A500 tablet... well kinda

[commodorejohn]

I don't really feel any need to jump on the tablet bandwagon, thanks. I still fail to see any concrete advantage to something that's either an oversized iPhone minus the phone, or an underpowered laptop minus the keyboard.

[commodorejohn]

Bandwagon? It's actually just a logical step for computers to take. I'm sure there were people ranting and raving that they weren't going to jump onto the "Mouse controlled graphical user interface" bandwagon in the mid 80's

Well yeah, but the mouse provided an intuitive interface for actions the keyboard wasn't well-suited for. The touchscreen is admittedly a nice, intuitive alternative for many (but not all) mouse operations, but you still need a way to enter text, and touchscreen keyboards are mediocre at best - anything large enough to type on comfortably eats huge amounts of screen space, and having no tactical feedback just sucks.

I can see the usefulness of this in a smart phone (certainly a better approach than the Blackberry models with three dozen keys the size of micro-M&Ms, not to mention the various terrible approaches involving assigning multiple characters to the normal buttons on a phone keypad,) but when you're using a laptop-size device anyway, it makes zero sense to not have a proper keyboard.

[commodorejohn]

That's why the USB port comes in handy; you add a  keyboard if you need one.

And then I'm lugging around a separate keyboard with the tablet instead of having one integrated, since I'm always going to need one. I'm not saying that there aren't people who do very little typing and thus can get by with a tablet and touchscreen-keyboard generally, but there are also a lot of people who do do a lot of typing (writers and programmers, for instance.) Saying that keyboard-less computing is "a logical step for computers to take" as a whole is saying that their needs aren't important, which is naive.

[commodorejohn]

The world of big box systems as the norm are coming to an end, lifestyle PCs are were it's heading these days.

Yes, and I hear there'll be flying cars, food synthesizers, and robot housekeepers at CES this year.

(And that still doesn't address the issue of there being no reason for a device the size of a tablet to not include a keyboard. Not all writers and programmers need a big-box system, you know.)

[commodorejohn]

You can stick your head in the sand as much as you want, but they've been around and are growing in popularity.

See, I know that, but what I don't understand is how you're getting from "are becoming popular" to "are totally going to replace PCs for the average user." How many people who have a tablet don't have a PC in their home? And while a low-power keyboardless portable device will probably work just fine for most of an average user's typical leisure computing, how many of them (teenagers with large amounts of disposable income excepted) don't have a few text-intensive or processor-intensive (by tablet standards) tasks that they need to take care of (e-mail, budget tracking, 3D gaming, etc.)?

Looking back over my posts, I might come across as a bit of a crank, but I don't have anything against tablets just for being tablets (though I don't have any use for them personally.) However, I don't see them completely supplanting full-fledged PCs (laptop or desktop) for anybody other than pre-adults who spend a lot of time on YouTube and Flash games.

[commodorejohn]

Because it's a trend that shows no sign of ending. The lifestyle PC form factors such as the all in one by the iMac and the EeeTops is one that better fits into a home than some honking great tower.

See, I was never talking about "lifestyle PCs" (there's a  marketroid term if ever I heard one) versus full towers. The  distinguishing factor between a tablet and a real PC, as far as I'm concerned,  is the presence of a real keyboard, a reasonable amount of RAM, and a reasonably powerful CPU. Hardware  is hardware, and I couldn't give less of a crap about the form factor.

(And yes, I'm sure tablets will gain horsepower as time goes on, but so will real PCs. Ultimately you should buy what you need or will need in the not-too-distant future, but unless tablets get significantly cheaper, you'll still be getting a lot more bang for your buck with a mid-range netbook.)

(Also, I'd like to note that no trend shows signs of ending until it starts to end. Changes in consumer buying habits aren't heralded by an "oh, by the way, we're kind of done with tablets now, sincerely, the populace" memo.)

And it seems that someone was paying attention to your complaint about tablet keyboards.

Hmm, interesting. The Tegra looks promising for mobile computing, but I don't see anything about any other specs, let alone what it'll cost.

[commodorejohn]

Cool, I can make wholly arbitrary lines in the sand too!

While I don't know that making a distinction between devices with a full-fledged, specialized text-input peripheral and devices that make do with adapting their existing pointing device to the purpose is "wholly arbitrary," yes, you can indeed make wholly arbitrary lines if you so desire. I just don't think it'll aid in discussion.

And that's great, right up until someone comes along and blurs the line still further .

And, uh, not seeing a keyboard there. 1GB of RAM and a 1GHz CPU is okey-dokey, but all the horsepower in the world isn't going to make a touchscreen into a keyboard. (Also, what about storage space? Didn't see any mention in the article.)

[commodorejohn]

Okay, so you're still stuck with either trying to use a tablet as a laptop via a separate keyboard (not fun,) or treating it as a desktop PC (pointless - you can get a better desktop for the same amount of money or a similarily-powered one for less and not have to use a damn stand accessory.)

[commodorejohn]

Yes, it does work if your mobile computing needs do not include significant keyboard use and your desktop computing needs do not include more power than can be had with a high-end tablet. However, you were pitching it as something that "blurs the line even further" between a real-computer laptop and a tablet, which it doesn't, as it does not have an integrated keyboard. Nor does it "blur the line even further" between a real-computer desktop and a tablet, as unless it's significantly cheaper than existing tablets as well as being more powerful than them, you can still get a better desktop PC for the same amount of money.

It's a tablet, and it can use an external keyboard, and if you don't have a $1 wire picture stand from the dollar store you could pay whatever they're going to charge for their stand "accessory," and if that suits your needs, great, but it's neither as flexible for portable computing as a laptop nor as powerful as a similarily-priced desktop.

(And frankly, there are essentially no more "strings attached" when it comes to using more than one computer. Low-power laptops are cheap, mid-power desktops are cheap, and flash storage is cheap and fast enough to where it's perfectly convenient to keep all of your documents on a USB removable drive - media collection excepted, anyway.)

And this conversation, in a nutshell, is what I don't get about tablets: they're basically just netbooks with no keyboard, less storage, and a touchscreen, yet people act as if they're some dazzling new revolution in computing, and must show any disbelievers the Light. Look, if it suits your needs and style, great, but they're not for me, and while both of us can prognosticate about whether or not they'll become the norm for mainstream computing, the fact is there is no way to tell short of waiting to see.

Urgh! What a horrible marketing mumbo jumbo creation.

YES.

[commodorejohn]

Which covers a significant proportion of the computer using world. An increasing number of younger computer users I know have started to view facebook as the internet, for instance. Everything they do stems from that one site.

Yes, but are they going to stay that way? The specific reason I was exempting pre-adults is because there's a lot of things they don't have to be concerned with at their age that a desktop or laptop is currently much better-suited for than a tablet. That is likely to change as they grow up.

Err, yes it does blur that line. As does the Asus that I pointed out to you previously. Your arbitrary and mobile set of complaints is just that. Oh look, moving goal posts!

Uh, I was complaining about everything you mentioned within my first couple posts in this thread.

I'll bet you were one of these people who bitched about Netbooks being useless because they weren't well suited to using photoshop too when they first came out.

No, I was one of the people who waited through the roughness of the early models and then bought one, because it was small and inexpensive but full-featured enough to fit my needs (and in fact my Eee handles Photoshop quite nicely.) In fact, it remains my primary computer to this day, and the only PC I use regularly outside of my workstation at my job. You seem to have an erroneous mental image of me as some sort of MIPS-hungry power-user just because I think that tablets and smartphones are underpowered for modern computing.

Will they take over today? Doubtful, though even then there are probably some users who could get on. But consider how far netbooks have come, they're now touting dualcore processors and in the high end models very respectable gpus in the shape of ION. How long do you really think it's going to be before tablets, which in their current guise are first gen effectively begin to update and improve?

Again, I don't doubt that tablet horsepower will improve in the future. But so will desktops (and thus, so will the horsepower requirements for up-to-date applications, though this is a trend that I myself find annoying,) and there are still key differences (once again: KEYBOARD) that will make them less well-suited to many tasks than a netbook, mid-range laptop, or modest desktop.

The writing is on the wall for the big box system and as in another thread, whilst lifestylePCs, laptops and netbooks are leading the way currently, it'll be mobile devices that eventually come to the fore. Consider the capabilities of even a budget Android smartphone these days.

Okay, see, once again, when I talk about desktops I'm not talking about big-iron liquid-cooled gaming rigs - I'm talking about anything that is not portable, including what you're calling "lifestyle PCs." You can keep throwing around that term all you want, but that won't make it A. relevant to the discussion, or B. not a meaningless marketroid buzzword.

And you still seem to be under the impression that "will become more popular" necessarily means "will overtake and replace everything else." Ownership and regular use of a tablet and a desktop PC are anything but mutually exclusive, and I suppose it's even possible that some people might use a laptop and a tablet concurrently (though I still can't fathom why they would.) Is there room for tablets becoming more popular in the future? Quite possibly. Does that mean that they are the sum total of the future of computing? Hell no! Does that even mean that they will be the primary computing devices of the public? Not necessarily - we'll have to wait and see what happens to know.