Era of the Tablets?

GoOakland
Wed, 10 Aug 2011 13:34:15 +0000

So like most of the tech world I am keeping an eye on the tablet industry. There are so many tablets out there. You got the Ipad, Xoom, Galaxy Tab, Iconia Tab, Eee Slate. The options are plenty and the sector is exciting. I played with a Motorola Xoom the other day and fell in love with it. It got me thinking. What if I used this for school instead of my laptop? It’s far lighter and far sexier. I mean I do a lot of “consumption” actions on my laptop. Things like open PDFs, Word, email, web browsing, etc. Sure would make a lot more sense than lugging my laptop around campus. I know for one class I used my ipod to read all the PDFs and stuff, which the class revolved around. It was awesome! Very convenient.

Then I was like dam. I’m an engineering major. We utilize things like Matlab and Inventor. A tablet won’t be my one stop shop. :(

Thus, this idea. Does building a desktop PC and then using a tablet seem like a solid tandem? I can use my tablet for the uses I already described and then access my desktop for the heavier things if I need to. Are there any holes in the idea? For example, do you think a tablet, Xoom or whatever, can actually utilize Matlab or any other larger software well enough remotely?

Hell, while we’re on the topic, where does everybody think the tablet industry is going? Do you think they will eventually replace laptops? In 2 years? 5 years? I know the keyboard is a pretty important hurdle for input purposes but what about hardware/software support? How far do you think industry can take the tablets in these regards? I mean most of these are already dual cores. I remember when the big thing for PCs was the dual core processors. Will tablets become as commonplace as laptops?