An open letter to Averatec:

To whom it may concern, I purchased my Averactec C3500 convertible tablet pc from costco in July 2004 for a cost of $1,350. The thought was that a tablet pc would be great for art school, would allow me to go paperless. This laptop was gonna get me through 4 years of college. I know that was expecting a lot, but it was a hope. But, the digitizer sucked. The batttery life of the 5 lb unit was a mere hour or two, at best (now the meter doesn't even read properly). All the XP Tabled edition software that came with it was bundled with all the other Averatec install features, so doing a clean/repair install of windows is impossible without reformatting. At about 1.5 years old, the laptop's wires to the screen deteriorated, making my display strobe in bizzare ways, making doing graphic/web design pretty difficult without displeasure to the eyes. My C3500 runs very hot at the back left corner. It has a decent processor, 80 gigs is plenty for me in terms of hard drive, but it's case is cracked (I had it serviced a while ago and they replaced it, but it's cracked again). All the little rubber bumpers on the screen, the bottom, came off constantly. The serial number rubbed off the bottom in the first six months. The product was good, but not great. So, I'm switching to an iBook or MacBook sometime this summer. I don't know that I'd buy from this Hong Kong maufacturer again (at least not a convertible). Really kind of unfortunate, because a convertible tablet laptop is quite the way to pick up the geeky guys. Sincerely, L