News reports the hot item this year were tablets. Tablet devices such as Kindles, iPads, Galaxy Tabs, Nooks, and many more. General features are size, battery life, and wireless or cell connectivity to the Internet and touch screen input. Many have virtual keyboards or can attach QWERTY keyboards via either USB or Bluetooth connections. Tablet history goes back to 2000 when Microsoft unsuccessfully released the Tablet PC. 2007 saw Apple release the first iPad primarily as a media device for movies and music and the tablet form of computer became popular.
Today the tablet is still regarded as a media device but underneath all that flash and sound is a computer capable of performing the very tasks our desktops and laptops do now. Have tablets reached the level of our binary buddies? Not yet, but they are coming on strong. So strong that we may be watching the end of the desktop or laptop computer. Tablets available today are adding capabilities as fast as possible. Different tablets use competing operating systems, such as Android, iOS and Linux. The battle heats up with the Microsoft release of Windows 8 which will be a tablet oriented operating system allowing still another set of capabilities to tablets.
Let’s take a look at features to be found in some of the tablets available today. Standard in most tablets is wireless connectivity. This allows us to visit any place with a wireless Internet connection, such as the public libraries, McDonalds, Beef O’Bradys and thousands more including relatives and friends where we can connect to the Internet. Once connected, we can surf the web, purchase airline tickets, send e-mail and open and work on documents. Built in Web Cams can enable video calls via a variety of software packages such as Skype. Digital cameras, certainly, Tablets have a very limited amount of onboard storage space so much of what we do, such as writing a letter will be stored online. For example the tablet I use is connected to Google Docs. It looks like a word processor or spreadsheet, acts like it but the software is actually running on Google’s servers and my documents are stored there. There is even some capability to print from a tablet to a wireless network printer. Most tablets that have Internet and e-mail features will automatically back up the e-mail and contacts list to online servers. And yes they all download eBooks, pictures, movies and music.
There might be a tablet in your future.
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