Posted on 12/26/2011 9:31:41 AM PST by pgkdan
I need a little advice and would appreciate any input. My laptop recently died and I'm in the market for a replacement. My problem is that I can't decide if I want a tablet or another laptop. Tablets appeal to me because of their size and weight and great portability but I'm concerned about what the limitations might be versus a laptop.
Specifically, can I browse the internet easily with a tablet? Will I be able to view movies and video? What about using office apps like excel or power point. I probably wouldn't be using a Tablet to create documnets but I would definately use it to view them. I also need to be able to access my company network via Citrix.
If you think a tablet would do the trick any thoughts about Apple vs a Galaxy?
Any thoughts? Again...your input and advice would be greatly appreciated.
Sorry, correction, the tablet is $150 with the purchase of a laptop.
$99 and $150 are both available, amount of memory.
If you are curious about how well your browser and computer support HTML5 video, you can go to Youtube's HTML5 trial page and opt in (or out). If you are in the trial, most or all of your Youtube videos will be served in HTML5 WebM/VP8/Vorbis format instead of Flash.
Over the past year or so, Youtube has been in the process of transcoding their H.264 videos to VP8/WebM format (Flash needs H.264; HTML5 uses VP8). It's a big job. Youtube gets about six years a day in uploads, but the load is uneven, so they use their servers for the conversion job during the lighter dayparts.
Taking Flash and Adobe out of the web ecosystem will be a worthwhile improvement. Simpler is always better.
My advice?
Get both; a tablet and a laptop.
For the price of an iPad, you can get a good $200 tablet, and with the remaining $300-$600, you can get a pretty good laptop. Best of both worlds for the price of an overpriced iPad which is really a media consumption device with productivity as an afterthought. With a tablet you can have the media you want, and with your laptop, you can have it all in one neat single package. The tablet can be used when you want your media to be portable, and the laptop can be used for media consumption and for productivity, and you’ll still have the complete computer experience in your hands.
If your budget is for less than $500, then the iPad is out of the question, but you can still get a very portable and lightweight laptop computer that can do it all and much better than any tablet and without having to get any separate attachments, like you’d have to do with a tablet.
I’d buy a laptop myself , huge storage options , heck, a lot of options out there, tablets have sure mucked up the digital scene, but as long as you have a set of good ports, decent battery life.. for less than $1000 , help keep Microsoft alive. :-) wifey is the apple owner here, no ipad yet.. itouch ipod iphone itunes..
I went with a 10’ inch Thrive android tablet before our cruise... mainly used for photo moving/stowage via the usb ports and SD slot and light browsing.. some good deals are out there , a lot of new 7 inchers
Good luck !
Need a rig? Buy a Lenovo. Wipe out DRIVE FIRST! DONT USE STORE PREINSTALLED OS! Very Bad!
Install Fresh copy of Win XP (It will be supported till Windows 9 will come out). Update it, get nice firewall and Malwarebytes paid version. You good!
DONT USE STORE PREISTALLED OS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’ve been using an iPad for a little over a month, and have worked with a Galaxy around Christmas (getting it set up for someone). Bear in mind, I’m proficient in the Microsoft world and other environments, but new to the Apple and Android worlds.
The iPad is real handy for checking email, reading documents, even taking notes during a meeting. Instead of setting up my laptop at home, booting it up, and logging into email I pick up my iPad and am reading email in seconds. I answer emails using the on-screen keyboard ... that’s a bit slow if it’s a response of more than a few lines. A Bluetooth keyboard is available, and would make this much more usable.
I can log onto our mainframe at the office, but I wouldn’t even consider writing more than 1-2 lines of code with it.
Going through Citrix works fine. You just need to make sure the apps your wanting to run are available on your Citrix server.
You can view Word and Excel and PDF documents fine. Editing Excel files is problematic. I’ve picked up a couple of spreadsheet apps, but none of the ones I’ve gotten are useful for anything more than the most basic spreadsheets. Some FReeper will probably tell us both the name of a good app for spreadsheets.
I’ve not attempted to edit any Word documents.
The email app on the iPad is quite nice. In some ways it has advantages over Microsoft Outlook.
There is a plethora of applications on the Apple store, and they are easy to download. Might be a plethora and a half. A surprising number of them are free, and they are Apple certified to be safe.
If you want to print from an iPad, you’ll want a wireless printer. They are easy to configure for each other.
I’m a little concerned about how fragile the iPad appears to be. It’s a whole lot of exposed glass. You definitely want a protective cover for the thing.
I think Apple’s real value shines if you have multiple Apple devices that can access the Cloud. Things automagically sync between devices without effort on your part.
All in all, I think I can do about 80% of my tasks that don’t require programming or intense writing with the iPad and no external keyboard. For my line of work, I still need my laptop. But it is nice to have around.
Now, the Galaxy: I was able to navigate around on the Galaxy, and most of the advantages above seemed to apply. I did find it much more difficult to safely shop for applications. No matter what online store I’ve shopped at, almost everything I was interested in could not be certified. And syncing between devices was relatively simple for me, but is not going to be simple for my son. Remember I’m a certified computer geek.
Neither environment is great on documentation. I expected such in the Android world ... it’s a geek’s domain. But I really expected Apple’s documentation to be easy to follow. I worked on two Apple devices over the holidays and documentation may as well have been non-existent. For the iPad I found some videos, but it wasn’t clear what the user did to make it perform some of its magic. I eventually discovered most of what I was seeing, but that was a disappointing level of support.
You want another laptop. I have an ipad here and it is really just an incredibly cool toy. Laptop is a real computer for normal computer tasks.
And, as others have said... do consider Apple.
Go to Toshiba Direct on the internet. They have some entry level laptops at very good prices ($329).
Then buy a ergonomic wireless keyboard/mouse (around $80) to avoid the ridiculously small keyboard and touchpad and you have desktop level performance with portability.
I take my keyboard and mouse with me when I go anywhere if I’m gonna be doing anything serious.
Virtual keyboards are a turn off for me. You can get keyboard attachments for tablets, but if you’re gonna do that, just get a laptop instead. Keyboards aren’t an optional accessory on a laptop.
True, but all modern browsers support HTML5. I know Chrome does, Firefox does and the latest version of IE does.
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