Ask HN: Do you use a tablet?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10174765

by Raed667 • 11 years ago

22 83 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Everyone around me seems to have a tablet these days. I have never used one and I don't see the need to.

I've been thinking about getting one lately, maybe for note taking or web navigation when I don't really need to code.

Do you use one? Why? Why not? And if so what model do you recommend?

DougN7• 11 years ago

I inherited my wife's old iPad but very rarely use it. Just hate on screen keyboards. Maybe I'll watch something on Netflix with it, but that's about it.

r0ll3rb0t• 11 years ago

I was in the same boat, ended up then getting iPad mini. It's great, but I wouldn't buy it again. I think I would buy a Windows tablet next, just for OneNote and making sure it had stylus support.

ant6n4• 11 years ago

During my ugrad 2005-2008, I had a convertible tablet pc and took most of my class notes using it in tablet mode. But it had a Wacom pen and no distracting touch input. And when I needed a keyboard, I could just flip around and have a full laptop.

To me, modern tablets seem like toys, except maybe the Surface pro (expensive). I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and barely use it. The screen is uncomfortably small for taking notes, and the note taking software is exceedingly basic compared to the 13-year-old Windows Journal (which is itself quite basic, like a notepad for pen-input, but powerful enough to take decent notes and making drawings).

SyneRyder3• 11 years ago

That's intriguing to me. I love my Galaxy Tab A 8.0 (the successor to the Note 8). S-Note has improved a lot since the Note 8 came out, you can now cut & paste and resize parts of your drawing. I think the screen is larger as well (it's now a 4:3 ratio, not the 16:10 of the Note 8).

I've never tried Windows Journal though, so I'm not sure which features I'm missing out on. S-Note could definitely be improved more.

ant6n4• 11 years ago

In journal drawings, are vectors: you can zoom in a lot, you can copy paste/resize them, you can erase individual strokes completely by tapping one part of them (if you set the eraser to vector).

In journal you can specify your own background; I like little squares to draw and take notes rather than college-book style lines. In S-Note they pre-defined a few paper templates, and the only thing that comes close ('idea notes' or something) uses a beige back-ground, which looks ugly when putting on a webpage. Thus I use an imagemagick script to fix those (cumbersome).

Journal makes it a bit easier to manage notes, they live in a proper file system; pages within notes are easier to manage (that page-management sub-tool in S-note is very cumbersome). Journal allows searching in notes based on text recognition, per file or per folder.

I found exporting easier with journal, but that may just be because you are on a proper operating system where you can copy and paste quickly; on the Note the normal modus operandi for copying seems to be to 'lasso' stuff, which you can't put on a website nicely (images are rectangles, not hand-lassoed loops).

Is there a way to update S-Note? (If not, that could be sort of another complaint: lack of updates)

trowawee• 11 years ago

Yeah, I use my iPad all the time. I play a bunch of games on it, read Feedly/Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr, read books, occasionally watch TV shows. It's my go-to device when I'm riding the El. I have the iPad Air 1st Gen, and it's great. My girlfriend has the Mini, which I like more for reading, although it's not great for watching videos. I think they're about to get even better with the iOS 9 ad-blocking capability; that's certainly the biggest issue with browsing on mobile now.

lnalx• 11 years ago

I found it useless until I bought one, being a musician I can easily follow chords on it. I use it too for web development (checking responsive design), Android development and Reading (very important as HN user!). I hadn't spent a lot of money, it's a chinese tablet with same iPad specs.

icebraining2• 11 years ago

Yeah, with a decent holder, they're particularly great as "help screens" for doing manual activities. Having a circuit diagram when I'm soldering or a recipe when I'm cooking, which I can easily touch to zoom in or clarify some term, is extremely helpful.

eswat• 11 years ago

I picked up a Nexus 7 years ago but found I wasn’t using it consistently enough compared to my laptop or kindle, so I gave it the boot.

But last year I bought an iPad to replace by broken Kindle. Between reading and deciding to put more consumption apps on it and stop using those on my laptop – Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, etc. – I started to get more use out of it.

In the end I have a tablet out of convenience of separating leisurely activities from work ones. Other than that it hasn’t provided significant value for me yet.

anonyfox2• 11 years ago

My iPad (air 2) works for me as the perfect "consumption" device wherever I are. Reading blogs, kindle app for books (prefer it to the old kindle device by far), twitter, facebook, mails, and so on. Also a few games like fallout shelter for the 5 minutes in between, or even stuff like deus ex, quite immersive gaming experience for a tablet.

For when I want to "produce" things, I grab my 13" mbp pro.

Actually I have always both, my ipad and my macbook, in a bag with me.

Bonuspoint for developers: the iPad can serve DashDoc remotely when coding on your mac! :D

geophile2• 11 years ago

My wife started working for Apple retail a year ago. During training, they asked what an iPad would be used for, and my wife gave pretty much exactly your response -- it's for consumption. WRONG! There was an ad campaign at the time, showing iPads as an important tool in writing music, climbing mountains, etc. They were trying very hard to convince people that iPads were for people doing things, not couch potatoes. I'm not sure they really convinced anyone.

msh• 11 years ago

Ehmm somebody is using it for more than consumption: https://mobile.twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/616345992506540...

anonyfox2• 11 years ago

Of course you can be productive on an iPad, no question. I have a keyboard-case for it, so writing a few letters or stuff like that is fairly straightforward and without much hassle.

It comes down on what "producing" means for you. I am a developer. Yes, I can code even on my iPhone (code editor, ssh client, git client is installed), but i'm much more productive on an actual mac.

If you're kinda office worker that uses mainly office software (word, excel, ...) and messaging (mail, slack, ...), an iPad with optional keyboard is perfectly capable as a primary working device, plus it's extremely portable and may even have mobile data plans attached.

collyw• 11 years ago

jonkiddy• 11 years ago

I bought an iPad mini with cellular and enjoy it. I commute on the train and mainly use it for reading HN, Kindle, email.

gaze2• 11 years ago

I have a surface pro 3 that I use exclusively for note taking. I'm a physicist and hand written notes are absolutely crucial. The fat iPad style stylii have way too thick a tip for anything useful. Surface Pros, Lenovo tablets with digitizers, and Samsung Galaxy notes are very popular among people who do calculations

WorldWideWayne3• 11 years ago

Some people are so petty that they feel the need to downvote this because you spoke well of a Microsoft product.

I love my Windows tablets! They're so much more powerful than devices running a locked down mobile OS!

analog312• 11 years ago

Any thought of using iPython Notebook as a lab notebook? I ask, because I'm a physicist too (albeit in industry, not doing real physics research), and am experimenting with doing so myself.

gaze2• 11 years ago

I use ipython notebook daily for data processing and interacting with simulations. Works great. The problem is that I need SOMETHING that lets me draw diagrams and write equations by hand,

Raed6674• 11 years ago

The surface pro 3 is more expensive than my laptop. The price is not justifiable for a student living in a 3rd world country.

petercooper• 11 years ago

I used to, but once I got a bigger phone (Samsung Notes and iPhone 6 Plus) I ended up finding the phone and tablet could become the same thing, so now it's just big phone + MacBook for me on the move. Nonetheless, I do recommend having a tablet because you might find it really works for you - we're all different.

towb• 11 years ago

I have a Nexus 9. I can't say that I need a tablet, I don't use it a lot, but it's still nice to have one. I use it for netflix in bed, ebooks, check the news whenever there is a commercial break on tv or to google something from the sofa, a couple of fun games, get access to my notes if I reinstall linux or do something that can break my computer. Stuff like that.

My opinion is that for reading and simple point and click stuff it is ok. Whenever I try to write a little more text than 3 - 8 keywords on google or to chat with people, it gets slow and wonky.

juandazapata• 11 years ago

I used to, but after buying an iPhone 6 plus, I realized that I was doing all my reading, browsing, etc, in that device, and that I just set my iPad mini aside. I gave it to my mom as a gift, now I don't use a tablet, just my phone.

dave1619• 11 years ago

Same here. My iPhone 6+ feels like a small tablet but is more convenient and always with me.

icebraining2• 11 years ago

I'm the opposite - I feel that smartphones, even 6" ones, are too small to comfortably enjoy using for more than very basic activities, so I just got a Nexus 7 and a very cheap dumbphone which lasts a week on a single charge, all for <100€.

wishinghand3• 11 years ago

I use an iPad primarily for 3 things

1. Music production/performance. The iPad does few things objectively better than Android and touch responsiveness when it comes to playing music apps is one of them. There's a 100-400ms delay with Android for some reason. I had heard they'd gotten better recently but my girlfriend just got a Galaxy S5 and even though it's a last generation phone it's unplayable for being on time.

The iPad has a lot of great emulations of older synths and exciting new apps that aren't available anywhere else. Some big names have also made apps, like Korg, Propellerheads, and Native Instruments. Check out iPolysix, iProphet, Animoog, DM1, Auria, E.L.S.A., Beatsurfing, Impaktor, BIAS Amp, Audiobus, Swoopster, Sparkle, Galileo, Thumbjam, Steel Guitar, Arpeggionome, Orphion, Xynthesizr, Glitchbreaks, Loopy, and Gadget.

2. A second monitor. Duet Display lets me plug in my iPad as a second monitor to my MacBook. This is convenient for coding on the go.

3. Casual laptop use replacement. About the only thing I can't do easily on just an iPad is code or write a lengthy bit of text. If I bring a Bluetooth keyboard I can conceivably do the latter. Possibly the former but I hear the coding apps are still "meh". But if I travel lightly and I want to read, answer email, check the news, play music, or watch some videos, then an iPad suffices over a laptop, and I don't need a heavy power brick. If I want better speakers I can either use headphones or a Bluetooth speaker. If I want a bigger screen there are converter cables or apps that let me do that.

stinos• 11 years ago

Music production

Do you write actual songs on it or rather just work out some melody or beat or so? Just asking becasue I cannot imagine doing the former, especially handling sequencer-style ui's on a tiny screen with touch seems problematic.

kaffeemitsahne• 11 years ago

Nanoloop's got this covered, it's adapted from a homebrew gameboy program. Had some fun with that on my ipod touch.

wishinghand3• 11 years ago

Depends on if that's all they know or if they come from a workflow where that's foreign. Or depends on how flexible they are mentally.

I use it mostly as my guitar amps, guitar effects, and drum machine. I have a lot of synths on there that I sequence with a separate app or have someone play with at MIDI keyboard controller. My new favorite thing is to get Xynthesizr (sequencer) in random mode but in a certain key to talk to a synth app and have that be a background bleep-bloop thing that is every changing while I do heavy reverb and echo drenched ambient guitar stuff.

lewisl9029• 11 years ago

Duet Display looks pretty nice. Does it live up to the performance claims in practice? How's the touch input support?

I've been looking for similar software for Android tablets for ages but everything I've tried so far were laggy and unstable.

I'll probably end up getting an iPad just for Duet Display if it works as advertised.

wishinghand3• 11 years ago

I don't know what the performance claims are but it's a bit laggy. Nothing infuriating but I don't know your patience. I don't even touch on it, my mouse cursor moves onto the screen. It didn't even occur to me to touch it while in second monitor mode, I literally treat it as a regular monitor until I stop using it as such.

jmaistre• 11 years ago

I have an iPad Air 2 and use it every day. My main use cases:

1. Reading. I love reading the old, free PDF books available from Google books and archive.org. The OCR doesn't work well, so you really need to read the original scanned image version, which requires a big screen and a fast enough processor (a phone or older model tablet won't cut it). I also moved from using my Kindle to the iPad for reading ebooks, since it is much faster to thumb through the repetitive parts of non-fiction books using the iPad.

2. Playing games with my girlfriend. Our favorite date activity is going to a bar or hanging out on the patio, having a drink, and cooperatively playing some trivia or puzzle game on the iPad.

I previously had a Nexus 10, but it was too slow to read scanned PDF's and it crashed all the time. The iPad Air 2 is much, much better.

buster• 11 years ago

I have an iPad and i really only use it as my portable spotify pad and streaming station for music for my receiver.

edit: i very much prefer my kindle to read books, and for everthing else i still use a laptop or a smartphone..

oskarth3• 11 years ago

Every day I see the top comment in a thread being a typical middlebrow dismissal, the type that adds nothing to the discussion. With that in mind, it's really surprising to me that this comment was downvoted. Before I upvoted it, it was grey, and after I upvoted, it was still grey. Who are these people who downvote a perfectly good comment like this? It puzzles my mind.

At the time of writing this comment, at least 10 comments in this thread were grey. There are a lot of comments in this thread being downvoted for no particular reason - moderators, what's going on?

omegaham• 11 years ago

I see this on Reddit every now and then - there are people who downvote everyone in a thread just for gits and shiggles. I make a point of upvoting grayed-out posts that I like, so hopefully they'll go right back to black soon.

song• 11 years ago

I wonder if it would make sense for the system to ignore downvotes from users with a high proportion of indiscriminate downvotes.

WorldWideWayne3• 11 years ago

I did it in retaliation to the person(s) who downvoted someone speaking well of Microsoft products.

If you really want to see how petty people can be, try being a Microsoft fan around here.

oskarth3• 11 years ago

I appreciate the honesty and the predicament for someone who likes Microsoft, but surely you can see how this type of pettiness and retaliation is bad for the community? Be better than the Apple fanboys ;)

dang2• 11 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10174991 and marked it off topic.

oskarth3• 11 years ago

Woaha, I didn't know you could do that. In the future, when there are suspicious downvotes, where do you want the community to report it? In-thread like this or by emailing hn@ycombinator.com or by some other means?

Thanks for your hard work and for a perfect response, as usual!

wyldfire• 11 years ago

I bought a B&N Nook 9" tablet and put CM on it. It is decent for reading. Later I bought an XPS13 laptop and I find myself using it much more often. Similar weight, great battery life but allows me to surf or code, whatever I feel like at the time.

nekgrim• 11 years ago

Got a LG Gpad 8" last year. Used it for reading comics and playing strategy/RPG games (unplayable on my 5" nexus due to screen size).

However, I hadn't used it long, and I'm thinking about selling it. A good device for consumption, but I always have a computer near me (at home or work), so useless for productive work. And I can read on my computer too. And play games.

m0skit0• 11 years ago

I don't. I even have been gifted one a couple of times but it just ends picking up dust. Laptop or smartphone seem more suitable for me in all circumstances for now. A tablet is either too big for the job or lacks a physical keyboard. For reading I either use the phone or an ebook.

jules• 11 years ago

I have a Microsoft Surface, but I only use it with the keyboard so next time I'm going for a small laptop instead.

tomcam• 11 years ago

I use one of the new, lighter iPads almost exclusively for reading programming books & documentation. My iPhone 6 is used for the same purposes when I'm waiting in traffic or in a line somewhere.

WorldWideWayne3• 11 years ago

I only use Windows tablets, where I enjoy the freedom of installing whatever I want. I have a Dell Venue Pro 8 running Win10 for light duty & reading, I have a Surface Pro running Win8 at a client's site for a remote workstation and my wife and I both have a Surface Pro 3 as our main workstation. We also have an iPad but nobody uses it since it's got a much more limited and locked down OS.

outericky• 11 years ago

TV replacement...

bliti• 11 years ago

Likewise for my family. I also use it to browse the web,but very little. It's an iPad mini. There are other tableta in the house (androids) but I loathe using them.

alekratz• 11 years ago

No.

SyneRyder3• 11 years ago

I love my tablet. I specifically got one with an S-Pen for handwritten notes & diagrams. I got a "Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8.0 With S-Pen", perfect size & cheap enough that I wouldn't feel I'd wasted too much money if it didn't work out. But I love it & just bought another one for my parents.

It has replaced all my loose paper notes. It synchronizes handwritten notes with Evernote, so I can search across all my devices. I use it to take notes while on the phone or during web conference calls. I also use it to write notes while reading Kindle, though Kindle doesn't work in split-screen mode yet. My other uses are Pocket, Duolingo, Toodledo (to-do list), but I could do all of those on my phone. I am dying for a decent Project Management app that works on a tablet with the S-Pen.

Before that I had a Nook Color running Cyanogenmod, but I never used it except to test apps. Pocket wasn't a compelling enough use case; the S-Pen is what made a tablet compelling for me.

SandersAK• 11 years ago

I use my iPad exclusively at home. I now never take my work laptop home and it had dramatically made my life better. iPad forces me to be much more switched off but I can still email if need be. It's honestly one of the best things for my work-life balance that's ever happened to me.

Raed6674• 11 years ago

As someone who is 24/7 connected and wants to cut-down a little, this is a selling point for me.

irixusr• 11 years ago

To disconnect I got a blackberry curve. Still has email and wifi feathering if I need it. Other than that it sucks and I love it.

I might replace it with a "tomorrow m5" phone; a feature phone the size of four stacked credit cards.

EugeneOZ• 11 years ago

But you can use phone for emails..

Raed6674• 11 years ago

OP Here: So iPads are kind of ruling this area. I just found a brand new Nexus 7 for 150$, do you think it is still relevant in 2015? Or should I just save a couple of hundreds more and get an iPad?

reustle• 11 years ago

I've had an iPad, iPad Mini, and Nexus 7. My next tablet will be the Nexus 9, I recommend checking it out.

captn3m02• 11 years ago

My iPad Air 2 lags way too much for any serious work on iOS8, so I just use iBooks on it and read books.

sambe2• 11 years ago

Lags? How exactly and what is serious work? I have the last non-Air iPad and it still Senna snappy to me. I'm normally pretty critical of UI performance.

captn3m02• 11 years ago

Mostly reading, sketching and writing. I couldn't ever get my iPad to work for anything major other than these three things. While individual apps work fine, app switching almost always results in an app-refresh.

I'm guessing you have the iPad 3 (the 'new iPad'), which had significantly better specs than the iPad 2 (along with a better screen, I think).

EDIT: Just realized I wrote "iPad Air 2", instead of just "iPad 2 3G".

Bjartr• 11 years ago

I have a dell venue pro 8 attached to a repurposed drafting table articulated lamp to hold it in place in front of my couch as a media center remote / quick web browser, so I don't have to find a place for it when I'm done using it and I don't have to check all the places I could have put it when I want to use it, it just "floats" either out of the way or right where I need it.

shaded22• 11 years ago

I found that I hardly used my nexus 7 and my toddler pretty much made it his own. I use my work MacBook for everything I couldn't or did not want to do on my phone.

At some i began to feel like I needed an in betweeen device and a tablet which is essentially a bigger phone was not the answer. Enter the Asus chronebook flip. Its a thin 10 inch chromebook with a touchscreen that flips all the way around and becomes a tablet. It seems to fill that void. Once Google opens up the ability to install more android apps on chromeos, it will be even more useful.

Raed6674• 11 years ago

I just found a nexus 7 (2013) being sold around the corner by a guy that never even opened the box for 150$. Should I pass if I'm going to use it for web + note taking ?

kabouseng• 11 years ago

My nexus 7 (gen 1) is very slow these days, just something you should be on the lookout for...

shaded22• 11 years ago

If you have a phone that is at least 5.5 inches l'd say pass on any 7 inch device.

kyriakos• 11 years ago

I stopped using my nexus 7 as soon as I got a phone with a 5.2 inch screen. I think if you own a phablet it duplicates the tablet's functionality while having the benefit of being always with you.

teaneedz• 11 years ago

I'm surrounded by tablets (iPads), but only pick them up when I'm checking out a website layout. Tablets are too limited for me, often missing features or content due to responsive design practices. The mobile web treats them as second class citizens and apps are not always designed with them in mind either. I'll stick with a handy phone and a laptop when I need a larger screen.

atmosx• 11 years ago

I have an iPad 3 and use it only to read content and browse online. Everything else is done with the laptop (content creation).

IMHO the iPad is the best at what it does, especially if you have Apple HW lying around.

rev_bird2• 11 years ago

tl;dr: I use the Galaxy Note 3 for my phone and tablet. I use it because it's got just enough real estate to check out Reddit/Twitter/websites while on the go, but I wouldn't personally recommend it for note-taking.

I had an iPad for a few years and then sold it somewhere around 2013. I just didn't use it enough, because my laptop was so much more useful for what I was doing, which was mostly coding and writing emails.

I have a Kindle now, but am honestly thinking about selling that too, if only because the DRM really freaks me out. It's so much easier than lugging books around, but I've never had to charge my book and it won't disappear should Amazon go out of business one day.

I was going to say that I don't have a "tablet" anymore, but then I realized I have a Galaxy Note 3 for my personal phone, and that's a tablet compared to pretty much any phone before it.

The thing made me nervous when I bought it because I was worried it was going to be too big, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. It's big enough for web browsing, even for a guy with terrible eyesight like me, but I can still toss it in my pocket. I'd feel like a tool if I did that with an iPad, and I can't figure out why. It's totally normal to see someone fiddling with their phone in a waiting room or on line at the DMV or something, but an iPad looks silly in those situations, for whatever reason.

One downside to the "phablet" revolution: When someone calls me and I don't have headphones handy it looks like I'm holding an LCD TV to the side of my head. But I spend way more time staring at this thing than talking on it anyway.

vram22• 11 years ago

I realized I have a Galaxy Note 3

Notice any drawbacks to it, after using it a while?

rev_bird2• 11 years ago

Some funky problems with displaying certain characters after it's been too long since a restart, but otherwise I really like it. I've probably only used the "S-Pen" a dozen times or so, and the little pen-specific apps can be frustrating to use, but that's a really small part of my use.

DanBC• 11 years ago

I have a first gen Kindle Fire. I'd use it, except it requires a US credit card for a bunch of app store stuff and I can't be bothered to go through the faff of getting a US credit card.

There's the possibility of rooting it, which I'm looking into.

I think making it easy for users to root / reuse devices would help drive sales to new devices by providing a more vibrant second user market.

analog312• 11 years ago

Tell HN: There are probably a lot of people, myself included, for whom a keyboard is integral to our work, due to coding. If this is the main obstacle to using a tablet, maybe someone should develop an on screen keyboard with layouts that can be customized for the different languages. I'll take one with all of the vital symbols for Python on one layer.

Right now I have a tablet that can be used with or without its detachable keyboard. It was given to me, so I have nothing invested in it. Aside from the obvious uses of surfing and note taking, I've got iPython Notebook on it. That's become my primary "terminal" for most of my technical work these days, so I can't live without it.

In all due honesty, I'll have to admit that the motivation for having iPython Notebook on a tablet, is to occupy myself during meetings. I've settled on not trying to compose big codes, but use the time to learn more about Python and general programming by surfing the web for cool tutorials and interesting new packages.

A tablet seems to be pretty much the biggest thing that I'm willing to actually carry around. The keyboard has the drawback of requiring me to have a horizontal surface to put it on. My little Moleskine notebook still wins for note taking.

dragonwriter• 11 years ago

I use a Galaxy Note Pro 12.2; it's a more comfortable platform for reading, note taking, some kinds of browsing, etc., than a notebook, and with the keyboard case it's pretty generally useful.

steanne• 11 years ago

i got one several years ago for reading but stopped using it when i got a phone with a nice ips screen.

hokkos• 11 years ago

I use an iPad for :

- read HN or Reddit, an app with reddit and safari with HN, it is nice to be on the couch and do the same thing I would on my chair

- play games: hearthstone a card game like magic, a tablet is the perfect medium for it.

- read technical papers or CS books in pdf, the best way to read rich text book with being distracted.

- a DJ app with spotify integration, nice UI, tactile feeling, and quite fun for parties

I had an Nexus 7 and I hated it, I really like the ipad last gen.

Gustomaximus• 11 years ago

They're great for on lounge/bed browsing. Also for travel to consume media in downtime or work information if you don't have to type too much. And if you have kids they are almost a must for easy entertainment.

As a workstations I don't think they would suit most computer dependent roles.

I'd say overall they are great to have and use mine a bunch, but they're a luxury not a necessity. If you can afford this level of disposable income Id say get a reasonable one and try. Cheap ones tend to lag from reviews and disappoint from performance. If your budget is tight Id put the money into a more quality laptop/phone. Also cost wise tablets tend to last longer than phones in my experience. If you buy a decent one you might get 4/5 years out of it vs 2/3 for a phone.

I'm sticking to iPads for the moment. I use Android and Windows phones so definitely not a fanboy. I would be open to a cheaper Android/Windows if they have improved tablets UX but last Android one I used 12+ months ago didn't seem to work as well as the iPad.

cweiss• 11 years ago

It's all about use cases. I have many tablets that I use for a variety of purposes. They all fit a certain need.

I have one in the garage that I use as a Sonos (whole-house music system) controller and to occasionally look up shop-related queries (IE - "what is the torque spec on the axle bolt for my bike?").

I have one next to the couch that is also a Sonos controller and I use for weather and "2nd screen" duties. IE - "Why does Con Air's cinematography style look so much like Michael Bay movies?"

I've got one in the home office I use for hacking, many other gadgets I use have tablet-based interfaces.

I have a retina iPad on the nightstand for reading, checking the news/weather/sports/social networks and to control my house lights - part of my bedtime routine.

My most compelling use though is for when I need a light computer for travel. Two years ago, I went to Hawaii for a week on two carry-on bags (including big camera and diving gear). I had my iPad with me and, while there, work had a serious server outage. I was able to SSH into the server, initiate repairs, and get everything fixed while sitting on the balcony in the sun. I did not carry (and could not have fit) any normal sized laptop in the carry on. I also used to it check out various tourist destinations and find places to eat while I was there (which I could have done on a smartphone, true).

I'm an extreme geek, I have embraced the culture of technology, my house is filled with many gadgets that have served me well and others that have served only to drain my bank account. I have no hesitations about buying something if I have even the slightest inkling that it would improve my life/workflow.

In the above, all but the iPads were cheap Android tablets that I dont think I paid more than $200usd for (none of those needs required a whole lot of horsepower).

To speak to your specific interest, tablets are awesome for casual web navigation and almost awesome for note-taking. I have yet to duplicate the ease and awesomeness of a pen on paper for note-taking with any tablet app/stylus combo. Many tablet note-taking apps have great features, but the actual 'feel' of a quality ballpoint pen on wood pulp has yet to be duplicated - for me, I've spent far too much time being 'constrained' by computers to be able to think as freely as I can with a pen and paper. Switching will almost certainly be a painful adjustment. That said, if 'computers' are your native medium, then note taking on a tablet can be a powerful thing.

For example, Microsoft OneNote is an amazingly awesome note-taking app for computer-savvy folks. They really nailed the balance between digital data entry and analog notation while presenting it in a fairly intuitive interface. I've only ever used it on PC, I'd love to see as brilliant an implementation on a tablet. Not sure it's possible without a mouse-'mindset' interface.

Though really, as long as you don't need big horsepower and aren't on an extremely constrained budget, it's not too hard to get your feet wet in the tablet world cheap. I just saw a not-horrible import Android tablet for <$40 on a sale site.

Ask HN: Do you use a tablet?

Related Stories