Your opinion on tablets

[Roxors]

For really mobile i have my phone for other stuff i have a laptop, tablets are just another toy imo

 

[Roze]

Moved discussion to the tablets forum

 

[gamul1]

For me - its not about it being a laptop/pc replacement. Its about it being a multi-purpose device centered around mainly entertainment.

My cell (droid inc) phone is awesome and I will enjoy it until it dies (or the contract runs out and I get an even cooler one). I don't want a tablet to replace this either. Even though a lot of what I want a tablet for I could do on my cell phone. But my cell phone is small. Reading on it is often less than desirable.

• I want a crystal clear screen that is pleasing on the eyes.
• I want large fonts for aging eyes.
• I want to read a book and not have to flip the page after 35 words.
• I want to play a quick game on something larger than a 3.7 inch screen
• I want to see a bit more of that email with the graph in it than I can now
• I would love to have a map with navigation on a 10 inch screen. Never mind how I am going to mount that sucker.
• I want to watch sports, or sports replays, or other web videos on a larger screen
• I would not mind watching a movie on the plane or train on one of these 10 inch screen. Whats nice is it could be downloaded and I would not have to deal with a dvd.
• I want to be able to check out some office documents with quick office, make a quick edit and send it back.
• It would be slick to let my kids each have one of these for quick and easy home work. Why not?
• I want ot browse the web on a portable device on something I don't have to squint on
• I want to be able to type on keys that are larger than 4 mm.
• I want to listen to my entire collection of music on on the go, while also browsing the web, or reading the news.
• And I don't want a kindle that is awesome at reading books, but not good for much else. Because I want my device to entertain me fully.
• I want to have fun - which I feel pretty comfortable I can do on a tablet.
• I could probably do much of this too on a iPad - but I want to have more control over what I put on my tablet for entertainment apps.

I guess I would say that the answer to your question really depends on your own limitations, expectations or how you interact with the world. If its of little use to you then entertain yourself in whatever way makes sense to you and let the rest of us entertain ourselves our way.

EDIT: Just had a discussion around why I want a tablet for the future. Talking about my laptop at work. and the need to reboot it every couple of days due to memory performance issues. Which led to the discussion of how painfully slow waiting for a computer to start up is. I want my work environment ot be just like a tablet/smartphone experience. Press a button, unlock the screen and you're ready to go. 2 seconds. Not 3 minutes.

Computers suck - the future will be tablets.

 

[alex182]

For me it's a matter of space. I spend about 10 months a year on ships and I have to take everything with me that I'll need for 5 months at a time in 1 bag. I have my big laptop for gaming and pr0n and the like, but it's a lousy e-book and doesn't get online. I have an e-book reader that is slow, b&w only, has issues with different book formats, and has a small screen. When you read 100+ pages an hour, paperbacks are just not feasable. I also have a phone that I can check my e-mail on when I get into the US ports, as long as I don't want to be able to reply.

For me, the tablet is 1 piece of tech that I can use for reading multiple formats of books that's easy on the eyes, a web browser that's big enough to view the whole page, an e-mail terminal that's comfortable enough to type on, yet something that's light enough and small enough to use in bed and doesn't take up valuable sock and jeans space in my sea bag.

My biggest limitations with the iPad are the lack of expandability in the memory (which cuts down the number of books I can load), the lack of a PC interface (You can only transfer approved file types via iTunes), and the market (I like to have options that the Apple store just doesn't have).

So, with all that in mind, I've been anxiously awaiting a good, 3g, 10" android pad. Unfortunately so many of the potential winners either don't have all the features I need (3g, Android market, capacitive touch screen, etc.) and the Samsung tab is becoming a bigger and bigger pile of lose as we get more info on it.

Slate PC's are just to big, full-blown tablets are too thick, hot, heavy, and power hungry for my needs.

But that's just me.

 

[Catfish]

When the iPad came out (and tablet devices that have been around for decade) I never thought they would be of much use. But then I noticed I could get periodical magazines in PDF format instead of hard copy paper. Constantly losing the paper magazines is a problem that I can solve using a tablet. I am a messy person all my life so things in my own house space are semi-categorized and crap lays in between. On my computer though, I keep everything in its place. So the more I can digitize my life the better.

I wouldn't want to use a phone to view my PDFs because they are too small and because I want a device I can also take notes on (typed notes). And I don't want a netbook because they are not discreet enough for when I want to take notes. The screens sit up on them, they have clicky keys.

A tablet fits this gap of technology for me perfectly.