> > Keeping notes, reading e-mail, typing, some video - easier to carry > than my laptop. What else is a good question, as I haven't had a > tablet in the past. Currently use my phone for e-mail, music, and > some editing, as well as carrying documents to read in meetings, vice > printing out.
I tried something similar with a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. It's a 7" dual core tablet running Android 3.2 (Honeycomb, no ICS for it yet). While it is a pretty good media consumption device, it's an awful creation device. So, I grabbed a keyboard dock for it. Unfortunately, Samsung's keyboard dock for their Galaxy Tab line is pretty terrible. Whatever they're using to interface between the physical keyboard and the app that you're trying to input text into is very sluggish. It also has issues with not knowing when to show/hide the software keyboard. As far as direct experience goes, I cannot recommend this tablet for what you're looking for. However, I have two friends with different experiences. One of the friends has an iPad (original) and he uses it for pretty much everything you're looking to do and it's worked very well for him. He uses it a lot for work, carrying it to meetings so he has documents and presentations on it, taking notes, etc. The other friend has an ASUS Transformer Prime and he's mostly happy with it. He uses it more as a consumption device, but he does also have the keyboard dock for it. He tried bringing it to work, but he just found he needed something a bit more like an actual computer and he has a laptop at work, so he just ended up using that. The ASUS keyboard dock is much better than the Samsung one in that the software interface for is seamless and it has an extra battery built in, so it buys you some extra usage time. The first friend is a manager/director and the second friend is a software developer, so I think that gives a better idea of how the current tablet choices work for a few different roles. My own advice is that you're right to be looking at devices with 9-10" screens. While a 7" screen is nice if you're looking to mostly just read books on it, if you want to watch video or do much more than just basic reading, you will really appreciate the larger screen, especially if you're looking at this instead of a laptop. The only other advantage a 7" screen has is that it can fit in smaller places. My 7" tablet fits in the larger pockets on my cargo pants (though I haven't ever felt like carrying like that, it's a bit uncomfortable). Also, avoid the "cheap" (less than $300 at this point) Android tablets. They will give you nothing but frustration. The last thing I'll say is that the iPad really is the premiere tablet at this point. Android tablet manufacturers just really haven't figured it out yet. Google's "Nexus" tablet may finally give them a real target like the Nexus One did for Android phones, so hopefully the Android tablet lineup will look a lot better in another year or so. - Chris
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