I’ve thought long and hard about this and I am jumping off the cliff. With all the noise about the HP Touchpad the last few days; I have to mention it. The thing sucks by all accounts. I’ve not used one, but let’s get real. HP had it out there for exactly 49 days before it was discontinued. The tablet just wasn’t selling and it wasn’t getting very good reviews. HP bought Palm which was a good phone series that ran WebOS and figured on having a market coup. From what I’ve read, HP put a lot of time and money into development into the WebOS Touchpad. Now the thing is dead.
I’ve read HP engineers even loaded their WebOS on an iPad to see what would happen. It was reported that the WebOS ran noticeably faster on the iPad. I’m not well versed in such things, but I would start wondering right away about the hardware. No one wants to have a device, especially a touch device that responds slowly to touch commands. Hell, no one wants to wait more than a second for anything to happen on any device. I cut my teeth on computing with an old IBM 8088. You know the one with the huge 20 megabyte hard drive that ran DOS only. You could play intricate games like Hangman on it off a 5 1/4 inch disk. I know it is an absolute wonder when I sit here listening to mp3 off the hard drive, type on WordPress, run five or six things in the tray and everything is steady-going. Most folks expect the same kind of action on their tablets.
We’ve all seen the commercials on TV where everything just zips, but they are only showing the main menu. I’m not buying into all the hype about how cool it is to watch movies and do all sorts of incredible things with a tablet. IT departments are finding uses for tablets and that is a good thing. A very portable computer is a needed thing. That started off as a laptop computer in the business world. Then the netbook/notebook came along with a reduced size. You also got a reduced performance factor running a full-blown operating system. I learned that some Linux distributions tailor-made some OS’ for those smaller machines. I’ve also heard they run pretty well.
What got technology really started is when Apple put the cell phone industry on its ear with their smart phone. I’ve never owned anything Apple, but I’ve admired some of their products from a distance. I don’t buy into elitism plus I’m too cheap to put out the money for Apple products. A very large portion of the population of the cell phone consumers did put out the money. The race was on for the rest of the world to find a product that could compete with the iPhone. We ended up with several competitors with various hardware and software jumping into the pond. Heck there was a few industries born from the iPhone craze. The most remarkable thing to me was the hardware revolution.
That is where I really started becoming interested. Hardware is the multifaceted monster that must be tamed if you want something small to work well. All the major hardware players got into the act and some hardware infants found themselves. To use a cliché necessity is the mother of invention. Hardware got better fast to produce more demand and better sales. The money-makers decided they just didn’t have enough money and there were more opportunities to be found. I can’t fault any industry for trying to make more money while trying to fill a gap.
There were a few tablets in the wild years ago and they just didn’t catch on. Techno-nerds even had trouble loving Microsoft’s first efforts at a tablet. The PDA was born and that became a little more lovable. Apple jumped up and announced amazing and wonderful was about to happen. Of course, Apple introduced the iPad and the world entered the 6th dimension of time and space continuum. I have to admit, it looks pretty cool and seems to work pretty well. There is no way I’m putting out the money for one, but Apple has a winner. The rest of the industry gnashed its teeth and went on the quest of making the holy iPad killer.
We all know how that has worked out so far. Maybe all of us don’t know, so I will tell you. No one has been declared as the manufacturer of the iPad killer. There are some pretty cool tablets out there in the tablet multiverse now. I’ve read so many tech reviews and blogs I have permanent scratches on my glasses and monitor that match. I have a feeling of collective dissatisfaction; the tablet form factor has not hit its stride yet. Just what is the tablet form factor supposed to be? How the heck is a tablet supposed to be used?
I’ve had trouble figuring the answers to those questions. The now defunct HP Touchpad has a commercial that sings “Let me entertain you.” That girl from Glee sings the song and the commercial does entertain me now! Most of the other commercials for the various products seem to promote the cool factor and how exciting it is to use that particular tablet. You can get so many things done out in the middle of nowhere using 3G and now 4G technology. Never mind the fact that 3G turned into 4G overnight with all the major wireless carriers. They didn’t make any changes, they got the ITU to classify what the next generation should be. One day the ITU said that a 4th generation of wireless technology should include 100mbps plus wireless connection speeds. A few days later the ITU changed their classification to include what was already available through all the wireless carriers. I digress here, so I will get back to tablets.
Just what role a tablet computing device has doesn’t seem clear to me yet. Way back the laptop computer was instantly put in the role of a truly portable computing device. Hold the phone; we have many more devices now that are much more convenient to use in a portable way now. This is where my head starts spinning uncontrollably. We have: Laptop, Netbook, Notebook, Ultrabook, Tablet, E-reader, and Smart phone. I’m sure I left some out as far as portable devices go. All the devices have to have some kind of operating system to make them work. The items Laptop through Ultrabook can run fairly well on full-fledged operating systems without much trouble. The items Tablet through Smart phone need specialized operating systems. The strange thing about those items, they all pretty much do the same stuff. Anything a Tablet, E-reader, and Smart phone can do; is done much better by the higher forms of portable computing devices. I have to exclude making phone calls on anything above a smart phone.
I’m not going to drag an E-reader around so I can make and receive phone calls. That is just too bulky for something like that. I also don’t drag a smart phone around because I have no real use for one. A smart phone would be a toy for me. I can check email or surf the web on my feature phone and don’t do that. An E-reader is a good idea except you can only read books from companies in proprietary forms on a great many of them. That blows; anyone can pick up a book and read it as long as they aren’t blind. The NOOK color almost got me because it has more uses. It could function in a Tablet fashion of sorts with a price tag of $250.00. The device could be rooted and run as a full on Android tablet also.
I’ve worked out in my mind that a tablet would not be a very good smart phone. What I haven’t worked out is what the big differences are between the two. OK, a tablet device is bigger than a smart phone and some tablets can make phone calls. A person can watch movies, do email, read e books, etc with both devices. For me; a smart phone is too small a device for me to use for anything other than making and receiving phone calls. I’ve settled on a tablet as it is bigger to look at. I also like the idea of using a tablet for the things I want to do when I’m not sitting at my desk at home. I have no real business I must keep track of when I am out and about, but a tablet would be nice to have to keep up with things. I’m sure I won’t blog from a tablet unless something really pressing enters my mind. Social media works out to Facebook and Twitter for me, I’ve got those things covered easily on a tablet. Owning a tablet versus an E-reader is a win over an E-reader because a person can have several e-book readers on a tablet.
For some reason I can see owning a cell phone as a single use item and abhor the idea in any other device. Now days a laptop is a smaller desk top computer. The netbook/notebook is a little less capable and I’m not sure about the Ultrabooks coming out. All the portable computing devices really haven’t drawn a lot of attention from me. I don’t really need one which means the device would be under used by me. If you don’t use a device much, it’s a waste of money. I really do not like to waste money; I could be a billionaire and I would be the same way. Having a car and a pickup truck would really be pushing it for me. The penny pincher in me did find tablets acceptable.
A tablet can give me an E-reader, a small multimedia device, an interface with social media, a portable time waster, and many more things. Let’s face it; no one likes to simply sit and stare at a wall while they wait for the doctor or whomever. I do not expect to be able to run Adobe Creative Suite on a tablet, or Microsoft Office Professional. Those two programs run very well on my desktop PC and I have no need to leverage the use of them on a tablet. It would be fun to remote to the PC sometime just to see if it works, but that is it. It would be fun to start a car with my tablet sometime, but that’s not going to happen either. I don’t want a tablet for all the cool stuff you can do with it.
The thought of dragging a book into my bedroom sounds good until you think about reading it. You have to have a lamp or some kind of light to read at night. To do it properly; you need a light that will shine on the book without casting shadows. That leaves out all the E-readers except the NOOK Color. A big drawback is I’m not seeing a Kindle app for the NOOK Color or any other e-book app for that matter. I could read on the NOOK Color without having to set up a reading light. I could just root the device and have a full-blown Android tablet though. I’m not crazy about doing that even though the library of Congress says it is OK. The kicker is price point!
Enter Galaxy Tab; it goes for $199.99 on Verizon with a two-year contract. That is not much different, but fifty bucks is nice to keep. That is for the seven-inch Tab, the ten inch Tab is much more. A person can also purchase a CPO (Certified Previously Owned) Galaxy Tab for $129.00. That is a bigger price point if you are willing to take a gamble. Samsung, the hardware manufacturer has pulled a Microsoft with the Galaxy Tab devices. I don’t believe the seven-inch Tab will update past Froyo. This is a fact I am unsure of and won’t bother me if I purchase the Tab.
This means surrendering my money to one of the huge conglomerates that bleed every customer for every penny they can get. Paying Verizon two dollars a month for a detailed bill is so far beyond what I can believe as a legitimate billing cost; I have no words for it. With a tablet, a person must have a data plan on any of the wireless providers. Verizon starts off with two gigabytes at thirty dollars a month. There is no silly two hundred megabytes for some price and then jump to two gigabytes and the gouge price. I could get by on two hundred megabytes because I’ve got a wireless broadband router.
We have to give the wireless companies a break after all; they have to make a few dollars don’t they? Verizon is the best bet for where I live. I won’t use the **&* word, Sprint, and T-mobile aren’t so good in my area. I’ll feed the beast for a few years and feel good knowing I helped to keep Verizon from starving to death on their meager profits. I won’t have to stare at the wall while waiting for the doctor. I can kiss goodbye to staring at the place mat at Denny’s waiting for my food. In fact; I can be in the middle of a large group of people and just stare at the tablet in my hands and avoid all that trifling conversation. I will be able to sit at large family picnics and simply put on headphones plugged into my tablet, bob my head a little, and successfully avoid everyone. Yeah, this tablet thing is going to work out!
