I HATE Tablet "Computers" -- am I the only one

I had an Archos 7 Home Tablet and liked it for what it was and what I was using it for, email and watching videos on greyhound during our move. I have been following this trend and really think the Blackberry Playbook will be something I get my hands on for a little mobile gaming, watching movies while my wife shops or checking email while out. the 7" size fit fine in my levis pockets and my cargo pockets of my BDU's anything over 7" I think will be to big. As this is a new and still evolving market as seen for CES android is coming out with a tablet OS as the only real OS ready for tablets is Apples at the current time. RIM has an OS in the making for its Playbook which from my point of view will be the best but only time will tell. I think these devices will be bigger then netbooks, laptops and smartphones combined. Gaming and general web and email will be the main reasons for them and the movie watcher too. I would rather take a 7" tablet then a netbook or laptop when hitting the beach or some other semi local travel. If only they would put GPS in these they would make great things to take on visits to cities like NY and Boston for day or weekend trips for people who don't live in those cities.

wkt said:

Can you by the way give me some information about the connections you use for the access to scientific literature ? I am especially interested in programming literature.
I would like to try whether VPN works with my netbook also outside the home network.

I have access to the scientific literature through my employer, a university. They have bought access to various scientific publishers' catalogues, so if I VPN into the university I can then browse those databases. It's only available if you are a member of staff of the university, I'm afraid.

Having said that, some journals do offer free access to older articles. You could try going to the website of a publisher or journal that you would like to access and give it a go - nothing to lose :)

I have my viewpad 10 win7/android tab which I do quite like but it's a little heavy, I think I'll pickup an archos 101 in the next few weeks when my local suppliers have them back in stock (angry birds here i come).

Hi all
Thanks for some interesting remarks on this topic.

E-readers are another issue --the Sony PRS daily edition is just about large enough to be USEFUL as an e-reader without needing eyesight like an Eagle to be able to read the screens and small enough to be carried around easily.

I really don't need to be able to surf / access email etc on it either so the whole wifi thing for an e_reader IMO is a waste of time --this one has a USB port / memory cards so it's easy to upload your e_books too without having to use a dedicated application like amazon's kindle.

For the rest of my mobile computing needs an acer netbook works just fine with a PROPER keyboard, mouse etc.

Just try manipulating complicated Spreadsheets via Touch screens ---ugh !!!! or touching up Photos without a pointing device. Try also when designing databases to draw links between fields etc in a typical database "design view" using touch screens -- no proper "drag 'n' drop.

There's much more to computers than just surfing the Internet.
Thank goodness Windows has no plans to replace the traditional keyboard and Mouse.

For me 2011 TABLET devices R.I.P

I think a lot of people who buy these will soon realize the shortcomings of them and the devices will fade away into obscurity. Not everybody wants to watch the latest Soap on a small screen travelling in a crowded commuter train.

Cheers
jimbo

clunkfish said:

I have access to the scientific literature through my employer, a university. They have bought access to various scientific publishers' catalogues, so if I VPN into the university I can then browse those databases. It's only available if you are a member of staff of the university, I'm afraid.

That is bad. I think your employer should be ashamed.
In my opinion Scientific Knowledge should be accessible to any citizen.
Is it a private university ? This is against (good) old German scientific tradition, I think.

This is off-topic so apologies to Jimbo who started this thread about tablet computing. I just want to counter the suggestion that my university should be ashamed about paying for access to scientific literature:

wkt said:

clunkfish said:

I have access to the scientific literature through my employer, a university. They have bought access to various scientific publishers' catalogues, so if I VPN into the university I can then browse those databases. It's only available if you are a member of staff of the university, I'm afraid.

That is bad. I think your employer should be ashamed.
In my opinion Scientific Knowledge should be accessible to any citizen.
Is it a private university ? This is against (good) old German scientific tradition, I think.

You have the cart before the horse. The publishers require us to pay for access, so we pay - if we don't pay, we can't read the latest work. It is nothing for my university (which is not a private institution) to be ashamed about , it's the way of the world - in Germany as elsewhere.

Ideally, all scientific literature would be freely accessible, but someone would still have to pay for the upkeep of the databases. Some of the open journals which have sprung up in protest at the restrictive practices of traditional scientific publishers charge a lot for you to publish in them - last month I had to pay well over US$1500 to publish my work in an open-access journal. You can now read that paper for free, but only because I ponied up the cash