portable digital sketchpad? the contenders...

 From:  Michael Gibson
3083.2 In reply to 3083.1 
Hi manamana, one thing to note is that MoI does not actually require a tablet to run, and in fact I think that the majority of MoI users actually just use it on a normal desktop PC with a mouse and not actually on a tablet at all.

But MoI's UI is set up to be "tablet friendly" so that it works well on a tablet and avoids things that can often cause problems when using a tablet (like needing to always touch the keyboard all the time, etc...)

One thing to be aware of is that in the past these kinds of light portable tablet machines have not had very much capability in 3D display hardware on them.

So one of the main things you will want to know about is what kind of 3D graphics chipset is being used.

It looks like many of the newest generation of these slate tablets may have Intel GMA 500 graphics on them. That's way on the low end of the scale in 3D hardware power but it's actually probably a good step up from earlier generations. It will still limit things to somewhat less complex projects though probably. But MoI will actually run on that chipset.

If it says it has something like SiS or S3 graphics, then I'd be a bit more worried about the graphics support, those are just less "mainstream".

The other thing is you'll probably need at least 1024x600 resolution to be able to run things well, but that looks like it is pretty much the standard for these new devices.

MoI has the ability to scale all of its UI up or down by a slider in the Options dialog, which can come in handy for adjusting it to fit smaller screens like this.

- Michael