Convince me to get/not get a tablet PC

[antonio107]

@BigT

Not to pick on you, but posts like this are really not helping me to even want to be anywhere near an iPad. Your reasons for not wanting one are the same as mine. And, yet, somehow, you’ve completely switched sides in a month-and-a-half or so.

As far as I can tell, the jailbreak app has yet to have even been released for the iPad2, and that’s pretty ominous with it being supposedly hacked a month ago. Apple’s really fighting this now. Jobs is still controlling what you can and cannot do with your device.

While I’m not necessarily including the OP in this, I’ve seen even the most vehement detractors change their tune once they get their hands on one, or, worse, when they go into the Mac store. That’s some slick marketing and skillful manipulation. That’s the last thing I want to be a willing part of.

Please tell me that your change of heart was motivated by cold, logical evaluation of what you do and don’t want from a device. I have nothing against that. But this sort of stuff is almost seeming like a horror movie cliche.

I played with one three or four times, once at the Mac store as I walked through the mall with my bag of gym shorts, and then a few times at Future Shop and Best Buy.

The flip flop? Much as I convinced myself that the Android or Playbook was better, or that I was better off with a laptop, the process of contemplation led me to observe several things:

1. Absolutely every one of my computer tasks, were my feet put to the flames, could be handled by the off license gov’t surplus IBM PC I bought for 75$. I check email on my blackberry and I write term papers, and I have a video game console. My netbook was a tool of convenience, rather than necessity.

2. Given that all the tablets are Bluetooth ready, I can buy an add-on keyboard, and come very close to the functionality I got with my netbook. Iswifter lets me use flash (and watch Hulu for the first time ever!), and one of the posters on this website introduced me to the world of SSH and VNC. Once I have it down pact, I have access to my home PC for whatever else I may need on the go, provided I have Internet access (which I do virtually everywhere I go).

3. Even though the Xoom had the SD port, and the windows 7 tablets were genuine PCs, they were clunky and slow compared to the IPad. I did a side by side comparison, and unless the Best Buy people were cheating me, the IPad was lighter, faster, and thinner than any of the other Android/PC tablets I played with that whole afternoon. And yeah, it’s an aesthetically pleasing machine. It’s got an eight hour battery life (rated at ten, but I get at best between 8.5 and 9), compared to maybe two hours on my netbook, rated at 4 hours.

Bottom line? It doesn’t do everything my netbook did, but it does enough things better (videos, surfing the Internet, battery life), and enough things adequately with a bit of work (Flash and JavaScript, storing files), to make it a perfect in between from my blackberry to my PC.

Also, as a disclaimer, my mom bought this for me as an early graduation present from my master’s. If it was my own money, I MIGHT have just hot glued the DC pin back again…