Tablets - Yay or Nay

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I used to be a doubter, but the $128 32GB HP TouchPad converted me
Will it replace a netbook / ultra-portable? No, but it sure will complement it.

WebOS phone + WebOS tablet (w/IPS screen) + Alienware M11x = everything I need on the road

 

[rockyct]

Been using my TouchPad in WebOS for >4hours straight and still have 60% charge. :thumbsup:

Android is installed, but WebOS is better in many ways.

I really like my $99 touchpad and I've left WebOS on. Android just seems overall pretty finicky to me and WebOS has the main apps I want.

Tablets are really just computer toys. They are nice to have, but I personally would feel guilty if I spent more than $200 on one. I was lucky with getting a Touchpad, but the Kindle Fire would be another good option.

 

[Pia]

Sure they have their uses. My "dream device" would be a tablet with a proper stylus, a Transformer-like detachable keyboard, running OS X.

 

[Jeff7]

I hate "typing" on touch screens. There is no replacement for a real keyboard (at least not yet). Tablets are nifty, but really I'd rather have a power efficient laptop running a not locked down OS.

Having used a tablet, it makes me appreciate how lousy the TNG/DS9/Voyager Star Trek work environment must have been: Touchscreens everywhere, just because the show's producers didn't like to build sets with lots of buttons.

I really like my $99 touchpad and I've left WebOS on. Android just seems overall pretty finicky to me and WebOS has the main apps I want.

Tablets are really just computer toys. They are nice to have, but I personally would feel guilty if I spent more than $200 on one. I was lucky with getting a Touchpad, but the Kindle Fire would be another good option.

My TouchPad does manage to pull extra duty as a Skype phone, so it's at least doing something kind of useful.
(I wish they didn't make the thing out of freakin' Teflon or whatever it is - it slides off of any surface. Form over function, yet again.)

 

[Geekbabe]

I have a rooted Nook Color running CM7, also have a Galaxy Tab 10.1, I have greatly enjoyed both. The Nook is our traveling reader, I use the GT most regularly, the screen is beautiful, love to use it to stream Netflix & Amazon videos.

 

[shortylickens]

Wrong forum.
Re-post.

I have had several of them and none were quite good enough. Am thinking about the Samsung Note but its not in America yet and will be expensive when it is.

 

[DaTT]

It is basically a large smart phone. I have no use for them.

 

[mmntech]

Tablets are ideal form people who don't need a computer, which is surprisingly a lot. My iPad will do 99% of what my mom uses her laptop for. Tablets are what net books should have been to begin with.

I love my iPad. It's definitely one of the best computers I've ever bought. Great for web surfing. I also take mine to work and read the paper on it. Just wish Apple would toss a gig of RAM in there. As for productivity, I do a lot of writing so it fits the bill perfectly.

As for the Android tablets, I really can't speak for them. Tough they look very nice. The PlayBook is just awful. RIM is stupid to sell them to regular customers. It should be an enterprise product only. As for Windows tablets, I don't think a full desktop OS is suitable for this role. They're just net books with touch screens, and the same drawbacks. Microsoft would be better adapting Windows Phone 7. I guess that's what Windows 8 will be.

 

[Elganja]

tablets are great for consumption (i.e. reading emails, web surfing) and playing simple games. but for any kind of "real" work, I still use my laptop or desktop (i need a real keyboard and a mouse)

with that said, lately I've been finding myself using my phone more for consumption then my tablet

 

[sdifox]

great toy

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I used to be a doubter, but the $128 32GB HP TouchPad converted me

This. I use my Touchpad every day and my home laptop rarely gets used for basic browsing and email.

I would never pay $500+ for a tablet, but $250 or under is a decent price.

 

[Wyndru]

Our school (PC environment) is starting to get Ipad2s for all of the students. Elementary for now, but middle and high school get them next.

The kids basically just play games on them. There are some educational apps, but they are all in game form. Also, the teachers want them to be what they aren't...laptops. We get questions about how to access their office files on the network, how to capture and save videos and files on the Ipad, saving to their flash drive etc...

Our district recently updated our webpage to rely heavily on flash also, so basically nothing works on the Ipads now.

They don't understand that these devices are very different than laptops. Total waste of money IMO. Maybe down the road these devices will become more useful, but for now we are just pissing away money for devices that the teachers don't really want.

 

[lxskllr]

Our school (PC environment) is starting to get Ipad2s for all of the students. Elementary for now, but middle and high school get them next.

An electronic school has long been a dream of mine. I think some kind of convertible would be much better for this application. Of course it should only run free software, and they should be working on free educational material. You gotta start somewhere, and you gotta do it right.

 

[rudder]

I've gotten a couple cheap tablets lately, and while I've had some fun playing, I still consider them toys. They're underpowered, underfeatured, and don't come close to a netbook for usability, and versatility.

Opinions?

Asus EEE transformer with keyboard. These were $350 on black friday...but still can be found cheap. The $100 tablets... well you get what you pay for... they don't do a whole lot.

When I am browsing for scores, news stories, tickets, or whatever and sitting on the couch... I now prefer a tablet.

 

[Ichinisan]

I hate "typing" on touch screens. There is no replacement for a real keyboard (at least not yet). Tablets are nifty, but really I'd rather have a power efficient laptop running a not locked down OS.

Nearly all tablets support a Bluetooth keyboard, and full-size Bluetooth keyboards are available. I've seen a few different Rocketfish (Best Buy) Bluetooth keyboards that have a 100% standard full-size layout.

 

[rh71]

casual ipad user here for living room web surfing and late nights in bed with netflix - works great. I don't like typing on it much though, would just browse forums, but not participate when I'm on it.

would've taken me at least twice as long to post this on it.

 

[Ichinisan]

... TouchPad ... I wish they didn't make the thing out of freakin' Teflon or whatever it is - it slides off of any surface. ...

I bought the $200 bundle from QVC that included the 32GB TouchPad, HP fitted case, and Touchstone inductive charging stand. The case works with the inductive charger, has two standing positions, and an awesome texture that does not slide. I rest my TouchPad of the dash of my car while driving up steep, bumpy inclines and it doesn't budge. I really think the designers meant for it to be used with both the OEM HP case and the Touchstone charger. If you're missing those, you aren't getting the full TouchPad experience.

Anyway, there is a major problem with the OEM case. It starts deforming after 1.5 weeks. I'm still using it, but there's a thin strip of material bowing-out around the microUSB port and the corner near the volume buttons is getting loose. Searching online, this seems to happen to everyone.

If you don't use the OEM case, get a full-body protector made of ZAGG-like material. That "orange peel" texture sticks to everything.

 

[PottedMeat]

i use my touchpad every day - streaming/reading documents/email/browsing

worth $99 - definitely. $499 - hell no

(I wish they didn't make the thing out of freakin' Teflon or whatever it is - it slides off of any surface. Form over function, yet again.)

the $20 hp case helps a lot with this. it's made of a rubbery foam material that covers the bottom and protects the sides too - especially the thin plastic around the speakers.

 

[Wyndru]

the $20 hp case helps a lot with this. it's made of a rubbery foam material that covers the bottom and protects the sides too - especially the thin plastic around the speakers.

You must have a different HP case than I do. Mine doesn't cover the speakers, and the thin plastic under the left speaker cracked . I've heard a lot of people have had this issue. I'd send it back but I don't want a refurb that is even worse.

 

[rcpratt]

It is basically a large smart phone. I have no use for them.

This is basically my opinion. When they offer more functionality than my phone, I'll look into it.

 

[PottedMeat]

You must have a different HP case than I do. Mine doesn't cover the speakers, and the thin plastic under the left speaker cracked . I've heard a lot of people have had this issue. I'd send it back but I don't want a refurb that is even worse.

hmm i was wrong - it doesn't cover the speakers, but it does protect the outward facing sides. i've found that the cover bent back does protect the speaker side from light impacts

we're talking about this one right? http://www.costcentral.com/proddetail/HP_TouchPad_Case/FB343AAAC3/11387527/

mine has a small crack from the speaker toward the usb port ( like ~1/2cm )

 

[ViviTheMage]

tablets are pretty useful, but I would only go android, or ios at this point.

 

[Specop 007]

They do some thing very, very well. Some other things they cannot do at all.

Its up to the individual user to decide if a tablet fits his uses. I can see it being a great replacement for light duties such as email, web browsing or maybe watching a movie. Good luck consoling in to a device with one though.

They wont replace a laptop anytime soon, but they definitely compliment one very well.

 

[CZroe]

I bought Shadowgun on my Sony Ericsson Xperia Play (Android 2.3 Gingerbread) and found it tedious to play even with Xperia optimized gamepad controls. I loaded it up on my brother's HP TouchPad running CyanogenMod7 (Gingerbread) and played through it with minimal issue. It glitches when you use the screenshot function (a needed special effect stops working), the title-screen doesn't quite fit the screen, and the software approximation of the hardware Android buttons causes a misalignment of where you need to touch on the screen to select certain weapons (easily fixed by hiding or unhiding it). It was a console-quality gaming experience except that the game was extremely corny, but what do I expect for $5? I thought it was cool that I could simply add my Google account the same as my brother's to access my purchases and his on the same device.

Oh yeah: Android has a little bit of trouble with reliable touch-screen input filtering so it can sometimes make aiming difficult (seems like a dead zone).

I also want to look into booting two completely different WebOS partitions so that I can have my own set of bookmarks, email accounts, cookies, etc on my brother's TouchPad. as smartly as WebOS appears to have been designed, I'm surprised they didn't consider the multi-user scenario... especially after seeing how popular iPads are with the whole family.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I use my ipad 2 a lot as a couch companion to look up stuff and post on forums while I'm watching TV. I do a lot of reading on it in the kindle app. I watch netflix on it while washing dishes or sitting outside waiting to flip burgers on the grill. I use remote potato to stream blu ray rips from my pc to wherever I am and to schedule windows media center recordings or football games or whatever there is that I don't want to miss. I did a large part of my christmas shopping idly sifting through amazon's window shop app while watching football over the last couple weekends. I loved having it by my side while playing borderlands so I could look up the stats of various pieces of new loot I found to judge how good my finds were. I tethered it to my phone so my little brother could surf the internet during a recent long drive. I've spent hundreds of hours gaming on it by now. I don't know about other tablets, but there are some truly first quality games coming out for the ipad these days.

People say that tablets are purely consumption devices, but I don't see why you couldn't pair one with a bluetooth keyboard and use one of the better word processing apps to fulfill 100% of your document creation needs. I'm certain there are other apps that have at least some use in other creation areas as well, but that's not really why I bought mine anyway. I consume a lot of media, and in that specific arena no netbook can match my ipad 2 in speed, portability, or usability. It has literally become something I find myself reaching for every few minutes for whatever reason. I don't think I can be without a tablet of some kind from now on.

Edit: On a side note, I can see how a cheap tablet would be nothing but frustration. If you're serious about getting a tablet, don't settle for some kind of cheap knockoff like that $100 tablet Ars reviewed a few months ago. To a certain extent, you really do seem to get what you pay for in this area.