Pondering Replacing laptop and reader with Tablet???

[sminarovich]

So my laptop is dying a slow slow painful death, and I was researching what laptop to replace it with, all the info comes from biased parties..but a friend suggested I just go with a tablet. My two biggest uses for my laptop is ebooks and online banking will a tablet be able to hold a large e-book library (can you use an external hard drive with a tablet) and is a tablet secure enough to handle online banking?? what am I not asking or don't I know that I need to think about???? any thoughts ? ideas ?

[covfam]

ok if all you do is read email, play videos/music, surf the internet, do minor photo & video editing, ebook reading, and electronic banking even light gaming, a tablet is quite fine both an android tablet and ipad will fill your purposes just fine. neither tablet is less or more secure than a typical laptop. actually most of the limitations for tabletsa are in the mind of the people.

i dont know how many timesive ive been told i cant edit photos with my ipad when in fact there are 20+ photo editing programs for it, ive been told i cant play action games on the ipad but i actually have several very good high quality FPS shooters and sports games on my ipad... ive been told you cant edit video on an ipad.. yet i have a very good video editing app on my ipad. ive been told you can do electronic banking on the ipad yet there are over 40 major banking apps for just that.

To be honest will a new high end lap top be able to do everything better?... yes, but to be honest a tablet will do everything that just about everyone needs just fine. the bigest limitations to the tablets right now are the narrowminded people who think they can only do a few things good. So unless you plan on doing some major Autocad or CGI work or high end gaming a good tablet will do the job for you. just make sure you get a good high end tablet and not a budget walmart tablet if you wish to replace your laptop.

[VydorScope]

I use the Asus Transformer with dock in place of a laptop for now until I can replace my desktop with a more full power machine. It can use an external HD, and has a SD card slot for expanding storage. It can run the Kindle App, The Nook App, and other readers like FBReader. It comes with Polaris office which is okay do to basic MS Office kinds of things with. It can handle all the basic functions, i.e. play video, games, flash, web, email, and etc.

Its NOT as nice as a low end laptop running Windows, and not that much cheaper, but I really like the touch interface of the tablet better then Windows for this kind of use. Plus the dock is optional, you can use it as a pure tablet with out the dock, or use the dock for the keyboard/trackpad like you would a netbook. In addition the battery life on the Transformer runs in to multiple days for me, low end laptops usually only run for several hours in my experience.

Before you make up your mind though, shop out low end laptops and decide if the trade off in features (full OS vs tablet OS) is something you are okay with.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by sminarovich

So my laptop is dying a slow slow painful death, and I was researching what laptop to replace it with, all the info comes from biased parties..but a friend suggested I just go with a tablet. My two biggest uses for my laptop is ebooks and online banking will a tablet be able to hold a large e-book library (can you use an external hard drive with a tablet) and is a tablet secure enough to handle online banking?? what am I not asking or don't I know that I need to think about???? any thoughts ? ideas ?

If the online banking is by website/webpage then yeah, no different than a laptop. I love my xoom and have my entire ebook library on it (but it would not be the best for wordprocessing or spreadsheets -- but even those can be done).

[Phogg]

I spend too much time outside to do without an eink reader.
I was using a tablet circa 2008, and not being able to read at the lake like my wife could on her PRS-505 was what lead me to get a dedicated reader.

[kjk]

Might want to check to see if your bank has a dedicated app for the iPad as well-Bank of America has one for the iPhone and one for the iPad-the iPad one is pretty well done.

[mikemc2]

Originally Posted by covfam

the bigest limitations to the tablets right now are the narrowminded people who think they can only do a few things good.

I would say the biggest limitation is the lack of a user accessible file system. Managing large collections of books or anything else for that matter, can be quite problematic unless you stay strictly within the reader or music app. Also, connecting external storage devices isn't nearly as simple as it is with a laptop. The iPad, for example, has no USB ports, only Apple's proprietary 30 pin connector. In order to connect a USB device you'll need to purchase a $30 adapter and your apps will need to support that storage. I guess the thing to keep in mind is that a tablet doesn't have a "full" computer OS on it so you'll be missing features you might currently be taking for granted. As for banking, if you can do it on the web you can do it on a tablet.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by mikemc2

I would say the biggest limitation is the lack of a user accessible file system. Managing large collections of books or anything else for that matter, can be quite problematic unless you stay strictly within the reader or music app. Also, connecting external storage devices isn't nearly as simple as it is with a laptop. The iPad, for example, has no USB ports, only Apple's proprietary 30 pin connector. In order to connect a USB device you'll need to purchase a $30 adapter and your apps will need to support that storage. I guess the thing to keep in mind is that a tablet doesn't have a "full" computer OS on it so you'll be missing features you might currently be taking for granted. As for banking, if you can do it on the web you can do it on a tablet.

Break out of the iPad world. I can (and have) directly plug in an USB terabyte drive to my Asus tablet and explore the file system fine. Same with the SD card slot.

[mikemc2]

"Break out of the iPad world. "

I use the iPad as an example as that's the most popular tablet, I'm considering an ASUS Eee Pad Transformer...

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by mikemc2

I use the iPad as an example as that's the most popular tablet, I'm considering an ASUS Eee Pad Transformer...

As I mentioned above, thats what I have. It works great as a tablet that can act like a laptop. It does not have the weakness that the IPAD has, and that you pointed out about the lack of file system access.

[VicLavigne]

Hardware requirements (laptop, tablet, ereader) always depends on user needs and desires. I have all three, and wouldn't want to do without any of them. For banking, I find that using my netbook is better than the tablet -- faster anyway, since I have full use of a physical keyboard instead of the 2-finger typing that I do on tablets. I enjoy using the tablet for travel and simple news reading. For ebooks, I really would not want to give up my e-ink reader. Yes, the tablet can do it but the battery life is not up to my standards and I really have less eyestrain with e-ink vs led screens.

Vic

[Joseph R]

Of course, going ''all tablet'' also means losing a optical drive: quite useful if you want to do backup, install and configure a wireless router, play and install games, do word processing through Microsoft Office, access a VPN and SSH and transfer data from one computer to another. How much do you think you need an optical drive? Of course, if you have a desktop at home, it is not an issue but if you do not then, i would recommend a notebook over a tablet for those reasons mentioned.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Joseph R

Of course, going ''all tablet'' also means losing a optical drive: quite useful if you want to do backup, install and configure a wireless router, play and install games, do word processing through Microsoft Office, access a VPN and SSH and transfer data from one computer to another. How much do you think you need an optical drive? Of course, if you have a desktop at home, it is not an issue but if you do not then, i would recommend a notebook over a tablet for those reasons mentioned.

Honestly.... Optical drives are just starting to go the way of floppies and tapes. With more and more software being "Buy, Download, Install" and services like DropBox, iCloud, and SkyDrive, taking over the backup needs... its becoming a old fashioned thing to use optical drives.

Heck I cant think of the last time I used one and I do all the things you mentioned.

A tablet IS a low end computer, and one like the Asus with physical keyboard, USB, and etc can physically do everything a netbook does.

[OtterBooks]

I just bought a laptop and it doesn't have an optical drive. My main concern with a tablet was word processing capability, which seemed rather weak. for the OP's needs a tab sounds good.

[garrybuck]

Do you do a lot of printing? If you do, it's a lot easier from a computer than a tablet.

Do you have unusual hardware that you absolutely have to have that only communicates a computer? "Unusual hardware" could be anything, but in my case I'm thinking about medical devices that upload data to the computer for analysis. Tablet support for unusual hardware may not be as robust as it is with computers.

Do you have specific software that you just can't live without that only runs on a computer? Again, this could be anything, just make sure you look before you leap. In my case, the killer app is Microsoft Access. I'd love to consolidate all my hardware and just use a tablet, but without Access (and communication with medical devices) I'm stuck not only with computers, but PCs.

YMMV