires 11/29 (today).

I have the older model X61 tablet and I love it. Tablet feature works great. I chose the touch-screen panel, which allows you to touch the screen with your fingers, but that feature is rather clumsy and I barely use the feature.

Been using it for 2 years now, and it still works great. It shipped with Vista, but feels like a new machine with Win 7.

Service is excellent. I had upgraded to 3-year accident protection warranty, and recently put in a service request to change the complete outer panel and the keyboard. The original build quality was very sucky, and there were stress fractures on all four corners of the screen, and cracks in other places due to wear and tear. But the new outer panel seems to be made of much better material.

I submitted the service request on a Monday evening. They shipped me a box on Tuesday morning. I put the laptop in box and sent it off Tue evening (free overnight shipping). It reached them Wed morning. They replaced parts (free) and shipped it out Wed evening (same day!). It reached me Thu morning, like new.