Back in January 2010, Apple introduced the first iPad and while half of the world was busy queuing up at the Apple Store to buy one, tablet naysayers (a.k.a hardcore geeks) weren't convinced by what Apple had to offer. Selling for a starting price tag of $500, it instantly made us compare it to other computing devices (i.e. netbooks) that were available for a similar price. We stabbed the iPad with a pitchfork for it not serving basic features like an SD card slot, USB port or multi-tasking, something that computing devices two-thirds its cost did have. We were also disappointed at the closed nature of the iOS that didn't have the fundamental computer features that we were used to -- things like a file manager or the ability to install apps beyond the list that Apple controls. But the main gripe with the tablet was having to type on a virtual, on-screen QWERTY keyboard. Although netbook keyboards weren't as widely spaced as a desktop or a typical laptop one, they still gave that same tactile button-press feedback that we're all too familiar with now.
Time passed by and competing tablets tried to win the consumer's mind over by adding truck-loads of features that the iPad did not have. Still, the iPad dominated the tablet market mainly due to the great support from developers, while app-makers for Android were still trying to figure out how they're going to optimize a single app for so many devices with different display sizes, resolutions and performance variations.
Although having dabbled on the iPad on and off, I only got a satisfying play-time with it after it landed to our labs this January. Wanting to know what the fuss was really all about, I decided to give it a fair try. I was a big believer of netbooks -- I still own the first 10-inch Eee PC that came out. So, forgive me for trying to weigh between the tablet and the netbook. Anyway, the first thing I appreciated about a tablet is its instant-on nature. While my netbook takes a good 20-30 seconds to boot into Windows, the iPad just turned on in less than a second after I hit the power button. Netbook makers tried to emulate this instant-on function by pre-loading a skimmed version of Linux (like Splashtop or HP's Instant Web) with basic apps like a browser, photo viewer, music player etc -- which would start in under 5 seconds after turning on. But honestly, none of these OSes have ever been good enough to use, as basic stuff like mouse scrolling gestures don't work, or the text rendering is generally horrible. You can always put the netbook into sleep mode for an instant wake function, but at the cost of battery sipping away faster than it does on a tablet (tablets like the iPad lasts one full month on standby, definitely a lot more than a few days of sleep-time that a netbook can last).
So, there were times when I had to quickly check something on the Internet and my hands subconsciously reached for the tablet, as I knew that it was the fastest way to get what I wanted. Next, the web browsing experience was better simply because of the way you hold the tablet versus the view-ability that a netbook provides -- it felt like I was reading content off a large magazine. Scrolling through web-pages by flicking a finger proved to be easier than trying to use two-fingered scrolling gestures on the tiny touch-pad that netbooks generally have. Also, in a tablet, since the opened window is the only one in focus, there was no question of bringing it into focus before trying to scroll.
The other fantastic thing I touched upon briefly before is the battery life. Tablets like the iPad last for 10 hours, even newer Android based tablets are clocking between 6 to 8 hours. And this is active usage we're talking of. Sure, netbooks also claim similar battery life figures -- but using what applications? In all the netbooks that we've tested so far, we've got an average of 4 hours of video playback and 5 to 6 hours of active Internet usage over Wi-fi. This, despite netbooks packing 60+ Watt-hour batteries, while these tablets generally have less than half of that battery capacity. The iPad actually does 10 hours of video playback, and the only way it's able to achieve this is by using an OS that's optimized for a device of its creed and not a generic desktop operating system (read: Windows 7) that runs on anything from a low-power PC to an ultra-mean gaming rig. Credit also is due to the ARM-based architecture on tablets that don't draw as much power as opposed to the x86-based ones used in netbooks.
But low-power CPUs don't mean low performance. The tablet works quite smoothly on a single-core 1GHz processor, while a 1.6 GHz single-core Atom processor makes the UI behave laggy as soon as you juggle between multiple applications. To ensure 1080p HD playback, you have to purchase a netbook with a dedicated graphics chip (like the NVIDIA ION or the ATI Mobility Radeon series), while older tablets like the first Galaxy Tab have been able to play 1080p even with modest hardware specs. Also remember, adding dedicated graphics is only going to worsen the device's battery life (in our testing, NVIDIA ION based laptops could play 720p video files in loop for 2.5 hours only).
Time passed by and competing tablets tried to win the consumer's mind over by adding truck-loads of features that the iPad did not have. Still, the iPad dominated the tablet market mainly due to the great support from developers, while app-makers for Android were still trying to figure out how they're going to optimize a single app for so many devices with different display sizes, resolutions and performance variations.
Although having dabbled on the iPad on and off, I only got a satisfying play-time with it after it landed to our labs this January. Wanting to know what the fuss was really all about, I decided to give it a fair try. I was a big believer of netbooks -- I still own the first 10-inch Eee PC that came out. So, forgive me for trying to weigh between the tablet and the netbook. Anyway, the first thing I appreciated about a tablet is its instant-on nature. While my netbook takes a good 20-30 seconds to boot into Windows, the iPad just turned on in less than a second after I hit the power button. Netbook makers tried to emulate this instant-on function by pre-loading a skimmed version of Linux (like Splashtop or HP's Instant Web) with basic apps like a browser, photo viewer, music player etc -- which would start in under 5 seconds after turning on. But honestly, none of these OSes have ever been good enough to use, as basic stuff like mouse scrolling gestures don't work, or the text rendering is generally horrible. You can always put the netbook into sleep mode for an instant wake function, but at the cost of battery sipping away faster than it does on a tablet (tablets like the iPad lasts one full month on standby, definitely a lot more than a few days of sleep-time that a netbook can last).
So, there were times when I had to quickly check something on the Internet and my hands subconsciously reached for the tablet, as I knew that it was the fastest way to get what I wanted. Next, the web browsing experience was better simply because of the way you hold the tablet versus the view-ability that a netbook provides -- it felt like I was reading content off a large magazine. Scrolling through web-pages by flicking a finger proved to be easier than trying to use two-fingered scrolling gestures on the tiny touch-pad that netbooks generally have. Also, in a tablet, since the opened window is the only one in focus, there was no question of bringing it into focus before trying to scroll.
The other fantastic thing I touched upon briefly before is the battery life. Tablets like the iPad last for 10 hours, even newer Android based tablets are clocking between 6 to 8 hours. And this is active usage we're talking of. Sure, netbooks also claim similar battery life figures -- but using what applications? In all the netbooks that we've tested so far, we've got an average of 4 hours of video playback and 5 to 6 hours of active Internet usage over Wi-fi. This, despite netbooks packing 60+ Watt-hour batteries, while these tablets generally have less than half of that battery capacity. The iPad actually does 10 hours of video playback, and the only way it's able to achieve this is by using an OS that's optimized for a device of its creed and not a generic desktop operating system (read: Windows 7) that runs on anything from a low-power PC to an ultra-mean gaming rig. Credit also is due to the ARM-based architecture on tablets that don't draw as much power as opposed to the x86-based ones used in netbooks.
But low-power CPUs don't mean low performance. The tablet works quite smoothly on a single-core 1GHz processor, while a 1.6 GHz single-core Atom processor makes the UI behave laggy as soon as you juggle between multiple applications. To ensure 1080p HD playback, you have to purchase a netbook with a dedicated graphics chip (like the NVIDIA ION or the ATI Mobility Radeon series), while older tablets like the first Galaxy Tab have been able to play 1080p even with modest hardware specs. Also remember, adding dedicated graphics is only going to worsen the device's battery life (in our testing, NVIDIA ION based laptops could play 720p video files in loop for 2.5 hours only).
I also thoroughly enjoying gaming on the iPad like I had never on my netbook. The touchscreen and accelerometer create cool and innovative ways to control a game; although there are times when you miss actual buttons. But moreover, its the ingenuity of developers to create games specifically for the mode of input a tablet has. Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja wouldn't have been so popular had they been released only for the PC.
The last and most important peril of a tablet was text input. Typing in portrait mode on a 10-inch tablet is horrible and only good enough for entering something as short as a URL in the address bar of the browser. But in landscape mode, I got to typing like the way I would on a netbook keyboard. It was fair when you rest the tablet on your lap. With the cover that tilts the tablet at an angle, things got better. Although I still can't imagine using a tablet as a primary writing machine, replying to that tweet or writing an e-mail seems quite doable.
So am I saying that netbooks are useless and tablets are much better? No, netbooks still have their place in the market for being inexpensive portable computers that are capable of running those popular applications that you may need. Heck, I did my final year's coding project using Visual Studio 2005 on my netbook -- something that cannot be done on any of these popular tablets. You too may have applications like these which you must use -- Tally, Microsoft Outlook, uTorrent etc.
But what I have realized is the interesting proposition that a tablet brings to the table. If you're going to be consuming a lot more than creating -- stuff like reading, watching videos, playing games -- then a tablet might just work out better on many counts that I explained amply before; provided you're not dependent on specific applications like the ones mentioned above that aren't available for tablets (yet). In fact, if you ask me now about the better in-betweener device between a smartphone and a computer, I would prefer a tablet. This is because, at the end of the day, netbooks are just shrunken, power-strapped computers running the same kind of OS as your primary PC. As somebody once said, "Never send a Boy to do a Man's Job" -- all the intensive tasks I want to do, I would ideally want to do them on my primary, powerful, x86-based computer and not on a netbook. So, if you're looking for a cheap computer on-the-go, then netbooks make sense for you; but for something that fills the void between a smartphone and a laptop, I think differently now.
Tablets are being called the post-PC devices; and rightly so as some of us have been perceiving them wrongly as computers; expecting them to do all the things that we're used to do on computers. So, a tablet may not replace your computer, but it is a nice add-on device to add to your digital paraphernalia.
The last and most important peril of a tablet was text input. Typing in portrait mode on a 10-inch tablet is horrible and only good enough for entering something as short as a URL in the address bar of the browser. But in landscape mode, I got to typing like the way I would on a netbook keyboard. It was fair when you rest the tablet on your lap. With the cover that tilts the tablet at an angle, things got better. Although I still can't imagine using a tablet as a primary writing machine, replying to that tweet or writing an e-mail seems quite doable.
So am I saying that netbooks are useless and tablets are much better? No, netbooks still have their place in the market for being inexpensive portable computers that are capable of running those popular applications that you may need. Heck, I did my final year's coding project using Visual Studio 2005 on my netbook -- something that cannot be done on any of these popular tablets. You too may have applications like these which you must use -- Tally, Microsoft Outlook, uTorrent etc.
But what I have realized is the interesting proposition that a tablet brings to the table. If you're going to be consuming a lot more than creating -- stuff like reading, watching videos, playing games -- then a tablet might just work out better on many counts that I explained amply before; provided you're not dependent on specific applications like the ones mentioned above that aren't available for tablets (yet). In fact, if you ask me now about the better in-betweener device between a smartphone and a computer, I would prefer a tablet. This is because, at the end of the day, netbooks are just shrunken, power-strapped computers running the same kind of OS as your primary PC. As somebody once said, "Never send a Boy to do a Man's Job" -- all the intensive tasks I want to do, I would ideally want to do them on my primary, powerful, x86-based computer and not on a netbook. So, if you're looking for a cheap computer on-the-go, then netbooks make sense for you; but for something that fills the void between a smartphone and a laptop, I think differently now.
Tablets are being called the post-PC devices; and rightly so as some of us have been perceiving them wrongly as computers; expecting them to do all the things that we're used to do on computers. So, a tablet may not replace your computer, but it is a nice add-on device to add to your digital paraphernalia.
