What Are Tablets Good For?
 

Okay, I am wondering if I'm so blinded by my bigotry and bias that I am missing something here.

So, open my mind. The question is:

What are tablets good for?

For what sort of uses do you prefer a tablet, and for what do you prefer a laptop? When would you buy a tablet instead of a laptop? If you had to rely on only one as your only computer (not counting your phone), which would you choose?

Wi-Fi and offline applications.
Reading books, Netflix, YouTube, music.
I personally don't see the advantage. I have seen some professor's use them for power point for lectures.

It's a great surfing device - so much more natural to hold a flat device and use your finger to point, move, explore. When you are watching TV and see something you want to look up (fact/more details) it's so much more natural to grab the tablet and surf than flip open a laptop and sit it on your lap.

Our high school uses them for EVERYTHING. My son doesn't have any text books. Everything is loaded onto his school supplied Ipad. He does all of his assignments on it and then submits the assignments to his teachers all on the Ipad.

I personally believe tablets will be the PC's of the future for the workplace (and home). I foresee people taking their tablets home with them to work from home. When we return to the office, I believe we will be plugging our tablet into a docking station that will connect it to a larger screen, keyboard and mouse. All of which will be accessories required for us old farts. The youngsters will not need these and just work directly on the tablet.

Or all of this will be done with cell phones rather than tablets.

Its primarily the speed and ease of use and mobility access. Just as Don pointed out, when something pops up that you want to know... (directions, making dinner reservations, movies, or basically any info that you would google like who played Napoleon Dynamite, etc. ) it's much easier and much quicker to simply grab the iPad and get the info.

This^^.

It's not a binary choice, "Which would you choose?", as stated in the OP. The only reason I have an ipad is because my daughter bought me one for Christmas several years ago. Had no need for it, but it has become my standby device for much of what's stated above. Use it a lot for research while watching TV, checking email, and also taking photos around the house. It's a total PITA to type on so any lengthy communication is done on the laptop. I could easily live without it, but it has become a convenient resource--a supplement to my laptop.

ummm, that's been going on for years already! :)

Our school only does it at the high school level and son is a freshman. For an old fart like me it was a little shocking. However I assumed it was nothing new.

Tablets are great for consuming content - reading, watching video, etc. To actually create content - write letters (or code or whatever), edit/create images, etc. then you need the full input capabilities of a laptop or desktop.

This.

Need full keyboard to type. Although I do have a Bluetooth keyboard for the iPad, there are certain things I can't do:

Complex Excel (the Surface Pro might be able to do this)
Coding
Writing more than basic documents, Word to PDF
Full features of Outlook (again Surface Pro might work)

One reason. The torque app combined with a bluetooth obd2 adapter. Mounted my tablet on the dash, now I can read all my engines vitals supplied through the obd2 port. Real time temps, pressures and more. Perfect for track days.

Always have books loaded on my tablet. I take it everywhere. If I have to wait, I have a book to read. If WiFi available, check email, Pelican, web or whatever. Bigger screen than my phone. Laptop usually only leaves the house when on vacation.

Tablets are really all that the average individual needs.

Online reading and research.

Bill pay / account management.

Email.

Social and entertainment content.

When you think about it even a low end PC is overkill since it's capabilities are far in excess of what that consumer needs or will ever take advantage of.

In a nutshell, tablet users only need to consume content, not create it.

Edit: yeah, what the id10t said.;)SmileWavy

my tablet has a detachable keyboard [nextbook with w10]

The reason I ask is, when my daughter returns to college next year I'm going to buy her a new computer.

She has a MacBook Air 2014 13", I figure it can be her Netflix Spotify Youtube entertainment machine, probably will live on a side table connected to a monitor/TV.

So I'm thinking her next computer might be a MBP 13", a Surface Pro 4, or an iPad Pro.

She does a lot of writing, photography, photo editing and organizing, increasingly getting into digital art (vector drawing etc). Which machine sayeth you?

Go with the Mac book pro. Retina display and a full frame dslr is pretty nice combo.

Really depends on the software she is currently or will be using.

For drawing hard to beat a digitizer so surface or iPad pro if she likes the software offerings.

Vector, writing = laptop

Photo editing and organizing, for me that's still laptop territory.

Generally as a creation tool the nod goes to the laptop.

Depending on how involved her art / photo editing is you'll still want a laptop with lots of ram, a better GPU, and drive space.

I've been hoping Apple would make a convertible digitized laptop.

They keep disappointing me.

I keep an old ipad II in the garage for tunes and googling. Comes in handy during car projects.

+1
Lots of times I'll be reading emails on my iPad and get up to answer them on my laptop.

+1 Something to be said for the lazy ease of a mouse and a keyboard.

Possibly the budget will extend to a MBP 15" but I rather doubt it. If she ever needs a chine with beaucoup horsepower, I'll build her a PC box.

I used a convertible laptop w/ touch screen for a few years. I really didn't like it at all. The OS UI is the problem. To be touch-suitable, the controls and actions need to be different from what they need to be KB/mouse-suitable. I don't think iOS or macOS have solved that. I don't know if Windows has solved that.

Traveling....I use mine instead of a laptop frequently because of it's small size and weight. The Kindle Fire tablet has worked great for me. Does everything a laptop will do, and is lightweight.

Not simple touch screen.

Wacom digitizer for drawing.

For that specific purpose you want it to be convertible so you can orient any way you want.

Love my 21" Cintiq but kinda hard to put in my lap or take outside and sit under a tree with it.:(

The Cintiq Companion is a nice self contained unit but at only 13" it's spendy for what you get even with the price drop to $1,700.00 plus it's Win8.

Curious to see what the 16" Mobile Studio Pro is like but $3k for the i7 chipped unit is ridiculous.

Probably not English Professors or you wouldn't have improperly put an apostrophe in a plural word like professors. :) :) :)

Ha guilty. I like just pressing buttons, and that auto correct on Swype.

Agree. I've found something of a happy medium with my Thinkpad 10 and Windows. It's got lots of apps that let me use it like a tablet with the keyboard detached - Netflix, Kindle, Words with friends and Amazon Music. When I want to get work done, attach the keyboard and away you go. Where it falls short is portability - my Kindle Fire fits in a pocket of my motorcycle jacket, but I wouldn't want a smaller screen on my laptop anyway.

I have a nexus 7 tablet and I use it all of the time. As many have said, I use it for social media, reading books, read online newspapers, email etc. Anything beyond that, I use my desktop. It is small enough when I travel. I chose this model over an Apple equivalent because it was at the right price point for me

I see much fewer tablets out in the wild in the last several years. Around 2012 you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a dozen ipads in a typical airport, meeting, or starbucks.

I think alot of that is how big and fast phones have gotten. Id much rather type on a phone than a tablet.

Mostly reading... the convenience of getting my 10+ monthly magazines on a tablet, in minutes, for 1/3 the $ of Barnes and noble... same with books ! Also they are 'instant on" - for surfing, email, the occasional game... No waiting...

Tablets are completely useless. I bought one a couple years ago for visitors and it collects dust. I used it for surfing a couple nights and got tired of it fast.

What kills me is the inability to type. Even surfing, I need to put in search terms. I also prefer navigating with arrows over sweeping motions and pointing with my fingers. Maybe it doesn't matter if you can't type, but if you do 80 wpm, you'll not have the patience to type on a screen keyboard.

I have the surface for a work machine and practically never use it in tablet mode. It does work well as a laptop if you have a mouse.

G

Going back to the MBP, having only USB-C ports is going to be a real pain for users who need to connect to lots of stuff but aren't organized enough to always have the necessary dongles. Seems you need to carry dongles for standard USB, for HDMI, for SDXC, or the all in one dongle.

I'm organized enough to do this, but my daughter may not be. Maybe I'll find her a used 2015/early 2016 MBP and swap in a bigger SSD.

So with the MBP this thin, and the MBA apparently on its way out, what's the role of the MacBook (MB)? Seems like the next MB needs to be razor-thin and weightless, or what's the point of it?

It is also weird to me that there isn't a MBP model with 32GB RAM and all the different ports. Like a "Real Pro" version.

The MacBook with only one port (USB-C) has been a pain to use.
And the fact that they charge $120 ($CDN) - almost 10% of the whole laptop cost- for an adaptor so you can charge and use one USB port is an insult.
I also have trouble often where I have a device plugged into the adaptor's USB port, but it is not being recognized by the computer.
If the computer is shut off and I then plug in the charger to the charger port on the adaptor I quite often find out a few hours later or the next morning that the computer did not take a charge. Convenient. :mad: Battery life seems abnormally poor.
I really miss the MacBook Air at times. (killed it with a quarter glass of pinot noir) :(
The retina display and processor speed of new MacBook is stellar though.
Still haven't found enough of a reason to get an iPad- the lack of a real keyboard for input and using iOS is part of what's ho;ding me back.

A month back, I was on a one day business trip. I took only my 8" tablet. I also took a small keyboard and a bluetooth mouse.

The tablet has VPN so I can log into my business network. With that, I can remote connect to my desktop PC and do any serious work. I have updated CAD drawings and updated quotes this way.

On my trip to Mexico City last week, I brought my laptop, but never started it. I was able to do everything on my tablet. If this is my "plan", I should probably get a larger tablet.

But doesn't a tablet, a keyboard, and a mouse add up to as much weight and bulk as a slim laptop, plus its hard to juggle all three things on one lap?

My current work computer is an HP ultraportable, it is hardly bigger than a larger Tablet. I really hate it, I need a dongel for every conceivable connection and it only has 2 usb ports

Not really.

The tablet should be in a protective case / folio and those typically incorporate / accommodate a keyboard so the net effect is laptop like.

My tablet is used for entertainment. We find what we want to watch or listen to on the web and broadcast it to our Vizio 65.

I've never had a television with a browser, but I imagine it is somewhat the same.

I've got almost one of everything due to work, I love the tablet for surfing, reading emails and doing meetings. For laptops I prefer the Macbook Air, fast, light, long battery, great OS. If I had to only have one, that's tough, but I would pick the Air, but I would prefer Visio natively rather than via an emulator.
New surface or surface book would also be interesting, but a little two expensive.

No. Weight is under a pound. And you use the tablet by itself on a lap. The tablet and keyboard fit in my portfolio.