allCloud

youbroketheinternet:

perspective.

(via joshuatopolsky)

I admit. I was fooled into getting a tablet because of all the hype I have heard and read about these devices that I couldn’t resist. Call that curiosity. After 5 months of heavy usage, I am disapointed. My 5 year old netbook is way much more usefull to me for getting things done than the tablet. And that goes for almost everything, from browsing to working passing by media consumption. Though for gaming, and reading magazines I must say the tablet is a good device.

Work

I have tried all of those touch-friendly office apps, and even with an external keyboard and mousepad, getting office work done on a tablet is like trying to run a marathon with a 20 pound rock attached to your leg : you can almost get the same results in the end, but the basics of select/copy/paste text/images and switching between apps is so unproductive you’ll end up by giving up in the end and sticking to the most basic tasks. And that goes for word-processing, spreadsheets and presentations. For professional tasks (I am thinking of software editing, image and video editing, sound processing, etc…), don’t even think once this device will ever replace your day to day main tool no matter how great and cool using the touch apps may feel.

Browsing the web

This is the main reason I conviced myself that a tablet would have been usefull to me. I spend a lot of my time in the browser, so I thought the tablet could replace 75% of my use on a netbook. Wrong again. First of all, webpages in general are designed to be used with a keyboard, a mouse, and a large screen. So if you are using your fingers on a webpage not designed for it, the result is not so great. Also, I spent a lot of my time zooming in/out of a page to access some information or a link, this waste of time I was never used to on a netbook. A lot of webpages have hover menus (menus that appear once the mouse is moved over a link or an image). Hover menus on tablets get displayed only after you tap the link or image. Of course, some websites have special versions adapted for phones or touch-devices, but not all. So in the end, I did spend a lot of my time giving up browsing the site I was viewing on the tablet and picking up the netbook. And not just a few times.

Music

To be perfectly honest, my phone already has all the features I need to listen to music or podcasts on the go, and even streaming content. So this feature is not really worth mentioning even though I don’t know why would anyone buy a tablet only for music.

Videos

Here again, my netbook surpisingly does a much better job at displaying videos and has all the necessary codecs I need to view any format at any bit-rate. But I enjoyed watching a movie on the tablet and I don’t have anything more to say about it. It does the job as you’d expect it to.

Books & Magazines

Compared to e-readers, the screen of a tablet is not at all confortable for heavy reading. My eyes really hurt after an hour of reading on the device. I have tried different display options for that (lower contrast, black background, etc…) but currently I can’t read books for a long period of time without hurting my eyes on a tablet. On e-readers, I have no problem with that. Reading magazines on the contrary is a great experience on a tablet and is really much better than on a netbook.

Gaming & Photos

The two things which I really enjoy doing on a tablet is playing games and browsing pictures. The amount of games available on iOS and Android is so huge, you’ll probably have a console-like device ready to play any game you wish. Viewing pictures on a tablet is also an enjoyable experience and is way more fun than on a netbook.

In the end…

I have really tried to make the tablet my primary device but finally gave up, and the users in your house which will probably use it the most are kids and teenagers. If tomorrow I had to take with me only one device somewhere, I think I’ll still stick to a netbook.

A lot of people, including myself, were very skeptical when the first versions of the Kindle came out. Who wants to read books, newspapers, magazines on a device with a screen which you need to plug for recharge ? The truth is that Amazon has already sold many million Kindles, and the sales of electronic books on Amazon book store have just over-passed the sales of regular books. Let’s be clear : once you have one of these devices in your hands, you have access to millions of books and digital media right from the tip of your fingers. Also, switching from one hand to the other while reading a seven-hundred pages book isn’t quite a treat for our arms and hands. The Kindle is not only great for the million books it offers, but also for its ergonomically designed hardware. Let’s not forget that the e-ink display of the original Kindle is much more relaxing for our eyes than a standard OLED or LCD screen, and needs very little power thus giving the Kindle an astonishing battery life which can last almost a couple of months.

Last week, Amazon introduced a new family of Kindles with prices starting at $79. That’s right, they are almost giving you this device and they know you won’t do anything with it unless you buy books and digital media from them. Amazon’s business model doesn’t need to be proved. They know they will make money out of each and every Kindle sold thanks to the Amazon content they will sell from it, even if they sell these e-readers at loss.

But let’s talk about this new device, the Kindle Fire, which stands out of the other new Kindles. The Fire is a 7 inch Android tablet. It’s very thin, very light, and they’ve made it so that you can hold it comfortably in one hand as any other Kindle. Unlike the iPad 2, this tablet is clearly designed for reading books, but you can watch movies, listen to music, play games, such as you would on any other tablet. Let’s not forget that Amazon is one of the world’s top content providing company not only for books, but for music, videos, TV shows…They have the content and now they have the ability to bring it all to you easily.

Nevertheless, some dark points are to be pointed out : the screen of the Fire is an IPS screen, which means it won’t be enjoyable to read in the full daylight with it compared to a regular Kindle, and it will drain the battery inevitably. Amazon states that this battery life will go barely through one day. It also seems to be lacking communication peripherals such as a microphone and a camera, and no GPS is announced.

But we see the point : this is a media consumption device after all, and therefore is a direct competitor to the iPad. Amazon has presented services which are clearly not available on any other tablet at the moment. Whispersync : so that you won’t ever need to plug your device or sync anything. Silk Browser : for browsing the web faster.

At $199, the Kindle Fire is one of the best deals for tablets at the moment. Other manufacturers, including Apple, will have to lower prices if they want to stay in the race. I would have seen myself buying one of these if it had a longer battery life and of course an e-ink color display screen. I guess I’ll just have to wait for the next version.

wood computer

no birds