Have you been tempted to buy a tablet? Maybe the iPad has caught your eye, or Amazon’s latest entry into the tablet market. But let me tell you this: while tablets do have a lot of benefits and advantages, they still can’t compete with a real laptop (sometimes called a notebook). Don’t believe me? Take a look at these details.
Tablets are expensive. Really expensive, sometimes. But most of that expense goes to the fancy touch screen and innovative interface, not to the actual hardware that the device computes with. So no tablet on the market today can compete, even with a mid-range, low- to medium-priced laptop, in pure computing power.
As awesome as Swype and other touch-screen typing technologies are, they can’t keep up with even a moderate typist on a real keyboard. If you use the standard QWERTY keyboard, you can probably type 90-100 words per minute, or even better – and you can’t come close to that with a tablet.
These days, it’s difficult to find a laptop that doesn’t have a CD-writer drive. With one of these (most of which are built in), you can read, write, and record over discs. On a tablet, you’re lucky if you can even read them. Many laptops even have DVD burners, putting them far ahead of tablets.
Tablets are often praised for their capacity to connect art, such as paintings and drawings, with the digital world through their touch screen. The problem is that a tablet may be able to record your hand motions, but it lacks the graphics memory and power that you need to edit those works of art. And you can forget trying to play the latest video game for the same reason.
People used to complain that laptops couldn’t be adapted to changing technology and required a replacement to keep up with technological evolution – but that’s not true anymore. Laptops today are versatile and can easily be upgraded. Tablets, on the other hand, have a new iteration released every few years as technology improves. Some tablets may look like a good investment now, but just wait until you’ve bought five or six of them because computing technology got better. A laptop, on the other hand, will last and won’t cost you a fortune to keep up.
A tablet is great for specific circumstances and situations, but when it comes down to versatility and long-term options, your best bet will be a laptop.
