Tablet recommendations?

Chris Linstid clinstid at gmail.com
Thu Mar 22 11:31:49 EDT 2012


>
> Keeping notes, reading e-mail, typing, some video - easier to carry
> than my laptop.  What else is a good question, as I haven't had a
> tablet in the past.  Currently use my phone for e-mail, music, and
> some editing, as well as carrying documents to read in meetings, vice
> printing out.


I tried something similar with a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. It's a 7"
dual core tablet running Android 3.2 (Honeycomb, no ICS for it yet). While
it is a pretty good media consumption device,  it's an awful creation
device. So, I grabbed a keyboard dock for it. Unfortunately, Samsung's
keyboard dock for their Galaxy Tab line is pretty terrible. Whatever
they're using to interface between the physical keyboard and the app that
you're trying to input text into is very sluggish. It also has issues with
not knowing when to show/hide the software keyboard.

As far as direct experience goes, I cannot recommend this tablet for what
you're looking for.

However, I have two friends with different experiences. One of the friends
has an iPad (original) and he uses it for pretty much everything you're
looking to do and it's worked very well for him. He uses it a lot for work,
carrying it to meetings so he has documents and presentations on it, taking
notes, etc.

The other friend has an ASUS Transformer Prime and he's mostly happy with
it. He uses it more as a consumption device, but he does also have the
keyboard dock for it. He tried bringing it to work, but he just found he
needed something a bit more like an actual computer and he has a laptop at
work, so he just ended up using that. The ASUS keyboard dock is much better
than the Samsung one in that the software interface for is seamless and it
has an extra battery built in, so it buys you some extra usage time.

The first friend is a manager/director and the second friend is a software
developer, so I think that gives a better idea of how the current tablet
choices work for a few different roles.

My own advice is that you're right to be looking at devices with 9-10"
screens. While a 7" screen is nice if you're looking to mostly just read
books on it, if you want to watch video or do much more than just basic
reading, you will really appreciate the larger screen, especially if you're
looking at this instead of a laptop. The only other advantage a 7" screen
has is that it can fit in smaller places. My 7" tablet fits in the larger
pockets on my cargo pants (though I haven't ever felt like carrying like
that, it's a bit uncomfortable).

Also, avoid the "cheap" (less than $300 at this point) Android tablets.
They will give you nothing but frustration.

The last thing I'll say is that the iPad really is the premiere tablet at
this point. Android tablet manufacturers just really haven't figured it out
yet. Google's "Nexus" tablet may finally give them a real target like the
Nexus One did for Android phones, so hopefully the Android tablet lineup
will look a lot better in another year or so.

     - Chris
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