Sensible Topic Tablets - The Future

I've had a few conversations with those in the IT industry. They mostly say the same thing - tablets are okay but they'll never be mainstream. On the other hand, I worked in Corporate IT for 30 years and met few people with 'vision'. I mean, Bill Gates took a while to get the Internet ffs. Then he wrote a book about it which was out of date before it was even published!

I've read articles like this one - http://www.zdnet.com/the-future-of-mobile-computing-a-phone-a-mini-tablet-and-a-super-tablet-7000021882/ that suggest you'll have a smartphone, mini-tablet and super-tablet very soon. Only one comment to that - crap!

At the risk of predicting something in an unpredictable area I'm more inclined to think that ways of working will change; tablets will become more versatile; docking tablets will become mainstream and technologies will merge.

So, where you had a tablet and smartphone before but went to work and jumped on the desktop they will merge. The tablet will be the smartphone and docking will allow more sophisticated use.

Given the nature of predictions I'm probably way off reality! Be interesting to hear what other people think though

To be honest, i never thought the tablet would get anywhere. I thought it would mainly end up on a kitchen wall to be used for putting some music on and check a few emails etc whilst having breakfast or tea lol.

The old smartphones were too small for internet etc and the tablets too big to carry around. They are sort of merging/coming together in size now, just big enough to fit in a large pocket.

Tablets are already mainstream in corporate IT. We are seriously looking at surface 2 with dock replacing desktops for some users.

Same here, we're going for Surface ( a Uni ) with docks. Went thinpath for a while but that fizzled out, didn't
Suit our needs plus the supposed savings don't exist.

Desktops and fixed devices seem so out of date for how people work - in the field where I work but it's often different in all sorts of sectors.

I think tablets are just a natural progression of laptops as the technology improves and importantly - meets users expectations

So many people in Corporate IT have said to me that spreadsheets etc. just don't work on tablets? Well, I was doing this sh*t when it first came out (before Windows) and I just downloaded a free spreadsheet app for the iPad and it's cool?

Sure, if you want to do summat more specialised then you'll maybe need to dock to get a full keyboard and bigger screen but I can work on this no bother.

i think slowly they are becoming better. They just need to be the right size. too big and and they are a pain to carry and too small and you cant practically use them instead of desktop

As people have said above the Surface Pro 2 has this filled, it's either a tab or a lappy depending on whether you use the docking keyboard.


(TT)