At my work I get to dabble and play with all the hottest gadgets, including the latest 4G devices, phones or tablets. My feeling is that a stand alone tablet, with no keyboard is not very functional for business or day to day serious use. Its great for portability and can do quite a lot but isn't comfortable to hold in position for long periods of time. It has its place.
But devices like the Eepad Transfromer and ones in the future like it, ARE the future if you ask me. Convertible devices, devices that come with keyboards, docks and the like in the box are where its at. If a tablet is designed and engineered from its concept with keyboard or docking functionality then it becomes quite versatile and functional. Being able to use the portability of a tablet but dock it to a keyboard, large screen and use a mouse means it really can then replace the laptop.
As far as spending personal money for a tablet? I do not recommend it right now. I get some free, they barely get used. I know people who have bought iPads or other tablets and they almost force themselves to use it, if only to justify the cost it seems. The reason I say hold off is because tablets right now are really in their infant stages, 1.0 if you will. In the next 3-5 years these types of devices will be come more hybrid, better designed and have MUCH MUCH more robust operating systems designed for them.
Android Honeycomb is neat, its nice and it ... works. But thats about all I can say about it, its not that well fleshed out and Google is a baby in the OS design world. I like Android, but Android is a baby and Google has a lot of growing up to do. They dont know the first thing about integrating their services as well as say.. MIcrosoft. Personally I feel the best thing to do is wait for Windows 8 to release. I believe MS is going to fully cross integrate all types of devices, tablets, phones, desktop, laptops and game consoles with Windows 8.
I believe the next year will be about which tablet or phone has that new neat hardware.. which doesn't amount to much. So what if the new phone or tablet has another proc? Oh wow, hardware accelerated graphics?!! Boring, it still does what my old ass phone does today, just a tad bit faster. The future folks is NOT about hardware upgrades, its about software, services and integrating those services across multiple hardware platforms.
Windows 8 should be a good starting point for tablets. It should bring services and software to a level we are not seeing on mobile devices today. Windows Phone 7 is margionally ok today, but when Phone 8 comes out and fully integrates you with your Windows 8 devices, or your Xbox 360 running Metro UI you'll finally start to see some modern services being implemented across ALL devices you may own.
Today is a mix match of 20 companies fighting for your money. No unified services, just a giant cluster of software and hardware being thrown at the consumer and packaged in shining marketing campaigns to fool you into buying a new device every 18 months when your contract is up.
I say wait about a year or 2 for tablets to mature and for better software and services to better utilize the hardware they sit on.
it's a shame this cheapy laptop is actually better spec'd than my desktop.
