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[hawkeye_de]

Today, anybody tells you that tablet pcs are the future and in a couple of years nobody would have a netbook or even a pc anymore. Everybody seems to be in HTML5 hype mode, all apps have to run in the browser, regardless how bad their usability is in this environment or other drawbacks.

I had a iPad 2 in my hands for 30 minutes. Sorry, for me this is a playing gadget, at best it is a suitable device for someone who is really passive, that is only reading stuff and jumping from one app to the other one or just browsing the web without providing content by himself. I wouldn't exhange my netbook for a tablet pc, alone the keyboard would be reason alone.

I know I have exaggerated a little but seriously: Is it really a minority, who thinks that those new shiny gadgets are not so great at all as the marketing guys and hype-sellers claim?

[MaximumZero]

For me, a tablet is an accessory to a computer. It's something to carry with you to do stuff on when you're not at your desk, and don't want to lug around a laptop. Tablets will never outcompete PCs in the specs vs price area. Less than a decade ago, people were playing the death march for the desktop PC, too, because laptops were going to destroy them.

[kaijyuu]

Different tools for different situations.


I hate touchscreens, so tablets are definitely not for me.

[ChairmanPoo]

On a tablet right now. Neat, but doesnt really substitute my laptop. It comes close, though (eee transformer has a dock which turns it into a pseudo netbook). I do use it more than my ebook reader atm, but then again, its less portqble than the latter...

[Sean Mirrsen]

If by "tablet PC" you mean touch-sensitive monoblock PC's, then I could agree that they have some good future for them. But as with all new things, they will be competing with the tried and true setups.

Me, I just want a shiny new Cintiq to draw stuff on.

[Bauglir]

They are a future.

[chaoticag]

My iPad2 has a dice roller on it, and it's nice to have a separate screen when GMing things over the internet, but that's it. I don't see tablets overtaking laptops or PCs on account of sheer power that they provide, as well as ease of use on these things. Tablets have to contend with shoddy auto-correct as aggressive as grammar nazis at times, and has a no swear policy, so I've said some odd stuff while using the skype text chat, and it was pretty embarrassing to say the least (saying 'gah' was replaced by 'gay' and I was talking to someone that was part of the LGBT community).

The game selection so far isn't good, a DS can do better, or a PSP, but the market there seems to be for easily accessible games for the casual masses most of the time. So the only future I see in it is developing a game for them on the nerd end of things. For the rest of the world this might be a coin flip, it can go either way depending on market and design choices. The worst thing the market can do right now is refuse to innovate, as I can't see todays tablets carrying on for a while.

[Levi]

I'm going to hold out for augmented reality robo-eyes. 

[FearfulJesuit]

No tablet will ever have the processing power to play DF.

I think so, at least, but I know making a prediction like that throws me into the group of people who stupidly underestimated Moore's Law.

[Aklyon]

No, its not the minority who think of this, its just yet again the loudest people are the only ones who are noticed.

No recent tablet will ever have the processing power to play DF.

I'd like to see one try, though.

[Jake]

I can't see any advantage to owning a tablet instead of a laptop besides the fact that you don't need a flat surface to use a tablet, and even then you'd have trouble touch-typing on one without a Bluetooth keyboard or a docking station. Neither am I aware of any tablet being capable of running industry-standard graphics stuff like Photoshop or AutoCAD, which is missing out on a really good practical application for them.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Just out of curiosity, what are you people referring to when you say "tablet PC"? Some of the touchscreen monoblocks (PC hardware integrated into a monitor; think LCD iMac) I've seen are pretty powerful (well, enough to play DF at any rate), and even some of the UMPCs.

[Flying Dice]

Well, I think that with sufficient advancements in the field, tablets will probably replace laptops. Desktops, however, no. For the same reasons that laptops didn't replace desktops: they serve different roles.

[Neonivek]

I believe that there is more room for the tablet. Afterall as it gets cheaper I suspect that Writing tablets for computers will also get cheaper (as soon as I see one that includes a visual of the screen on it for cheap... I am jumping on it).

However there is just no replacing the keyboard and often mouse.

It is like computer games. Why havn't the console replaced them? because there is just some things a computer does better.

[RedKing]

Tablet PCs have a variety of uses that laptops and desktops are just too unwieldy for. In a way, they're sort of a hybrid stage between a smartphone and a laptop. They have much of the portability and versatility (and OS infrastructure) of a smartphone, but with the robustness and horsepower more in line with a laptop. Obviously, it's a compromise -- they're not as portable as a smartphone, and not as powerful as a high-end laptop.

But this all kind of misses the point. You don't buy an iPad to play Gears of War 3 or do protein folding simulations. You buy it to be an eBook reader, a portable photo album, a mobile board game, a quick way to check your email and social media, and a thousand others uses -- many of which the designers never intended but which somebody came up with a clever app for. It's that a la carte extensibility that's the real charm of the tablet PC, imho.