Tablets

[ck1]

Are they practical for general business use, writing emails, creating documents etc or are they more suitable for web surfing etc - looking for a new laptop for work but considering an ipad instead?

[rockyracoon]

What sort of general business are you talkng about? An iPad won't replace a computer. That being said though, I boot my desktop up only about once every 6 weeks to do a bit of work on word and excel for my OH.

[ck1]

Thanks Rocky, mainly emails really, some excel, internet stuff, word documents...

[Alston]

Google...Laptop v Tablet and there is a lot of info available.

This is an example.:-

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&;docId=1001068291

Al.

[rockyracoon]

Emailing is fine as is surfing, games, watching videos etc, as to the excel stuff, there are apparently apps from Microsoft but I have no idea how good they are or how they work, you'd have to investigate, also there is no facility to save documents on the ipad so if you amended something on excel in the ipad you'd probably want it to 'cloud' over in some way to your main PC, but as I say I've no idea how they work.

[Sycamore3House]

I run my own business. I use my ipad for everything (except HMRC RTi payroll think that what it is called). Apple have Pages = Word. Numbers = Excel. Keynote = PowerPoint. Documents can be converted to PDF and Acrobat Reader. I use Kashflow for my accounts there is an app for that. Hope this helps. You will still need a laptop to enable you to use iTunes.

[Buenchico]

Netbooks offer a good compromise between laptops and tablets. They're far easier tro carry around than laptops but they're still 'proper computers', with physical keyboards and running Windows.

I use one of these:
https://www.google.co.uk/shopping/product/17798334143557297599?q=acer+aspire+one

[Gromit]

New iPads get all Apples productivity apps now for free.

http://www.iphonefaq.org/archives/972870

Don't buy now, new models are due out in a couple of weeks.

[AB Editor]

Depends how long your emails are :)

Remember, you can always plug in a keyboard to any of them for proper "office" work.

Additionally, if you go for something like the MS surface then you can use the hdmi to extend the screen (I don't know what your work set-up is like...). There may be ways to do similar things for Android and iPad (Mirracast? Maybe?)

You should be comfortable with the screen size and the workflow whichever you go for. I think we're just on the cusp of Tablets being for "real work" as much as PCs.