My company has just allowed us to purchase tablets with company funds. I’m researching now, but I was wondering if SDMB could give me a hand.
My needs, in order of priority, #1 being most important to me:
Full keyboard: I saw a tv commercial about the Surface where the cover is also a gel keyboard. Probably, this would require a tablet with the main connector on the long side, rather than on the short side like the iPad.
Connectivity: I need it to connect to USB (mini USB is fine) and possibly vga/HDMI.
Storage: I currently need a larger flash drive, and 16-32 gigabytes of storage is preferable. It should act like a flash drive when connected to another device.
Compatibility with MS Office: it should be able to read and write to .xls, .doc etc. files.
Incorporated stylus: I’ve seen models where there’s a little hole in the case where you put the stylus.
Size: Widescreen 7" or normal 9".
Cost: If it’s under $200, the company would probably foot the whole bill, over $200 they would subsidize it.
I’d be willing to abandon 5-7 in favor of 1-4.
Things I don’t care about:
Games
Apps (I don’t care if there’s tons of apps, as long as it does what I need.)
Question the first:
Why do you need ?
2. Connectivity: I need it to connect to USB (mini USB is fine) and possibly vga/HDMI.
Question the second:
Why a tablet at all ? Your list of items sounds much more like you want a laptop (possibly a convertible ultrabook) rather than a true tablet. While you can get a full keyboard on any tablet (via bluetooth) and there are nifty keyboard docks that are non-bluetooth for some tablets like the Asus Transformer, Microsoft Surface, etc, generally a laptop is going to be much cheaper for the same functionality.
Tablets are great, but it sound like you want to use one as a content creation device, with the requests for a stylus, microsoft office, outputs to what I presume will be projectors/presentation devices. That isn’t a role in which they excel.
Agreed. You say you want a full keyboard and MS Office. You don’t want a tablet, you want a laptop or ultrabook.
The allegedly “better” MS Surface tablet (“MS Surface Pro”, I think they are calling it) may or may not be released soon. “Coming Soon”. If this thing really can run native Win 7 and 8 programs, and does well as a tablet, it may be the perfect business/enthusiast hybrid tablet/pc. But it’s still not out, so we can’t say yet nor evaluate it.
Also, good luck finding something under $200 that runs MS Office. AFAIK, it hasn’t even been released for Android yet, let alone iOS (although from most of your points it seems an iPad is right out). Any other platform with less app selection (which you say you don’t care about) is definitely not going to run Office for a very long time. It looks like the Surface Pro will start at about $900 dollars, well beyond your stated price range. I totally agree withjacobsta811, you don’t want a tablet, you want a laptop.
Question: Why do you need a stylus? The whole point of tablets and capacitive touch screens is that those make a stylus obsolete.
Just wanted to add, that while you can’t get microsoft office on most tablets, you can edit and create Microsoft Office compatible files using several different office suites for IOS & Android: Best productivity apps in 2021 | Tom's Guide
None of those are going to replace Microsoft Office + a Keyboard + a Mouse/Touchpad for speed and accuracy if you are trying to create a complicated report or document though.
Get the Microsoft Surface RT. You can check out reviews for it on YouTube. I personally got the iPad 3 for the retina display and apps. I am also now an Apple fanboy.
Sorry, I didn’t mean “full keyboard” as in with numeric keypad, but just all the letter keys and top row number keys. I tried the iPad’s keyboard and the pinky keys are gone and you have to press a button to get to the numbers.
Yes, I need a laptop, which my company has already issued to all of us, but they want to see if tablets are better. If I can find a tablet that does what I need, then I can return the laptop. Also, in this situation, the tablet would be mine but the laptop would be company issued and returned later.
Regarding stylus, I have had a 3GS iphone for a while now, and it hates my fingers. It registers what I press incorrectly about half the time.
Yes, a touchscreen laptop would be great that folds over and can be used as a tablet is also what I would be looking for.
Yeah surface pro looks like it hits all my points (except cost) and will also run Ms Office (according to the website.) Without other options, I might just wait for it to come down a little in price.
None. It isn’t possible to make a tablet using the apple 30-pin or lightning connector as it is proprietary and owned by Apple. (30-pin being old, lightning being new). Most android tablets use MicroUSB, which is instead a standardized connector also used by cell phones, etc. The connector for keyboard docks if you don’t use a bluetooth keyboard are usually proprietary though, and specific to whichever vendor’s tablet you are looking at.
iPad mini looks like the right answer so far, I’m pretty sure there are apps and accessories for everything I need it to do. There’s even a lightning to 30 pin adapter so I can keep using my old accessories.
Let me tell you that if you’re turning in your laptop for a tablet, and you want to do WORK, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Really, for work purposes, I would strongly recommend that you keep the laptop.
What do you do with Microsoft Office that couldn’t be done with a plain text editor?
The iPad mini is a smaller iPad 2 from a hardware perspective. A refurb iPad 2 is only $319 and you get the larger screen - and full warranty. With the exact same performance, memory, graphics and CPU as the mini. No adaptor needed, it uses the 30 pin connector.
instead of a replacement, you should look at the ipad as an extension of your current laptop. something smaller, more portable and goes wherever you go. for input heavy requirements, it’s going to be a step down no matter what you do, keyboard or no. i wouldn’t want to do any kind of heavy editing of my spreadsheets on something so small, and the ipad mini is smaller.
The main thing is that I need to view ppt, xls, docx, etc. I don’t necessarily need to create them.
There seem to be tons of lightning to usb or mini usb available. The bigger problem is that if I do attach the ipad to a printer or flash drive through USB, would it still work? The one that comes as a charging cable seems to be male USB, i’m assuming a female one would be available (such as the ones to insert memory sticks.)
ACK! NO! iPads don’t connect to printers through USB - you can only print to Airprint enabled printers, or do a bit of futzing around.
Also, you can’t connect USB sticks to the iPad - your best option is dropbox or email. As far as I am aware, there are no external physical storage options for the iPad.
You can connect SD cards to the Ipad with adapters like these, but AFAIK these are to import photos and videos to your ipad- they are not general storage that you could use to say, save a document to or import a document from.
