Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Why Do Most Tablet Specs Suck?
Slashdot reader Qbertino describes himself as a "happy tablet user," moving from an old HTC Flyer to his Yoga 2. But he notes that most other tablets "have laughable battery times," and "I've yet to find a tablet that does not give me storage or memory problems in some way or other, lasts for a day or two in power and doesn't feel chintzy and like it won't stand a month of regular everyday use and carrying around..." He asks why none of the manufacturers seem willing to offer more than one gigabyte of RAM -- and why they're so stingy with storage. "Where is the rugged 16GB RAM / 1TB Storage / 20-hour battery tablet?"
So leave your educated opinions in the comments. What are your thoughts on the current tablet market? And are they the ultimate all-purpose "convergence" device that Apple and Ubuntu seem to think they are?
So leave your educated opinions in the comments. What are your thoughts on the current tablet market? And are they the ultimate all-purpose "convergence" device that Apple and Ubuntu seem to think they are?
Try checking out the Memopad 572c. 2 GB RAM, a fantastic screen, supports SD cards, and a really high performing chip with ~ 10 hour battery life, all for less than $199. It's not made anymore, can only get up to Android 5 at the moment, and won't take on the full size ipad, but for what you get it's a fantastic deal, if you can still find it. A decent $199 tablet seems to be a lost art these days :/
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
In fairy land with the unicorns and super-dense LiPo batteries that don't explode when you sneeze really hard.
Because what do you need in order to power 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD??? Lots of power. Which don't exist in batteries with the density required at prices that are affordable.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Here.
Not even a LMGTFY.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
apparently these days cheap is all that matters - quality doesn't
This.
Nobody is interested in making a good product, only a cheap product.
The issue is that nobody is willing to pay for high-end tablets. A few years ago, there were more premium tablets around, and they didn't sell.
Tablets are a niche product with limited usefulness and as a result nobody is willing to pay a lot for them.
The iPad is well made and has good specs, but offers no expandability and you have to buy the most expensive one to get a decent amount of storage. For the same price as the top of the line iPad I bought a laptop with a bigger screen, faster more powerful CPU, a lot more storage, 4 USB ports and an HDMI.
I have yet to come up with a reason why I would want a tablet.
Tablets are meant for consumption, not production. Touchscreens are a regression in human interfaces: sloppy, imprecise, immediately unintuitive kludges for meta input. Tablets are one side of a power grab by the industry because PCs offer too much freedom, privacy and repairability; the other side is app markets and cloud services. Tablets are too convenient; to achieve that they must sacrifice any spec based on volume: battery capacity, storage, RAM, cooling, etc. Except screen size... gotta keep packing more pixels.
We have three tablets for the two of us. One in the kitchen for recipes, and a personal one for us to use around the house.
I often hang out on the couch and listen to music while I read e-comics, browse Reddit or Imgur, or use the tablet to look up IMDB entries. A laptop is just cumbersome and hot in those circumstances. An 8" tablet like my Samsung (1600p, beautiful display) is perfect, easy to read -- easier to read than a 4" phone screen. Laptop too big, phone too small.
Also works fine in the bathroom. Easier to read than a phone.
I have a crappy Nook HD for recipes and music selection in the kitchen -- it's a lot more portable than a laptop, fits everywhere, lasts a week or more on a charge just sitting there, and I don't have to worry about getting anything in a keyboard or using a mouse or crappy touch pad. Laptop too big, phone too small.
I was skeptical about getting a tablet, but for us they've worked out great in these scenarios.
Everyone has different needs.
I still don't own a a smartphone and instead use a very old now Asus Transformer TF201. I don't own a smartphone because even basic plans cost me around $90/month and I just don't need mobile data much at all (I almost entirely use wireless at home and use the tablet when I do). My talk and text is astronomically low to the point I have over a 'thousand minutes' built up on my pay as you go feature phone and I spend like $22 every 3 months. However I take my tablet everywhere and have for years with ~8 hours of life as long as I keep the screen brightness down and if I need it I have the keyboard with a second battery in it. My mom actually complains about how I take it with me everywhere so I can read books, play video, tap into open wifi to look things up online, listen to music, take notes, write a novel, and perform all sorts of other tasks. It's more than paid for itself, though it did cost ~$700 brand new with the keyboard. So it could have bought a laptop, but I have a laptop and barely use it because it's to big to take with me easy and overkill for most of what I need. Instead a tablet with a keyboard attachment is basically perfect. Sadly it's getting long in the tooth now running an ancient version of android and it's certainly never going to see an upgrade to a newer version. It's taken a lot of abuse over the years as well and is still ticking, though it's chipped and even has a crack from the hundreds of times it's fallen off of something I lay it on and fallen onto numerous floors including some absurdly hard tiles.
Since most pay pay absurd amounts for a mobile phone each month and already have a smartphone which has grown larger and larger over the years, I'm not surprised most people don't look at tablets. I know I'm so not the typical consumer, but then most people don't know what they are missing either. My parents have wanted a tablet like mine for quite awhile instead of the laptop they got (and which has numerous odd issues). I think they would appeal more to the older generation, but they aren't targeted at that market and so a lot of people who would enjoy them never hear of them (not even the Ipad, which is probably the best known of them).
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
I have to disagree that "all of my complaints are relatively incorrect". I'm glad you haven't experienced issues typing on the MS keyboard cover, but it's a fact that many of our users have. The Surface Pro is designed so it props upright along the edge of the cover, and the cover is a plastic and fabric combo that's slightly flexible. That means if you're sitting on a train or other form of public transportation and it's vibrating/bouncing around, the Surface Pro 4 can't really be held still by the keyboard portion - unlike a laptop with a traditional hinged lid firmly attached to the bottom half of the shell. That doesn't even begin to discuss such questions as why MS feels the need to sell the keyboard cover as an *option* for over $100 on a computer this expensive? Seems to me it should be included, as I've never met anyone who bought a Surface Pro 4 and decided to skip the keyboard cover.
As for the font scaling? Try any of a number of older apps developed using Java 6.... It's typically not compiled to be "scaling aware" (even if Java 6 technically did offer the option to compile source that way). Our Fonality VoIP "HUD" control panel is one such example. On a Surface Pro 4, if you launch it - you can't even see the phone extensions you're trying to click on because it draws them so tiny. There's no way to get Windows 10 to tell the app to draw it larger in proportion to everything else. All you can do is drag it onto a regular (non 4K) external display where it will display properly.