World is Getting Smaller- Tablets Vs Laptops

Ta-fone launched by Karbonn in its Ad created by Taproot India gave me a shocker when a person threw a lappie(a general name that people use for Laptop)in Lake. I thought are they mad or what? But then I thought for a while, I too prefer to take my tablet with me over Laptop.

My day that used to start with Laptop has gradually shifted to a Tablet. It starts with reading TOI on app, chatting with friends on whatsapp and then gradually ends with me seeing a movie on youtube. What is more interesting, is companies like HCL and Lenovo that are primarily into manufacturing of PC’s and Laptops have now entered this segment too..!! What does this alarm to you? Yes this segment is giving a strong and threatening challenge to traditional Computers. Companies like Samsung and Apple not only have affected the sales of arch rival Nokia but also in a way have affected sales of Dell and HP’s Net-book series. In this segment companies like Karbonn and Micromax have their own share of Pie.

Image Courtesy: freedigitalphotos.net

BSNL and Tata DOCOMO provide 3 GB of 2G free internet browsing for just 126 Rs per month that is good enough for normal teenager and also good for Business man and working professionals who don’t have to deal with much Data transfer through internet. These kinds of schemes have made a tremendous impact on sales of Tablets. According to a survey printed in LA Times and conducted by research firm IDC, it said that Tablets will surpass portables sales in 2013 and total PCs by 2015. This year 1 in 22 will buy PC as compared to 1 in 31 will buy tablet but by 2015 the numbers are expected to reverse. IDC also reported that 55% of tablets sold this year will have a screen size less than 8 %, making the small for a majority for the first time. So here I again prove my point of “WORLD is getting SMALLER”. This is the reason that apple introduced i-Pad mini after launching i-Pad. So it means that even Apple understands that world is getting smaller.

If we try to see why tablets are replacing Laptops, we all will surely sum upto these few points:

1) Apps: Undoubtedly Applications that are readily available in Google play and Apple store are the main reason why people opting for Tablet. Just like I said about app of TOI, just one click and every news appears infront of me. So that has decreased my labour of opening a laptop and then browsing a website. Not only online applications but also offline applications like Image editors are also one that people prefer to use. These applications make tablet no less than a laptop. You can always stay active on social media with tablet through apps like Fb or whatsapp

2) Weight / portability: a laptop weights nearly 2 to 2.5 Kg where as a tablet is not even half of its weight. A tablet on other hand is just around 0.5 Kg. So any person on move will like to decrease as much weight as possible.

3) Power Consumption: A tablet will easily work for whole day just by charging it once where as laptop at max will serve for 4 hours on single charging.

4) Ready to operate: A laptop takes around 4/5 min to start functioning in full flow where as for Tablet you just have to open the lock.

So from above three points, suppose you are sitting in Himalaya mall of Ahmedabad with free wifi what would you like to have? For a regular person, i suppose Tablet will surely be the answer

5) Go anywhere Net Connection: a sim connection which allows you to get connected to internet at all the places.

6) All the basic facilities of Laptop: You can open a MS office file on your tablet, connect to other phones through Bluetooth, do a video chat play games, see movie listen songs and every basic function you can do with a laptop can be done with a tablet and an additional advantage that tablet fits in your pocket.

7) Touch screen: This feature helps you easily interact with the system thus making it a user friendly device.

8) Price: last but not the least any doubt one can see that tablet are far more effective cost wise with range of tablet varying from 6000Rs to 50000 Rs as compared to laptops that start from 20000 Rs

Considering above benefits it is of no surprise to me that one article in Computerweekly.com said that around 50% of mid-sized company CIOs in UK are consider offering employees tablets instead of Laptops. But still one has to agree that in present time you cannot make laptop obsolete. There are fields where you cannot replace Laptops, thus giving Laptops an edge over Tablets.

If we try to see this side of the coin, we can see some advantages of Laptops:

1) With a small screen tablets are only good upto small message writing but you cannot write a long article on tablet. Like I too had to open my laptop to write this article. One cannot imagine a programmer writing 10000 lines of program on Tablet.

2) RAM, graphics card and storage: every gamer is waiting for the day when there will be 4 GB ram with 2 GB graphics card and 500 GB internal memory in present, I don’t see that happening soon. This kind of hardware is also useful to people in designing field

3) One simple cannot replace mouse pointer with a fingers because the kind of accuracy that a person gets with mouse is very tough to get through the fingers.

4) We don’t have a jack for pins of Projector or printer in tablet so every time you need to give presentation you will have to back to the basic laptops.

So after reading my article you must have been kept in dilemma which thing should you purchase next time you go in a mall. Well to very problem there is a solution and one such solution was brought in market by HP. Yes I am talking about Envy X2 from HP: part laptop part tablet. This has benefits of both the products. I am sure that Dell and other companies will follow this pretty soon.

Change is a part of life it all started with a CPU as big as a room to laptops and now shifting to tablets. I am sure that someday tablets will be replaced by the device on which Pranav Mistry is presently working on, bringing Virtual world in real world.

This article has been authored by Manan Shah in LBSIM

REFRENCE:

www.latimes.com

www.computerweekly.com