Using a tablet PC to play online poker

One of my readers asks me about using a tablet pc to play online poker. 

I see you’re a poker player too… have you used your Tablet PC with
any of the online real-money sites, and if so did it work well for
that? Was it easy to place bets correctly, especially in no-limit with
the "slider" controls on screen? I’m looking at buying a tablet for the
sole purpose of online poker. Thanks in advance!

I play a lot of poker, though a lot less now with the baby here.  I
find the tablet an extremely pleasing device to play on, and the
sliders aren’t really a problem when playing no limit games.  Obviously
it’s hard to multitable on anything with a single screen, I find
playing a single table very enjoyable.  You won’t do much chatting with
the tablet if you’ve got the keyboard detached, but then you don’t need
to.  Betting/checking/raising with the pen is easy.

On my tablet PC right now I have the clients for all the major online
poker  sites and copies of Turbo Texas Hold ’em and Poki’s Poker
Academy Pro for practice when disconnected.

I love doing a hit and run on a poker table, and to do that, you need to be able to play anywhere, any time.  Since wifi isn’t ubiquitous, I’ve played quite a bit of poker over the indispensible Cingular
cellular service with a Sony GC83 modem.  At roughly 200 kbps it’s not
fast, but it’s fast enough.  The coverage of cellular is quite broad,
and if you are one of those people that needs to buy one of the new
broadband wireless PC cards, for god’s sakes make sure it’s dual band,
so you can surf the GSM network when you’re outside the EDGE or EV/DO
footprint. 

One thing I’ve not tried to keep on my tablet is my Poker Tracker
database.  Since I’ve started playing PokerStars a lot (to clear the
last reload bonus) I’ve started again keeping all my hands in poker
tracker.  While I could keep it on my laptop, I’m keeping it on my big
rig at home, a monster PC with multiple displays I use for
multitabling.  It’s properly backed up, and I use it to archive all the
family’s music and photos.

At the end of a play session on my tablet, I simply request that the
hand history be sent via e-mail.  I pick it up on the big rig.

My previous prediction
about tablet functionality becoming merely a feature and not a
technical genre all it’s own is turning out to be quite accurate.  More
and more notebooks are coming out with tablet functionality.  While it
will never achieve 100% ubiquity in the notebook market, it will most
certainly become a competitive feature.  And as a competitive feature,
look for it to differentiate the high value market from the bargain
basement notebook market.  Keep an eye out for the Apple tablet as
well, it’s coming, Apples patent applications point the way.