I really don’t see the fascination with tablets. I honestly just don’t see it. I can do everything I need. Skype, etc, whatnot with a cam on a laptop and it’s easier and more comfortable than running it with a tablet.
Most folks I know run a tablet as a supplement not a PC replacement. For the times when they want to be out and around and not have to carry a laptop in their backpack. That’s about it. Or for playing games on the bus, talking with friends, etc.
Which makes sense. The tablet does have things it does better on the go - but it’s not really a laptop replacement.
As for MSFT - apple fanbois should love 8. It’s totally ‘metro’.
Tablets? They support bluetooth keyboards you know, but just your phone is usually good enough these days. Android or iOS, its all transparent, but the iPhone is better. Only thing lacking a a big widescreen monitor to use as a primary display at your ‘home base’ — be it your company premises or home — and it’s sayonara for the grampa box. That’s already happening at Apple right now with faster/better video throughput than PC solutions can provide, if your a PC guy waiting for some monkey-see Korean operation to finally develop it for your Windows box:
http://www.apple.com/thunderbolt/
We had a business conference call last week that I was roped into and not one person was connected to our GoToMeeting using a Microsoft solution. Not even the presenter. Think about that for a moment and ask yourself how long MSFT can last with that going on.
Microsoft’s solution these days is announcing they’re teaming up with Best Buy to offer ‘Microsoft Stores’ like Apple has. *Best Buy*, for gods sakes. How appropriately ridiculous, seeing that Best Buy might not even be around next year judging by the maybe twenty customers and forty employees they have in the store at peak sales hours compared to Apple Stores that are so packed full of customers all day long that you’d think Scarlett Johannsen and Kiera Knightley were inside doing a free strip show.
My Apple gear offers a better MSFT Windows PC experience than a genuine MSFT PC clone: Office is far nicer on the Mac than on Windows, and you can run Windows natively on Apple hardware if you must. All done with a Mac Mini the size of a VHS cassette, which ironically, is about what Microsoft can be likened to these days.
Give it awhile and eventually we shall see that tablets and phones will prove that nobody needs a big honkin’ grampa box at home or in the office, just like almost nobody prints things on a printer anymore — you know, like an HP printer that HP thinks people will need when businesses start buying PCs again, as this thread is entitled, to get back on topic.
MSFT and HP are going over the cliff hand in hand like Thelma and Louise.