Why I don’t need a Tablet

Greetings dear readers, ‘tis I, the Lady Geek with your article of the day about a serious pondering I’ve been having during the last few months: To Tablet or not to Tablet.

When I was a young girl every week I visited my older sister’s office. As I would sit very quietly in the big wooden chair just in front of the receptionist’s desk, my focus was solely centered on the woman behind the desk whose back was to me. Her posture was perfect, her concentration as precise as her fingers moved so elegantly and competently over the keys of her electrically powered typewriter creating an extremely lovely clicky-clak rhythm of importance. As a five year old GIT (Geek In Training) I decided that whatever I did as a grownup had to involve typing and making that same beautifully musical rhythm!

A few short years later I was typing at my own electric typewriter when Star Trek Deep Space 9 appeared on my television screen and I was taken by Jake Sysco. No, I didn’t have a crush on him, (I was more of an Odo fan-girl), I had a crush on that thing he carried around in his hands, the Star Trek PADD (Personal Access Display Device) He inputted his stories, his games, his life into this one little handheld device. I began to dream of that device.  I had to have it, and yet, the nineties being the nineties, technology had just progressed towards beepers and early analog cellular phones, so I had to put that dream on the shelf never expecting to actually see it come into fruition…

The Lady Geek’s Conundrum:

Fast forward a few tiny more years down the road to the year 2011 in the neighborhood diner sipping a cup of Joe and collecting my thoughts. There I was, dressed in my denims and lovely pink cashmere top, looking as good as I felt and minding my own geeky business. As I sat in front of my laptop composing a series of words for my “Great American Novel”, one of my friends who happens to waitress there part time and shares my love of all Star things( “Trek” and “Wars”) asked me, “Why don’t you have the ‘Sysco Special’ yet?”

The only answer I could come up with as I looked from my computer to my Smartphone to my pad and pen on the table beside me was, “Do I actually need a Tablet?”

I know people from two camps. The camp that won’t pick up a Tablet until it becomes a notebook replacement and the camp that can’t live without their Tablets as they are.  Each side has their own perspectives and maybe a favorite kind, but I needed to form my own opinion. So I finished my coffee, packed up my laptop and headed to the nearest electronics store with two missions in mind. The first, to find suitable justification to upgrade my already electronically obsessed self beyond just trying to be as cool as Jake Sysco was; the second, to get my hands on a big cookie in reward for offering my dear readers sound advice yet again.  Are you ready for my findings? Here we go.

Tablets vs. Notebooks:

1. Physicality:

Upon entering the large electronics chain and navigating my way through the salespeople to the actual hardware, I found some obvious visual differences. Instead of the hinged clamshell design and standard hard drive of the average notebook, Tablets are open faced with their storage onboard or expandable through SD, HDMI and USB (in some cases) thus making them the ultra portable cute and cuddly cousin to the modern notebook. The petite design of the Tablets make it easier to actually kick back and relax on your sofa or favorite rocking chair to indulge in your light computing work. Their virtual keyboards make entering light data easier and another plus is that if you love the apps your Smartphone provides you’ll be able to use them on your Tablet as well which is pretty nifty since a lot of Apps don’t have desktop counterparts.

2. Usability

Now let’s get to the nitty gritty of what to expect from a Tablet. If you are a casual gamer (at this point, if you’re asking what a causal gamer is, you probably are one) then a Tablet is just as fun as your phone. You can play various puzzle games, ball games, bird games and the like because they all use touch control and accelerometers (An accelerometer is a device that measures the vibration or acceleration of motion of a structure) to great effect.

If you’re a hardcore gamer, well then you can learn to play the Yahtzee app while you’re away from your home computer and Skyrim.

Of course you can use the Tablet for your surfing and emailing needs. In fact, once again, I would prefer the Tablet over my laptop if I just want to wind down at the end of my day by surfing the web or answering emails simply because I can curl up in bed with it and not have to worry about the vents getting blocked by my cover while it’s on my lap or about its bouncing as I move around on my bed causing my hard drive’s write arm to skip around.

The final plus of the Tablets I’ve looked at has been one of the things I love about my Motorola Photon. I can watch movies on it.  

3. Photos, Reading and Other Assorted Passions of Mine:

Among the Tablets I’ve looked at, none take the quality of pictures I require for day to day “Mommy-ing”.  According to Maximum PC: “Tablet cameras are generally crappy, suffering from compression artifacting, color shifts, and other image-quality problems.” And for once, I have nothing to add because that was my experience with Tablets.

Also, I have a Nook that I love to read when I have some down time. It’s the same size as a Tablet, and has that soothing E-ink that doesn’t cause headaches and eyestrain after prolonged usage. The Tablets don’t offer that, so they can’t replace my E-reader or actual paperback.  

Finally typing on the virtual keyboard just sucks. I am a touch typist and these things don’t take my skills with or without a Bluetooth keyboard or keyboard dock. Neither iOS nor Android support office, productivity or serious content creation apps, so as a writer if I have serious prose to write, I’m stuck.

Final Thoughts:

While munching on that reward cookie I mention earlier, I went into that electronics store with open eyes and optimistic curiosity and I left with no serious justification to add a Tablet to my technology collection other than the fact that they are definitely cute. The fact of the matter is I am a geek. I like RPG’s and first person shooters, I love playing Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. I am also a big fan of reading and writing, which are two of the things a Tablet of any kind will not let me do to the best of my liking. The final straw is the picture quality is, well, craptacular. Tablets of today are not necessary for me to be a happy geek, even for my inner “Jake Sysco”.  Maybe in the next three to five years a Tablet will be developed that meets my every gadget need. Heck, I’d settle for one that can beat my phone.

If you aren’t a complete geeky snob like me, go ahead and get one, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. There are some bells and whistles and pretty features that make owning one worthwhile, but a Tablet just isn’t for this Lady Geek.

Written By MaryAnn Paris