10 reasons to buy a tablet, and 5 to not buy a tablet

[Pliablemoose]

So before you break out the credit card, let’s talk about a few reasons to buy a tablet… and a few reasons not to.
1. Tablets make great e-readers. Although many would complain that the reading experience isn’t nearly as focused as single-purpose e-ink devices, and the text isn’t as legible, these drawbacks haven’t stopped users from cracking open PDFs, comics, long web articles, and so on tablets. Plus kids books are fun in full color, something Kindle can’t yet beat.
2. Tablets are portable productivity stations. There’s nothing like a calendar and an email window on a big screen. Although many of our phones now run PIM applications, the real estate afforded by a tablet makes for a far superior experience.
3. Tablets are better than older laptops. If you don’t need to type a lot, tablets will handle more content than a two-year-old laptop, and there are more modern apps and games.
4. Tablets are great for meetings. While you should probably paying attention during meetings, tablets are a great way to take notes unobtrusively and, when things get boring, play Angry Birds on mute.
5. Tablets are great for sharing photos and 1-on-1 presentations. Tablets are excellent for a communal photo sharing experience and are a boon for insurance adjusters, real estate folks, and salespeople. Having everything in front of you in cool little device sure beats firing up a laptop and running a presentation.
6. Tablets are great for movies and music. There’s nothing better in the car for kids than a copy of Cars or Dora on an iPad. Our kids love it and a tablet costs a bit less than installing soon-to-be-obsolete DVD-powered LCDs in the headrest. I also enjoy taking the iPad on a plane for movies, a job that used to go to the iPod Touch.
7. Tablets are cheaper than a new laptop. Your old coffee table laptop died and you’re thinking about a new netbook. Don’t bother. Tablets, as we said before, are on par or more powerful than a standard ~$500 laptop.
8. Tablets don’t crash. Or at least when they do crash it’s not a big deal. A quick restart is is all it takes to get them back on track.
9. Tablets are good for travel. Tablets usually work with Wi-Fi and 3G networks and the large screen and storage space is great for maps, guides, and dictionaries. Think of your tablet as a Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.
10. Tablets are just cool. They make you feel like you’re from the future.
And now, Five Reasons Tablets Aren’t Ready 1. Are tablets as portable as the phone you already have? You can stick your phone in your pocket and never know it’s there, but can you do the same with an iPad or TouchPad? I don’t think so, unless your name happens to be Baggin’ Saggin’ Barry. Is carrying an extra bag to holster your tablet the end of the world? Clearly not, no, but don’t try to tell me it’s as portable as my handy little Android (or whatever) phone when it’s patently not.
2. Where are the games? And by games I don’t mean things like Angry Birds, with all due respect to our fine feathered friends. Will I be able to play 64-play multi-player in Battlefield with a tablet? Will I be able to waste hundreds of hours playing World of Warcraft? What about Crysis 2? Tablets may have their place in the world, but playing real games to the fullest will always require a discrete GPU-backed PC.
3. How much work can you do on one of these things? Does they run Photoshop? How long will it take to render video? My guess is that my desktop PC, with its overclocked (to 4.0GHz) quad-core processor and hundreds of gigabytes of free space, will be able to render a video 800 times in succession before a tablet can render a video just once.
4. “You can browse the Web with a tablet while watching TV on your couch! And movies look great on them!” All fair points, but I can already browse the Web on my couch with my battle-tested laptop, so why get another device to do the same thing? That doesn’t make much sense, does it? As for movies, well, I prefer watching them on with a proper setup—Blu-ray player, big screen TV, surround sound, the works—as opposed to watching them cramped on a train, or even hunched over in bed.
5. Something better will come along in a few months. Remember when netbooks were all the rage a couple of years ago? The future of computing, and so forth. You barely see them mentioned anymore, and that’s because tablets are the new soup du jour. In four years we’ll all be writing “Remember tablets?” articles, lamenting having spent all that money on a silly piece of transitionary technology.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/12/10-reasons-to-buy-a-tablet-and-5-reasons-not-to/

I liked # 10 the most

10. Tablets are just cool. They make you feel like you’re from the future.

 

[sjwaste]

Gotta tell you, the Nook Color with Honeycomb is very, very nice. I really can't wait to see when an AOSP build happens, because even the extracted emulator image is great.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

7. Tablets are cheaper than a new laptop. Your old coffee table laptop died and you’re thinking about a new netbook. Don’t bother. Tablets, as we said before, are on par or more powerful than a standard ~$500 laptop.

lol. My $350 4 year old laptop is more powerful than an iPad, compared to a new $500 Core i3 laptop that statement couldn't be more wrong.

 

[Phobic9]

Gotta tell you, the Nook Color with Honeycomb is very, very nice. I really can't wait to see when an AOSP build happens, because even the extracted emulator image is great.

I'm really tempted to get one of these right now but I hear that the usability just isn't ready... yet. I sold the iPad last night and I'm looking for a new toy.

 

[sjwaste]

I'm really tempted to get one of these right now but I hear that the usability just isn't ready... yet. I sold the iPad last night and I'm looking for a new toy.

Depends on what you want. If you root it and start installing things that B&N didn't intend, yeah, it's going to have some bugs. Mine is as much a toy as a reader, but I wasn't going to turn down the opportunity to try out Honeycomb if it was sitting right there and relatively easy to install.

Battery life isn't great, there are odd issues with Google Talk, the market took some fixing (mostly cache/data clears and reboots), etc. But that all happened in the span of a couple of hours last night, and this morning I was reading on it again.

It's hard to describe why you would run a very beta OS build, but if you are the type that likes to fool around with your gadgets, its a good choice. The Nook Color is without a doubt the best Android tablet on the market right now anyway - and a damn good reader too.

 

[akugami]

I think the reasons for not getting a tablet aren't really in line with why one should get a tablet.

Take #1 of why tablets aren't ready. Why are you comparing it to a phone when you've been, for the most part, comparing it to a laptop or larger mobile device like a portable DVD player? I mean, if I was to pick up a tablet today, it'd be to replace my laptop and not my phone.

#2, Where are the games. I think the games are coming. But I think it'll be slower coming on the iPhone than on Android. Recent releases have had some really nice looking games. Rage, Devil May Cry, Infinity Blade, Lara Croft, Sacred Odyssey, and even Battlefield. Now, these games look great although they may not be as full featured as their console or PC cousins just yet. One can easily imagine that day coming on future tablets.

#3. I think that laptops will do be better at certain types of work. Typing is obviously faster on an actual keyboard for one. Stuff like Powerpoint or Excel would definitely be more suited to a laptop or desktop. Instead I'd argue that it's a wash depending on the type of work you want to do. Certain types of work do transition well to tablets. For instance, let's say I'm a photographer on the go. I want to do some quick edits on some RAW files. Load up the files on my iPad (probably through wifi or a cardreader). Note that currently I don't think there are any RAW editors but most of the time you're tweaking the RAW rather than doing any wholesale changes like in Photoshop. If you've ever worked with something like Lightroom you'll know what I'm talking about. This is a type of task that should work well equally well on a tablet or laptop so long as your device is sufficiently powerful (next gen dual core tablets). And one can always add something like a Bluetooth keyboard or a docking station for when heavy typing and mouse usage is needed. Something like the Motorola Atrix.

#4. I think it's easier holding a tablet to browse the web in bed than a laptop. Most laptops also run hotter than a tablet.

#5. I don't think something better will come along any time soon. Netbooks were the rage because most people realized all they needed to do was type some documents (such as for schoolwork) or browse the web and do some email. They didn't need a hulking 5lb 14" monstrosity to do so. A 2lb+ device even if it was a bit small in screen sized sufficed. It was also easy on the back and didn't lighten your pocket as much. Netbooks weren't really "new" devices but rather an extension of the laptop market.


Tablets aren't suitable for many uses but for what they're good at, I don't see them being replaced any time soon. I don't see myself picking up a tablet until they get a high res display similar to the one on the iPhone 4.

 

[Raduque]

The only reason I need to not buy a tablet is Cellular Carriers.

With very very few exceptions, all the decent/high-end tablets are carrier branded. Everything else is cheap garbage not worth owning.

 

[Bryf50]

3. Tablets are better than older laptops. If you don’t need to type a lot, tablets will handle more content than a two-year-old laptop, and there are more modern apps and games.

7. Tablets are cheaper than a new laptop. Your old coffee table laptop died and you’re thinking about a new netbook. Don’t bother. Tablets, as we said before, are on par or more powerful than a standard ~$500 laptop.

Lol wut. A modern tablet is about as powerful as a decade old laptop. I doubt you could buy a new laptop today at any price thats not more powerful then an ARM powered tablet.

 

[DivideBYZero]

lol. My $350 4 year old laptop is more powerful than an iPad, compared to a new $500 Core i3 laptop that statement couldn't be more wrong.

Lol wut. A modern tablet is about as powerful as a decade old laptop. I doubt you could buy a new laptop today at any price thats not more powerful then an ARM powered tablet.

You guys need to watch this video for two minutes then link me to a video with a laptop doing exactly the same feat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=sI_kbqrlbgc#t=363s

 

[Pliablemoose]

You guys need to watch this video for two minutes then link me to a video with a laptop doing exactly the same feat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=sI_kbqrlbgc#t=363s

Damn it, after some retail units get reviewed, I could see replacing my nook

 

[Fingolfin269]

The #3 reason to not own one is kind of the one reason that holds me back. It's not so much about the lack of productivity/work applications as it is the lack of a keyboard to do things like write emails (or this message) efficiently.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

You guys need to watch this video for two minutes then link me to a video with a laptop doing exactly the same feat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=sI_kbqrlbgc#t=363s

That wold be a piece of cake on a Core i3 370 laptop. I can't link you to an identical video because a laptop running a few OpenGL demos simultaneously isn't impressive so no one has bothered to make a video of it.

I like the playbook but the hardware is primitive compared to a Core 2 Duo from 2006 much less a new nehalem or Sandy Bridge based system.

 

[Spicedaddy]

They're cool gadgets and I'll surely pick one up when they get cheaper (200-300$), but I can't see the use as a work tool when I already have a smartphone and a small laptop.

Tablets have the functionality of a smartphone, and their portability isn't much better than an 11" notebook.

 

[DivideBYZero]

That wold be a piece of cake on a Core i3 370 laptop. I can't link you to an identical video bvecase no one would be impressed by a few low res OpenGL demos running on a modern laptop.

I like the playbook but the hardware is primitive compared to a Core 2 Duo from 2006 much less a new nehalem or Sandy Bridge based system.

So link me to a video of an i3 running 4 OpenGL apps @ 1024x600 @ 60fps each at the same time. And as for the demos, one is Quake 3 and another is a shader demo, hardly simple stuff.

Pretty funny that you're now reaching for Sandy Bridge... I thought you were talking four year old laptops, or a basic i3. :sneaky:

Anyhow, you're just arguing for the hell of it after I showed you up.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

So link me to a video of an i3 running 4 OpenGL apps @ 1024x600 @ 60fps each at the same time. And as for the demos, one is Quake 3 and another is a shader demo, hardly simple stuff.

Pretty funny that you're now reaching for Sandy Bridge... I thought you were talking four year old laptops, or a basic i3. :sneaky:

Anyhow, you're just arguing for the hell of it after I showed you up.

Quake 3 isn't difficult, my 6 month old smartphone can run it at 60fps without a problem.

Tell you what, to simplify things lets use a simpler benchmark so it will be easier to find equivalent results, how about linpack performance? A Core i3 370M is good for 25,350 MFLOPs on average. I haven't found results for OMAP 4 yet but Tegra 2 is only good for ~36 MFLOPs to put things in perspective.

I mentioned Sandu Bridge to indicate just how inferior Cortex A9 is compared to Intel's latest, I have no problem sticking with a base i3 for performance comparisons.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Quake 3 isn't difficult, my 6 month old smartphone can run it at 60fps without a problem.

Tell you what, to simplify things lets use a simpler benchmark so it will be easier to find equivalent results, how about linpack performance? A Core i3 370M is good for 25,350 MFLOPs on average. I haven't found results for OMAP 4 yet but Tegra 2 is only good for ~36 MFLOPs to put things in perspective.

I mentioned Sandu Bridge to indicate just how inferior Cortex A9 is compared to Intel's latest, I have no problem sticking with a base i3 for performance comparisons.

Can your smartphone run four instances ofQ3 at the same time? No. Can your i3 laptop?

And bringing up the latest i5 and i7 is pointless. Keep to the topic.

 

[Wonderful Pork]

Can you're smartphone run four instances ofQ3 at the same time? No. Can your i3?

Waiting.

Arguing about what something can do is useless. When is the last time somebody swapped between 4 simultaneous games of quake 3? My car CAN go 110+ mph, I've only done it once (just to see if it could).

If a tablet (or any piece of hardware) can fit into my day to day workflow and make my life easier I'm going to buy it, regardless of the specs. Currently none of them can do that. Its the little things (like buttons to control the radio on my steering wheel) which really make the experience great, not horsepower - unless you're racing.

Lets get a stylus w/ capacitive touch & glass screen on something, then we'll talk. Then I can ditch my laptop AND my notebook for day-to-day stuff. Not the crap stylii (styluses?) that are out now, but a genuine, supported, handwriting recognition tablet, with glass & capacitive touch.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Can your smartphone run four instances ofQ3 at the same time? No. Can your i3 laptop?

Waiting.

Smartphone - AFAIK Froyo doesn't allow you to run multiple instaces of Quake 3. My phone does have the same gpu as the Playbook though.

i3 laptop - I don't have access to an i3 system at this time so i can't prove it one way or another. It shouldn't have a problem with it though.

Did you deliberately ignore the fact that a i3 has ~700x the floating point performance of Tegra 2?

 

[foghorn67]

I am buying a tablet soon, however it won't replace my laptop simply because inputing is still a crap shoot.
I can't wait until they can figure out a capacitive screen that can take a stylus with a broad range of pressure. Think ipad+Wacom tablets.
Then artists, photographers, writers, students can truly ditch the laptop.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Smartphone - AFAIK Froyo doesn't allow you to run multiple instaces of Quake 3. My phone does have the same gpu as the Playbook though.

i3 laptop - I don't have access to an i3 system at this time so i can't prove it one way or another. It shouldn't have a problem with it though.

Did you deliberately ignore the fact that a i3 has ~700x the floating point performance of Tegra 2?

Your phone is a core short and only an Cortex A8 and of course your phone cannot run multiple instances, that was my point, Tablets are becoming powerful, even if you don't like it.

As for i3 floating point, who cares if you can't do anything you want with it? My point was you cannot do with your i3 what you can on these gen 2 tablets. My claim is that tablets have power in excess of "four year old laptops". That was what YOU claimed they were on a par with, and I assert that you are wrong.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Your phone is a core short and only an Cortex A8 and of course your phone cannot run multiple instances, that was my point, Tablets are becoming powerful, even if you don't like it.

As for i3 floating point, who cares if you can't do anything you want with it? My point was you cannot do with your i3 what you can on these gen 2 tablets. My claim is that tablets have power in excess of "four year old laptops". That was what YOU claimed they were on a par with, and I assert that you are wrong.

They are becoming powerful compared to their predecessors sure, the notion that Cortex A9 is competitive with a modern laptop processor however is beyond absurd. Also that floating point performance has very real implications, try transcoding a full length movie on a Playbook and see how long it takes. Can you run Bad Company 2 on a tablet? How about a simple game like Minecraft? Can it run Visual Studio or Eclipse? To me it sounds like there are a whole lot of things that a laptop can do that a tablet cannot.

You also misquoted me I said a 4 year old laptop is more powerful than a iPad which is certainly true. Simply looking at the processor architectures (Conroe vs Cortex A8) shows just how primitive the tablet is by comparison.

 

[zmatt]

Yeah, car guys have a saying that goes there is no replacement for displacement. I would wager that most pc processors from this last decade would outrun your arm chips. Definitley anything k8 and newer.

Sent from my Samsung Captivate.

 

[DivideBYZero]

They are becoming powerful compared to their predecessors sure, the notion that Cortex A9 is competitive with a modern laptop processor however is beyond absurd. Also that floating point performance has very real implications, try transcoding a full length movie on a Playbook and see how long it takes. Can you run Bad Company 2 on a tablet? How about a simple game like Minecraft? Can it run Visual Studio or Eclipse? To me it sounds like there are a whole lot of things that a laptop can do that a tablet cannot.

You also misquoted me I said a 4 year old laptop is more powerful than a iPad which is certainly true. Simply looking at the processor architectures (Conroe vs Cortex A8) shows just how primitive the tablet is by comparison.

If you're transcoding anything on a tablet you're missing the point of the device.

However, I can see no reason why you can't run Eclipse on PlayBook, Minecraft doesn't look special and there is no reason why BC2 couldn't be ported.

Also, OMAP 4 is A9, not A8.

 

[zerocool84]

Yeah, car guys have a saying that goes there is no replacement for displacement. I would wager that most pc processors from this last decade would outrun your arm chips. Definitley anything k8 and newer.

Sent from my Samsung Captivate.

You cannot compare the two. I don't know why people keep doing it. Two totally different things. One is for mobile and one is for desktop. Made to do different things. That's like complaining about a Toyota Pruis getting stuck off-road when a Jeep Wrangler can easily do it.

 

[mammador]

Tablets are poo, and something I don't get or see the real point of.

This is for a number of reasons. Every computer platofrm one can think of is by definition built to meet a user requirement. Any systems development methodology is based on that fact. So what is the requirement for a tablet? Web browsing, social networking, etc.? Wll why not just buy a portable netbook? Isn't that why netbooks w Bere invented?

Also, if one wants one to organise events or appointments, then why not just get a smartphone? Even a feature phone can do this, right?

Tablets are bollocks, and Jobs' marketing team simply saw an opportunity to capitalise on gullibility lol..