It sounds to me that you need a device that can stand up like a laptop and has a keyboard (either integrated or BT). I have a Transformer 101 with the keyboard

It sounds to me that you need a device that can stand up like a laptop and has a keyboard (either integrated or BT). I have a Transformer 101 with the keyboard dock. The dock is awesome! Extra battery, USB port, and a great way to type long emails! Hardware: great, software not so much. Boot loader access is restricted in my TF101 (Asus provides an unlock tools for later/premium models but not mine) but luckily there is an open source, reversed unlocker letting me run Ubuntu! Ubuntu was a huge hassle to get working but a great dev environment. Asus took a few months with many delays to deliver 4.0. Rumor has it that it won't get 4.1 from Asus. So I would encourage you to look at a newer Transformer tablet with a keyboard but beware about future support. The Surface is almost guaranteed to have great support for a long time given MS's history. Keyboard probably isn't as nice (it's squishy, right?) but much more compact than a Transformer keyboard.