By Paul W. in Support | 22/07/2011
With all of the recent advances in tablet technology and their growing popularity, I thought I’d share my opinions of the different platforms and highlight whether (in my personal opinion) a tablet can replace a laptop.
The first thing to ask yourself if you’re looking to purchase a tablet is “What will I use it for?” What I mean by this is, even though “there’s an app for that!” there are and probably always will be things that tablets simply cannot do. A good case example that I recently read is that of a journalist. If you type large volumes quite often this can be quite tricky to do as quickly on some smaller tablets as it is on a full size laptop or pc keyboard – you also don’t get the satisfying click!
That being said, tablets can be very good for note taking, and I fully see the advantages of their use in education where they can be used to support lecture notes. And they’re certainly light enough to drag around campus.
A tablet can be very useful, perhaps most useful, for people who mainly browse the web. If you’re the type of person who only uses a laptop to browse Facebook and read emails, then the likelihood is that a tablet would suit your needs.
If you’re someone who does a lot of media editing (Photoshop, iMovie etc) then a laptop will almost certainly win the race. The simple fact being that they typically have more processing power available to them. Yes, there are apps that will allow you to do some basic editing on a tablet, but their feature-sets are limited at best and likely to become a scratch board for you before doing the finishing touches on a computer. Laptops are typically storage-expandable with portable hard drives, whereas tablets are usually limited on storage.
A big drawback with tablets, in my experience, is manageability in the corporate environment. Staff will likely see the devices and think that on principal they would be great. However, managing them proves difficult. After all, these devices have typically been developed for the consumer. There are some third party products which offer some management via API’s, but this is going to be at extra cost and can be very costly if you’re thinking of rolling out a large number of devices. The Blackberry Playbook is due to be released later this year, which may integrate into a BES infrastructure. We will have to wait and see how fluid this integration is. Of course, it goes without saying that in comparison you could get almost full control over a laptop if done correctly.
With the growing popularity of tablets in the business market, I would imagine it won’t be long until platform developers catch on and begin incorporating native business tools.
In summary, I think it's unnecessary to think of it as one or the other. A tablet can certainly be useful and could potentially replace your laptop, but you need to assess your needs in depth. I would suggest that tablets should be supplemental to laptops/desktops, to be used as much or as little as you need.
As for a comparison between tablet platforms, well that’s for another article!