I'm wondering if such a beast exists: A relatively modern device in the tablet form factor, where the screen is big enough to display an 8.5" x 11" page at actual size?

Either a true tablet form factor like the Win8 tablets coming out now, or, a laptop with a fold-around keyboard so it folds completely flat. Or hell, even an Android or WinRT tablet, but I'm pretty sure none of the iPad/Droid/RT devices are anywhere near big enough.

Everyone who uses sheet music or chord charts these days is moving all their stuff to iPads/Androids running software like ForScore. That's all well and good, but the iPad/Android approach has serious problems for me:

• All the sheet-music-display software for iPads/Androids that I've seen (such as ForScore or others) requires a file format conversion to either PDF or to a proprietary format. You can't display your chord chart or sheet music in its original editable format (in my case, chord/lyric charts in Winword .DOC files).
• Lack of direct access to the file system means that you must do some kind of an import step in the sheet music software. Some of the software will support DropBox directly, which is real good, but still not quite as useful as copying the files directly.
• Cannot *source edit* the charts/music in their original format other than scribbling annotations atop them.
• If you annotate the charts by scribbling notes atop the charts, your annotations are locked into that software, you can't get them back to the original source documents. Any annotations are now in that program's proprietary file format. Even if they weren't proprietary files, because of the lack of direct-access-to-the-filesystem, you now don't have an easy way of transporting those annotations back to a source computer where the original files were composed.
• iPads, Android, and WindowsRT tablets are just too friggin small. At that size, you need the chart too close to your face to be useful for the way I use my chord charts. When I use chord charts, I stand really far back from the music stand and keep an eye on the chart out of the corner of my eye, and an iPad or Droid is just too small for that.

Right now I'm experimenting with one of my company's very old tablet PCs running WinXP tablet edition. The device is a Motion Computing M1400. This is actually QUITE CLOSE to what I'm looking for. It's close enough that I'm using it as a proof of concept (the "concept" being that I can somehow someday go paperless for my chord charts). Its 12"-diagonal screen is the correct aspect ratio, and when I display an 8.5x11 page on it, it's starting to come close to actual size. Not quite, but much closer than an ipad or droid would be. (Ideally, for a 4:3 screen like that, I'd want about 14 inches diagonal for Actual Size display and I'd be happy with 13.) Because the M1400 runs Windows, I can simply copy my .DOC files to it and display them. I even have a fairly fancy Word VBA macro that handles the process of setting up playlists and paging through the charts in a live performance setting (that was the thing I asked for "Save As" dialog box help in another thread recently).

If I don't find something better than that M1400, I will ask my company if I can buy it from them, and just use it for this purpose. (Heck, I'm thinking it was destined for the recycling rack to begin with.) The problem is, the thing is old and no longer supported, and Motion Computing no longer carries things like extra batteries for it (I checked). I found a replacement battery from one third party company but I've got no idea how good it would be. I'd like something new, something actively supported, something lighter, that I don't have to tether to a power supply, and that has enough CPU/RAM to run Win7 or Win8.

Okay, so there's a billion Win8 tablets coming out right now in all sorts of different sizes. I should be able to use one of them, right? Well, here's the problem. Their screens are all 16x9 ratio. Our fascination with watching DVDs on our computers has done this to us: Every computer made today has a 16x9 screen. (Even the ones made by Motion Computing.)

Okay, sure, so you can still display an 8.5x11 page in portrait mode on a 16x9 screen. There will be a gap above and below it, sure, but the page will display. True, but the problem with that aspect ratio is that you have to have such a massive screen to reach 8.5 inches in width. In order to view that 8.5x11 page at Actual Size, you need a screen that is more than 17 inches diagonal.

Does anyone make modern 16:9 tablets, for US sale, with screens in the neighborhood of 17 inches diagonal?

Anyone know of a relatively modern device (i.e., likely to be still supported with regard to replacement parts and batteries) with an NTSC (4:3) aspect screen in the neighborhood of 13-14 inches diagonal?

I'm having trouble finding what I want via Google.