I'm thinking of getting an iPad/tablet computer. I don't need one and cannot really justify the expense but I WANT ONE.
And I can't quite get it.
Way way back, around three years ago now, I started commuting considerably substantially by train. Before I had travelled mostly by car, but occasionally by train - a couple of times a month or so. Then my car got broken into and written off by the insurers as 'beyond economic repair' so I went to travelling by train more frequently, but still for journeys of only around twenty minutes or so. But then three years ago my job changed and I ended up on the train for an hour each way. So two hours a day in total.
Of itself that isn't a bind. Were I not on the train I would be spending the same two hours a day in the car; getting the train forces me to do some form of exercise at either end; and I can do stuff on the train that I wouldn't be able to do in the car like read or sleep. People tend to get a little miffed if you sleep in the car if you're the driver I found.
But this meant that I now had two hours a day of time to fill. Reading was all well and good for a while... and I always had my little MP3 player to give me some tunes; but even then the restriction to about 400 songs (at the time that was good) meant that the same songs came round pretty quickly.
So, I looked at alternative entertainment and was immediately drawn to portable computing. The alternatives were either a portable DVD player, which would mean I would have to buy DVDs; or a portable MP4 player. Why spend all that money on an MP4 player which does the same as the MP3 player, just with video, when for pretty much the same price I could have a mobile computing device which gave me MP3 and MP4 capability, as well as word processing; picture viewing and adjustment; and at home would give me the freedom of another device to browse the internet on whilst watching tv. It was a no-brainer.
So I did some browsing around. At that stage the iPad hadn't been released, but there were tablet computers just coming out on the market. They intrigued me. They actually fascinated me. They were new and they were novelty. Every man and his dog on the train seemed to have a laptop; but these didn't even have a 'top'. I wouldn't be following the sheep, I would be standing out!
But then I looked at it and considered it properly. Yes there were a few minor technicalities - the tablets were slightly lower spec: less memory, slower processors and considerably less storage. Whilst I could get a chunky laptop with up to 500GB of harddrive space (again, this was good at the time), these tablets could only manage around 32GB of solid state memory.
But it would be shiny...
Aside from the 'technicalities' there were more fundamental flaws. One of the reasons for buying a portable computing device over the MP4 player was that I could do things other than just music and video on the train. Tablet devices didn't seem to allow me to do that. They had the additional functionality of connecting to the web...but only when I was at home with wireless broadband. They probably had a wordprocessing application, but it was very limited in what it could do, and with only the screen and no keyboard it wouldn't be suitable for anything other than just quick bits - certainly not enough to do anything substantial on. So essentially it was just a bigger media player.
And that brought me on to a couple of other points. Tablets are reasonably sized. They certainly don't fit in your pocket. So I would need a bag to carry it around in at any event. So if I needed that, why didn't I just go for a device with the functionality of a keyboard? In fact, this would provide me with an even greater benefit than just the keyboard - they ability to angle the screen for the optimum viewing angle. My phone can provide media in my pocket if I need something that small. So why would I want something as big as a tablet which I can't put in my pocket and can't make calls on [phone] but also don't have full functionality of a keyboard and wordprocessor [laptop]? And that's before remembering that you have to peer through finger smudges from the touchscreen to watch whatever you are trying to watch.
So, I bought a netbook - basically a laptop without a disc drive to make it much smaller and lighter. I hardly ever use a disc drive anyway so it is no loss, and using one on the move is just asking for trouble.
And I have never looked back. An tablet has less functionality and certainly less portability than my phone; and almost no functionality compared to my netbook. I do have to wonder why people get them.
And I have asked. I asked a few of my friends what they do with their tablet that they don't do with their home computer or phone. They struggle. They use it purely to justify having bought it, but cannot give any specific circumstances where it is the only device they could have used. It purely comes down to it being a bit smaller, a bit lighter or a bit quicker to start up. It basically comes down to "it's just there. It's on. I can grab it." The laptop takes a little longer to start up; the laptop is a little heavier. My netbook is the best of all worlds.
I wonder what will happen in a few years when the fad has passed?
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