I don't have one but I sure do want one.

Got the new iPad a couple weeks ago... I think I'm in love.

My wife got the first gen ones when it came out and I used that at first. But once the Geometry Wars leaderboard cleared and I was no longer the #1 player in the world (small brag), I lost interest and preferred using my laptop. I'd tell anyone that asked me why I didn't have one, "Because I love my laptop."

Recently though, I was deciding between a Macbook Air or an iPad for travel. I ended up with the iPad and glad I went with it. And for typing, I picked up this http://goincase.com/products/detail/origami-workstation-cl57934 stand... really nice.

I would never use a tablet or smartphone, let alone actually purchase one. Except maybe if I were 10 years old and I could play Daggerfall on the tablet.

Good consideration, and true from what limited things I've seen. I was thinking if you could install Windows on one then you might be able to tweak it, but dunno.
I'd love it if I could use a tablet-sized gizmo for my (specific, picky) needs. I'm hoping in another 3-5 years, they'll have something.

There's also wireless ones so no cables necessary. Really though, DVD on the go is impractical, so if you are stationary, there's no difference between peripheral and built in other then better battery life by making a peripheral.

I explained this in my post. All good tablets are ARM and therefore cannot run windows natively -- at least not until windows 8 WOA.

There's full on suites for photo editing, even think I read of a Photoshop port for tablets.

Do any of you guys who use tablets know of a decent stylus? I bought one that was about $20 and it's a nice metal one with a round rubber tip that works fine for most things (mainly keeping my fingers from smudging up the screen protector) but I'd like one with a finer tip that would make writing and drawing more accurate. This one isn't bad, but the tip is kind of wide for doing more precise things. I suppose I could get like a Nintendo DS stylus or something..lol Suggestions?

But it means more things to keep track of. I already have lots of camera gear/lenses/filter, tripods, and so on that I lug around. I know you could put all the tablet parts in a single bag, but it's still more separate stuff I have to keep an eye on/fiddle with. Not trying to be contrary, but it simply sounds like more hassle.

So they are working on something then...that's nice to hear. I have fave programs and I want to be able to use those programs. Not some app-like substitute.

Good to know, thanks. I'll look into the Photoshop one. I never like the sound of "port" (heh) but could be good for what I'd want.

The fine tipped styluses can only be used on tablets that support them.

I take it you don't understand how capacitive screens work?

No ordinary stylus will work because capacitive screens work on differences in charge capacity, which in and of itself has a limit on accuracy and also why the stylus are fat. To get around this some tablets allow for digitizers, but support is tablet specific and limited due to Apple telling people styli are uncool and doesn't have a digitizer.

The htc flyer is the most popular tablet with a digitizer

You don't seem to understand what I've been saying: Windows 8 tablets won't be able to run those applications as they will be ARM tablets which means all current applications won't run on them as they are compiled against the x86 architecture

Most likely not.
I'll ask hubs to explain it to me later. Anyway....that's too bad then. Oh well.

Boo, thwarted by science. Or technology. Or whatever :< lol.

I have an iPad 2, 16gb. I have had no problems with it and it detects wi-fi on a dime. My PC is fried so I've been using it for anything online.

You can think of it like the old powerbooks. The software that ran on those doesn't run on modern Macbooks because they are fundamentally different (Powerbooks were powerpc whereas mtcbooks are x86).

Windows up to now has been x86 But the tablets will be ARM as ARM is fundamentally superior than x86 in terms of staying cooler and using less power, both important factors for portable devices. There will be some x86 windows tablets just like there are now, But just like now they will svck by having bad battery life, run slow, or be incredibly expensive.

I took some weird tablets at a party once.

Did they make your pupils big or small?

I think my pupils stayed the same size but the rest of me got really big. And everybody else shrunk.

Hmm... strange over here if you're not carrying a tablet or smartphone of some sort, you're smaller than everyone else. Which I was pretty proud of before I got my Note.

It does sound like a notebook would be your best option. Although tablets may work out better in the vast majority of cases, there are still a few instances where the oldschool has the advantage. With time even those will be eaten into (as hardware gets more powerful, lighter, smaller [which is good even if you keep the body size the same] and the software expands in scope, etc.).

Yeah, also with the shift towards the laptop market favoring higher profits in ultrabooks, shedding the lower end as lost to tablets, it's going to get harder to find laptops with dvd readers built in. Every planned laptop for after windows 8 I've seen so far has no optical drive. Laptops became too much of a commodity, so the industry is trying to reinvent itself to get profit margins up by basing themselves off the macbook air.

Unless you need more processing power, more built-in peripherals, need to multi-boot different OS's (of course you can remote, but that doesn't work out for everything), or things of that nature. I still need to travel with a laptop if I need to do work on the road...tablets can't do everything I need to do yet.

...or people that need processing power, want upgradeablity, modularity, flexibility, and all of these things for a reasonable price. I would go crazy (and have a smaller bank account) if I had to deal with laptops as my primary computing devices. Sure, for productivity, web browsing, light multimedia, etc. they're fine, but to do my job, for example, I need an actual workstation. They're certainly more portable than desktops, but if you don't require portability they're inferior to desktops in pretty much every way possible. There's certainly nothing archaic about desktops...it's just that average users can get away with a laptop, and they don't know or don't care than they're not a good value compared to a desktop.

Heh..."port" is only a 4-letter word when it's done badly (or if you count the letters).

What about Medfield?

Not certain what you mean by "more built-in peripherals" because with Honeycomb/ICS Android actually has a pretty good base for support of peripheral bluetooth and USB devices, you also can multiboot them (android/linux). The one thing that isn't addressed is more processing power, hence why I said tablets marginalize laptops, not make them completely obsolete. For the majority, though, a tablet is superior to a laptop in every imaginable way. By the point where laptops start approaching superiority, they cost too much and still can't make it through my 10 hour school monday that I had this semester.

Time will tell, though I personally doubt it'll perform as well as ARM 9 SoCs in terms of raw power. It may start leveling off the battery inequality, though.

Not pupils as in friends, eye pupils.

Built-in, as in not separate devices. Things like more storage, optical drives, SD card slots (which some tablets have, but not all), keyboards that aren't painful to type on, etc. What's the point in having an extremely portable device if you have to carry around an extra bag full of external peripherals?

...but not Windows, which is where I start to have issues with proprietary software I have to use for work that isn't available for Linux.

A good $500 laptop still puts the $500 tablets to shame as far as RAM and processing power go. Battery is still an issue, so it really depends on how long you'll have no access to an outlet.

Yeah, it's really hard to say. Still, nobody believed that an x86 mobile SoC could give ARM a run for its money from a processing power/battery life standpoint, and the first generation pulled it off. Things tend to get better from there, but who knows...they may hit a wall at some point.

Well, short of optical drives, the asus transformer with the doc has all that (assuming more storage is allowed through both a micro and standard SD, which can easily be left in all the time). Keyboard on there is at least as good as any netbook keyboard, far superior to most I've used. Which just leaves optical drives which you can't really use on the go anyway.


technically you can. qemu is such wonderful software http://xkcd.com/934/

I'd have to vehemently disagree here. If Android was as heavy of a hitter and without as much hardware acceleration, you'd probably be correct, but given how optimized for media tablets are, video playback is flawless (1080p on the transformer prime with the Tegra3 SoC can go for 10 hours without stuttering before the battery finally gives out). It really shows in things like boot time, and system responsiveness in general. It's a case of more isn't always better and really shows the finer points of the RISC architecture IMO.

The Kindle Fire I know for a fact has a worse battery life than my laptop. Not all laptops are worse than Tablets. I do agree though that if you get a higher quality tablet, it could be more convenient and easier to carry around, but I know my laptop is better than a Kindle Fire. My brother has a Kindle Fire and a laptop, the same latop I do, and our laptops lasted 2 hours longer fully charged than the kindle.

I do wish I could afford a tablet, but I have better things to spend my money on.