Quote:
Originally Posted by spindlegirl
Aren't they just like laptops, only cheaper and lower CPU etc?
|
CPU etc in netbooks is now rivaling laptops, and often beats laptops of just a few years ago.
The only coherent difference I've seen mentioned is that netbooks don't have CD drive. (No idea if that's a universal standard, but that's how it was described to me.)
Quote:
|
Tablets may be the new gizmo du jour, but I can't see them taking over... to me they seem to be like a different thing altogether for different functions.
|
Tablets are media consumption devices; netbooks/laptops/desktops are production devices.
Most people aren't actually involved in much computer-based production, so tablets are likely to become the dominant form over the next several years. However, authors don't write novels on tablets; movie-makers don't make films on them; accountants don't aggregate data from multiple spreadsheets on them; magazine editors don't do layout and photo-touchup on them.
There are probably isolated exceptions. One *could,* if necessary, do most (all?) of these things on a tablet. However, tablet software and hardware isn't well-designed for them, and isn't going to be; making them as versatile as computers would kill their main function: buy-and-play usability.
(I am keeping my PRS-505 active until it DIES because I dislike touchscreens, and the new BeBook is the only thing that seems to have the handful of features that matter to me--long battery life, file support for html or doc/rtf as well as an ebook format--and as far as I can tell, it's not sold in my country.)