As a handheld device, with a 7 inch android tablet the Galaxy Note can be unobtrusive and discreet, yet highly functional. Its light weight and balanced form makes it convenient for holding in one hand while reading ebooks on the high-resolution 1280-by-800-pixel display.

Unfortunately, the display proved to be as much a weakness as a strength. In the native browser, Web pages display better as "mobile" pages than as full-fledged website pages. And content creation feels much more constrained on a 5 inch tablet display than on a 10.1-inch screen: You can't get a lot of page onto the screen while writing a document in Polaris Office, for example. Some Galaxy Note features--such as enhanced VPN connectivity and hardware encryption--seem especially well-suited for business use. In general, when road warriors use of the Note tablet-style, they'll probably focus on email and in-a-pinch document manipulation.

My assessment of the Galaxy Note comes after having spent countless hours with competing tablet 7 inch and 10 inch tablet, the vast majority of which run Google's Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) tablet-optimized OS. The Galaxy Note's operational frustrations seem endemic to Android 2.2 (Froyo) and 2.3 (Gingerbread) tablets, such as the original Galaxy Tab: Shortcomings include relatively poorly implemented multitasking, cumbersome navigation, and an annoying Web browser. (Samsung's custom TouchWiz overlay improves on a few of Gingerbread's weaknesses.) In contrast, despite their own imperfections, Android 3.0 and 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) feel elegant and well-executed on tablets' larger displays.