Protechnica

Evan Koblentz ContactAll Articles Law Technology News December 6, 2011

Can tablets replace laptops? Or are they doomed to forever be a niche category?  There’s one thing I know sure — I’m not going to carry three mobile computing devices. Currently, for work, a laptop is my primary computer and, of course, I have a smartphone.

Visionaries afflicted with tablet mania say that within a couple of years, clamshell laptops will be made obsolete by powerful tablets, just as suitcase computers were made obsolete by clamshell laptops in the 1980s. Electronic component miniaturization and reliability improvements of virtual keyboards, some futurists say, will make clamshell laptops into digital dodos.

For we skeptics, tablets as they exist today aren’t good enough. High-end tablets still can’t do what laptops do, yet they still cost as much as laptops,
and the best ones are almost as large. Make a good tablet that’s as cheap as a smartphone, or that folds in half to be as small as one, and then we can discuss eliminating a mobile computing device.<Read More>