[colug-432] to get a tablet

[William Yang]

On 03/10/2012 10:14 AM, Rick Troth wrote:
> What do y'all think about tablets?
> 
> My wife and I want to get her dad something for his birthday.  We're
> thinking he might like a tablet.  The primary function would be
> gaming, probably movies, but also web surfing.
> 
> He's not an Apple aficionado, but would be happy with an iPad.  My
> sister's family has an iPad and they like it.  But what about the
> Samsung?  And Sony, usually overpriced, seems to have something
> reasonable.
> 
> Then too ... maybe he would like a "convertible", but they've been
> using ordinary laptops for so long that a convertible doesn't seem
> like a substantial change.  (And might be cumbersome.)

My wife has an iPad2.  She mostly loves it, and it performs a substantial
amount of the applications her laptop used to perform.  The handwriting app
she uses (Penultimate) is excellent, and has allowed the tablet to replace
much of the paper in her life.  We have a bit of a love-hate relationship
with it (I don't like its sync functionality), but I have to say it's an
impressive platform, depending on the range of use you want to put it to.

In my mind, the lack of more traditional keyboard/mouse I/O is a serious
shortcoming for the iPad and other tablets.  I'm sure others have mentioned
that tablets are primarily *receive* mode devices -- if you generate a lot
of content for transmission, you tend to run into limits imposed by the
input characteristics of the platform.  This can be worked around --
convertables, external keyboards and I/O devices, etc, but it all adds
weight and a certain kind of cumbersome-ness to the platform.

	-Bill
-- 
William Yang
wyang at gcfn.net