Hands-on with the Axiotron Modbook (The Write Stuff?)

Today we spent a few minutes with the Axiotron Modbook on the Macworld show floor, and it’s basically a MacBook that’s been converted into a tablet. It seems best suited for artists but the company claims that it’s also designed for students and professionals. For a starting price of $2,279–that’s $780 more than the MacBook black–you get a slate with a Wacom digitizer that has a whopping 512 levels of sensitivity.

In our demo we liked how the Modbook responded to the amount of pressure applied by creating a thicker, bolder stroke in a drawing program. And the handwriting recognition worked pretty well without any training. Axiotron even includes a GPS receiver, although we didn’t get a chance to test this out.

The aircraft grade aluminum case felt sturdy, but it also makes this slate fairly heavy. And it feels a lot thicker than the new MacBook Air ($949.00). Then again, the Modbook has a built-in optical drive while the MacBook Air does not. We asked Axiotron if there were any plans to build a modded version of the Air and were pretty much laughed at. We’ll take that as a no.

Despite this being a specialized device, we think it’s worth taking for a test drive to see if it’s worth the premium. We hope to get in a review unit soon.