[ale] Android Tablets

Jerald Sheets questy at gmail.com
Sun Aug 8 23:34:19 EDT 2010


It's a common misconception that these things are content creation devices.  

I think from an overall design standpoint, their best application is one of a content consumption device.

Now, make no mistake, on the iPad I have iWork and do indeed create presentations, text files, remotely control windoze, ssh into my systems and do work (and even code perl!).  So, I'm not asserting that statement is absolute, but I think to consider the device a place to run offiice of any kind (with the hope of being productive and creating content) is misapplied and you'll never be happy with any touch-oriented device.

My biggest uses for my iPad have turned out to be note-taking in meetings, to-do lists, email, calendaring and meetings, SSH, and reading.  The real killer app is that I have most of the technical books I own in PDF format as well as printed and have imported all those PDF books into iBooks.  My whole library with me everywhere I go in a single device.  That's just freaking delicious.

I guess what I'm trying to say in short is, this is not a netbook and isn't intended to be one.  It isn't your laptop and isn't intended to be one.  It's a niche right between your power machine and your mobile, and some people just don't have the need for it.


-- Jerald Sheets
Sent from my iPad.  
Please ignore spelling/grammar errors.



On Aug 8, 2010, at 10:32 PM, Jeff Hubbs wrote:

>  I am hoping for some tablet that would be excellent for student 
> use...I took another long look at an iPad yesterday and I found it to be 
> shockingly lacking in overall usefulness.  It seems to me that if you 
> can't run OpenOffice on one, it's just not something to be worth 
> carrying around.




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