Anyone used a recent model tablet PC much? I'm thinking about buying one.

I've had one for about a year HP 1200 model. It works pretty good, the hand-writing recognition works well once it learns your style.

Down sides to it, battery life is iffy unless you have the uber one, and it does get hot if you don't turn it to low power mode. But it is small and portable and works great for note taking etc.

edit:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834147796
this is the upgraded model of the one I have.

I have a Gateway Tablet PC. It's okay -heavy, and low battery life. Unless I need the tablet portion, I usually carry around my Dell Inspiron. From a presentation standpoint there are a number of cool things I can do with it, but since it isn't a true touchscreen I find the tablet aspect somewhat limiting and clumsy.

I think a lot of the answer about quality depends on what you want to use it for. There are USB tablets that you can buy which might go nicely with an ordinary laptop/PC. I've looked into wireless options before - the dongle receiver plugs into the PC - as an alternative to lugging around my tablet.

I think the touch aspect varies widely. I was looking at one of the HPs and it had both the pressure sensitive touch screen and an active Wacom digitizer built in so you could use a pen for accuracy. I also found several where you only got the passive touch and nothing else, which would blow for anything other than basic navigation.

Do you lose much on the laptop mode? Is that hinge awkward when it's open in laptop mode?

I don't think so - it's just big, but I use it like a regular laptop all of the time.

I do have fun drawing on PowerPoint slides during class lectures with mine.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834147796
this is the upgraded model of the one I have.

That's one of the ones I was considering. Hard to beat the price (which worries me).

I really like it, you don't lose much with the hinge. Though when you calibrate the touch screen it stays calibrated to the mode it's in, like if I want to write on it, I calibrate it for right handed writing with the screen tilted and holding it in my left. But when I pop it back to regular position the touch is a little bit off (just a few pixels) I'm not sure if that model comes with a stylus or not but I'm pretty sure it does, and mine has a little built in holder for it that's pretty slick. It's no WACOM, but for being cheap, it's good quality and it does most of what I want, and it's light weight. It just gets hot, though the newer one may not have the issues mine does.

I am using a slightly older model I have a HP TC 4400 Maxed proc ram and a 250 gig hd. With the 12 cell bat they sell I get 14 hours of use before i should start to recharge. I love my tablet only problem is no serial port :( I hate usb to serial.

I tend to also gravitate to the HP bussiness Line. I also bought mine from a HP dealer on ebay it was NIB and came with HP 4 year Accidental Warr.