Anyone else dislikes tablets - all tablets?

[Graham]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

My primary need when traveling is communication: I need to access the web, handle email, read books, view pictures and videos, listen to music, and view/edit documents and spreadsheets. All of those the tablet can do, though a larger and more powerful model would be better suited. (Screen size again.) The addition of an external keyboard was the missing piece of the puzzle.

I make increasing use of Google Docs and Sheets, stored on Google Drive, and I have an Android office suite that can create and edit locally stored files, and open docs and spreadsheets from my Google Drive and saved changed versions back to it.

You've described the use case for a Chromebook perfectly here. The only thing that a tablet does better in the above list is reading books.

What's more, a Chromebook can be used for light development and design - particularly if you're working with web technologies - and even light video editing.

I was amazed the other day to find that I could use it for music notation as well, something that I was sure I'd need to return to my Windows desktop for.

It'll be interesting to see how soon a touchscreen convertible Chromebook appears on the market.

Graham

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by wodin

Not quite smartphone form factor, but Microsoft Surface 3 (and increasingly a number of others) do that in a tablet form factor now.

Yep, and there will be more of that.

My point was simply that it wouldn't just be in a smartphone form factor: it would be a smartphone, which you could carry in a pocket and use as a phone, but would also have the horsepower to plug into a dock and become the hub of a full system.

A tablet, viewed from that perspective, is a smaller, portable "All In One" computer. There are an assortment sold now as desktops where what you have is a large monitor, with all of the other stuff, like CPU, RAM, and hard drive incorporated in it. They even have touch screens. You plug in keyboard, mouse, and the like, and away you go.

Shrink that down to a portable device, and you have a tablet.

Shrinkage is possible because components get smaller, faster, and cheaper. Instead of a hard drive, you have a solid state drive using flash memory instead of spinning disks. We aren't yet at the point where flash memory will replace hard drives, because of costs. I just got a 32GB USB thumb drive to create a portable Calibre library installation, so that my eBook library wasn't tied to a specific machine. The thumb drive cost $15 plus tax, and worked out to about 50 cents a GB. But really large SSDs with the required performance and size to fully replace hard drives in a system are still expensive enough that they haven't replaced hard drives in most systems. Most systems I've seen using SSDs are hybrid designs, with an SSD for the OS to boot from, and a hard drive for user data, because an entirely SSD based system would cost too much.

One thing I'm surprised I haven't seen (though I'm told it exists), is a smartphone and tablet combo package from the same vendor. Each works stand alone, but work together when paired (like the tablet automatically using the phone to connect if you don't happen to be near a wifi hot spot.)

Another factor is increasingly pervasive broadband.

One thing I was fascinated by back when was AT&T/Bell Laboratories "Plan 9" OS, a research effort designed as the next step beyond Unix. In Plan 9, the user's workstation was the center of the universe. The user had access to compute servers, data servers, printers and the like, all of which were mounted off of the user's workstation, with a special communications protocol to tie everything together. The user could access any mounted resource without having to know or care precisely what it was or where it was located. All the user was concerned about was what it could do.

We are beginning to approach that with cloud storage and cloud computing. The user's machine doesn't have to be powerful enough to do many things that require lots of computing power. It just needs to be able to reach a machine that does, and have the work done on that machine. All that is required is the network bandwidth to make the needed communication possible.

We're getting there.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Graham

You've described the use case for a Chromebook perfectly here. The only thing that a tablet does better in the above list is reading books.

Size matters. My 7" tablet is a good size to be an eBook viewer. The larger one I want down the road for other uses would be too big to do that conveniently.

No matter. I never assumed I would have a "one-size-fits-all" device, and assumed there would be more than one in the mix.

What's more, a Chromebook can be used for light development and design - particularly if you're working with web technologies - and even light video editing.

There are plenty of folks using Chromebooks for development (like about half of Google's developers, as far as I can tell.) It doesn't even have to be web technologies. There's no reason a developer can't check out code from a repository, edit it locally, check it back in, then kick off a test build on a build server to see if it works.

Video editing is trickier, but I suspect if you have sufficient bandwidth, you could do heavier video editing - the work would be done on a server. The results would be displayed on your screen. You would just need a fat enough pipe that the fact the CPU doing the heavy lifting didn't happen to be in your machine didn't matter.

I was amazed the other day to find that I could use it for music notation as well, something that I was sure I'd need to return to my Windows desktop for.

<blink> I'm amazed as well. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised in retrospect

It'll be interesting to see how soon a touchscreen convertible Chromebook appears on the market.

Fairly soon, I should think.

The main issue with a Chromebook is that assumption that you are connected to the network and the data you are working on resides elsewhere. If you aren't connected, the equation changes.

I don't have a Chromebook, but if I got one, it would need a reasonable amount of local storage for those occasions where I wasn't connected.
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Dennis

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I don't have a Chromebook, but if I got one, it would need a reasonable amount of local storage for those occasions where I wasn't connected.

I use a small hard drive with my Chromebook.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

I use a small hard drive with my Chromebook.

And a little experimentation showed I could do it with my tablet. I have a 512MB Seagate Free Agent portable USB drive intended as a backup solution.

Some will do it out of the box. Toshiba's Android tablet, for example, will work out of the box with a Toshiba external drive formatted exFAT.

Mine needed external assistance. It has to be rooted (which it is), and I neded to install the
Paragon exFAT, NTFS & HFS+ helper from the Play Store. The Paragon driver uses the Linux NTFS 3g framework to support NTFS drives.

The tablet doesn't have the power to drive the Seagate (which is unpowered) successfully. Plugged in directly, the Paragon driver sees it, tries to mount it, then loses it again. The solution is to plug it into a powered hub, and plug the hub into the tablet. Paragon sees it and mounts it at /mnt/usbhost1. A root-enabled file manager is needed to explore the drive file system. I use an open source program called Ultra Explorer I found on the XDA Developer forums, though others exist.

I use a hub anyway, to support an external keyboard and mouse. This is simply another device attached.

I don't see using the capability a lot, but the fact that I can makes it one more tool in the box.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ApK

Can you please give any specifics here? Yes, Fires don't have Google services, but for the most part, they run all the Android apps most people want. Not that I disagree that in many cases, people will run up against their limitations. -- I did, and I too no longer use Fires because of it-- but I think the price, support, etc, combined with the fact that they do indeed run most Android apps that folks seem to want just fine will make those limitations moot for many folks.

I was speaking specifically of a device to be rooted to turn into a general purpose tablet. The deal breaker for me was no Fire slot for an external SD card. You have 16GB of internal storage, period. If that does it for you, fine. If not, the Fire is the wrong choice.

The Fire assumes your content will be stored on Amazon's cloud and you will be connected and access it from there, so you won't need a lot of internal storage. That assumption is not valid for me. I am normally not connected, and use locally stored programs and data.

Root it, and you probably can install the Google services, but if you're going to root, there are better devices to target.

For many folks the Fire is an appropriate solution. I'm not one of them.

Plus if you are a serious Amazon content consumer, the Fire has added benefits, like really good Prime video support.

Which is the point of the device. It's a content consumption device for content Amazon will sell you, and its purpose is to drive you to buy that content from Amazon.
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Dennis

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

For many folks the Fire is an appropriate solution. I'm not one of them.

Which is the point of the device. It's a content consumption device for content Amazon will sell you, and its purpose is to drive you to buy that content from Amazon.
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Dennis

I love the Fire HD7. It's my go to media device at home - videos, music, and audiobooks. No need for external speakers, because of the great built-in speakers. All of the content I play on it is free or next to free - Prime Video, Prime Music, Audible, AOL Radio, TuneIn Radio, OTR, etc.

[Yapyap]

I like my iPad. I don't need it, but I like it for games, or for the last quick check of Twitter and some web pages before bed - after already turning off my desktop - or to take with me to the living room when watching TV, in case I want to check something quickly.

It was also very handy last year when travelling. I have an older netbook as well, but the iPad was much lighter to carry around, and for a week's holiday trip, I really didn't need a computer (and if I had, the netbook wouldn't have been sufficient anyway - for my work, I really need a proper desktop, with a large monitor and good keyboard).

If I absolutely must, I can also read on it (for PDFs), now that I've found a PDF reader that lets me change background colour to cream/beige/sepia. It's a lot less pleasant than reading on my Paperwhite, but as long as I don't have to do it all the time, I can cope.

Originally Posted by HarryT

Apple give away their iPad office suite: "Pages", "Numbers", and "Keynote", for free these days. "Pages" is a pretty good word processor.

They do? Each of those apps costs 8.99 € for me on the App Store. :-/ Fortunately I don't need any Office-like functionality on the tablet - for the very little I do need, I've found that Google Docs will do the job.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Yapyap

Each of those apps costs 8.99 € for me on the App Store. :-/ Fortunately I don't need any Office-like functionality on the tablet - for the very little I do need, I've found that Google Docs will do the job.

I got them all for free, along with some other apps, when I bought my iPad Retina Mini. Perhaps they only come free with some devices?

[ApK]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I was speaking specifically of a device to be rooted to turn into a general purpose tablet.

There's no need to root the Fire. It's as 'general purpose' a tablet as any, just as it ships. There isn't any one device that has every feature that everyone wants.
If there is something specific YOU want that cannot be done on the Fire without rooting, that's YOUR purpose, not "general purpose."

It The deal breaker for me was no Fire slot for an external SD card.

No SD slot on the Nexus or the iPad either. That's an important feature for some, absolutely meaningless for others. It's presence or absence does not effect how 'general purpose' it is or how much of a 'real computer' it may or not be.

Fire assumes your content will be stored on Amazon's cloud and you will be connected and access it from there, so you won't need a lot of internal storage. That assumption is not valid for me. I am normally not connected, and use locally stored programs and data.

Fire is optimized for Amazon's cloud like iPad is optimized for Apple's and Nexus is optimized for Google's. Even if you don't use the cloud services all of those devices fit some large groups "real" "general purpose" needs. If it doesn't fit yours, that's fine, but your needs do not define "general purpose" or "real computer" or any such similar broad generalization.

Root it, and you probably can install the Google services

You can. Nice to know. I never bothered, nor do many folks. The fire does what many folks want a tablet to do just fine without it.

For many folks the Fire is an appropriate solution. I'm not one of them.

Nor am I.

Which is the point of the device. It's a content consumption device for content Amazon will sell you, and its purpose is to drive you to buy that content from Amazon.

Just as the iPad is designed to make you buy Apple content and the Nexus is designed to make you buy Google content: By optimizing the experience of doing so.
Amazon went one step further and made the hardware particularly affordable to do so. That a REAL "general purpose" factor in my book. If I can't afford it, I can't get anything done with it!

ApK

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ApK

No SD slot on the Nexus or the iPad either. That's an important feature for some, absolutely meaningless for others. It's presence or absence does not effect how 'general purpose' it is or how much of a 'real computer' it may or not be.

Yep. I've use my Nexus 7 primarily as a reading device. I have over 4000 books on it, and they use 3.5GB out of the 29GB of available storage. It may be a factor if you want to load your device with video, but certainly not for books.

It's less of an issue for the iPad where you can - if your pockets are sufficiently deep - have up to 128GB of storage.

As I noted earlier in this thread, the latest incarnation of Android (Kit Kat) has made SD cards almost useless for general-purpose storage. An app can now only access its own app-specific folder on an SD card.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by HarryT

As I noted earlier in this thread, the latest incarnation of Android (Kit Kat) has made SD cards almost useless for general-purpose storage. An app can now only access its own app-specific folder on an SD card.

They can only WRITE or DELETE in their own SD card folder. They can READ data from anywhere.

This primarily impacts folks who use apps that wirelessly download and manage their own content.

While it really wasn't as much of a hobbling as I feared it would be for me, more of a minor inconvenience, I nonetheless decided to root my phone and make the quick setting change that restored full functionality. I like my devices to be convenient for me....

ApK

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ApK

They can only WRITE or DELETE in their own SD card folder. They can READ data from anywhere.

This primarily impacts folks who use apps that wirelessly download and manage their own content.

Thank you for clarifying that.

[pidgeon92]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I got them all for free, along with some other apps, when I bought my iPad Retina Mini. Perhaps they only come free with some devices?

They are paid apps that Apple recently started giving away free with newly purchased iPads. I think they began including them free with the launch of the current generation of iPads.

[rdfry]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

Has anyone tried reading on one of the new Samsung small tablets that have just come on the market with emissive (AMOLED) screens (with tough gorilla glass too)?

I would be interested in any feedback on that (I have happily used AMOLED on phones for some years now)



I agree, Swype is worth giving a try.

Swype is also available for Nokia's Symbian (and their little used Meego too) and if I recall correctly Swype's first appearance was on Symbian. But, of course, that was limited to phones and Symbian is now recently discontinued. However, there are still tens (hundreds?) of millions of Symbian phones around (I still use one, mainly because it meets my personal preferences of having one of the best cameras on a phone available and its small form factor).

My own personal experience was that in earlier Symbian days I found Swype to be my preference, but as Symbian developed their keyboard and its associated software auto-prompting word completions the standard keyboard became easiest to use. But that just a personal preference and, as said, I would go along with the suggestion that Swype is worth trying.

I'm using a Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4. The screen is beautiful and the size is perfect. The Amoled screen on the Tab S is brighter than the screen on the pro.