Has Your iPad Replaced Your Laptop? Yea, Me Either, But Soon Perhaps...

[Jeff Campbell]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/01/16/12_of_ipad_owners_in_the_enterprise_no_longer_use_their_laptop_.html' target='_blank'>http://www.appleinsider.com/article...ir_laptop_.html</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"More than one in ten iPad owning business professionals have indicated that Apple's touchscreen tablet has become their portable device of choice, completely replacing their laptop."</em></p><p><img height="515" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/at/auto/1326746742.usr105634.jpg" width="600" /></p><p>It's getting closer and closer for me all the time, mostly due to the improvements in the work space where I spend most of my day, but also in the fact that more and more content is available for the iPad (i.e. mobile flash sites switching to HTML5). And in meetings it has pretty much replaced pen and paper for me. It is just so easy to use in my opinion. What are your thoughts?&nbsp;</p>

[Hooch Tan]

I will maintain that tablets are still a long way from replacing laptops, especially for work purposes. Yes, tablets are fully capable machines that can, and have replaced certain types of work that is done on laptops and traditional OSes, but not all. I'm probably biased and think that tablets may never fully replace work computers though. The reason is that at least with the work that I do, I tend to need lots of pixels to work effectively. From data entry or analysis to software development, more pixels, more monitors helps me considerably. I just don't see that happening with tablets. But I will grant that for less data heavy purposes, a tablet seems like a much better option, providing the software is there.

[Sven Johannsen]

Interesting topic. I would like to see a survey, that asks these same folks, WHY. Not that I disagree, but I wonder what is actually driving them to use the iPad where they would have used a laptop before. Is it the slick interface, the joy of typing on a screen, the brilliance of writing with the equivalent of a fat tip marker (capacitive stylii aren't very pointy), or is it that the iPad weighs only 1.33 lbs and can go a whole day on a charge. Bet those specs figure heavily into the choice.

Look at what they say they do..."The most common use of the iPad among professionals is Web browsing, which 79 percent said they "always" use the device for. Reading followed closely with 76 percent, news consumption had 73 percent, and work communication earned 54 percent."

Heck, I can do that on my phone, but the screen is kinda small. Android tablets do all that very well too, but they do take a bit more fiddling.

I wonder how many of those folks would be OK with taking a business trip, taking only the iPad? (or Android Tablet, or Win 7 slate for that matter). Maybe if you let them take a keyboard along...but then you got a laptop, don't you.

Maybe we should stop and define the distinction between laptop and tablet. Is it OS, keyboard, weight, battery life, size? The screen on my Vaio TX isn't much bigger than the iPad' and it runs Windows, and has a keyboard and DVD writer and PCMCIA card slot, etc. (2.14 lbs BTW) My HP slate is smaller and lighter than the iPad and runs Windows as well. Neither do it for more than 3-4 hours unfortunately. What is the Asus Transformer...when docked?

I really think we are technologically at a point that a tablet, whatever OS, could replace a Portable Personal Computing device, heretofore called a laptop. I would argue that to allow comfortable content creation, we are still going to want a keyboard, and maybe a mouse. I think the Transformer covers that nicely (Though HP did it back in 2005 with the TC1100...form, not capability). There will always be a need for more horsepower than you can efficiently and economically squeeze into a portable device. That could still be a 6-8 lb laptop rather than a desktop/workstation. Nothing stopping the creation of a laptop with a dock that supports 3-4 external monitors to allow the hardware, content, and applications to be transportable.

Consider the Henge Docks. http://hengedocks.com/ With 27" monitor, a full keyboard and Magic Mouse setup and a MBP in there, isn't that for all intents and purposes a desktop? You can walk away with the laptop. What if you could also separate the keyboard from a touchscreen MBP? salivating yet?

I love my iPad, not only for what it is and what it does, but also what it has made everyone else start thinking about...again.

[DaleReeck]

Tablets are still a consumption device. But just as I wouldn't use a tablet to create a large spreadsheet or Powerpoint project, I wouldn't use a Macbook to read Kindle or Nook books. While many look to see when or if the tablet will replace the laptop, I believe that the opposite is also true - that a laptop doesn't replace a tablet. The two have become distinctly unique devices and I don't see either one trumping the other in the near future.

[Macguy59]

Nope and I don't see that happening in the near future. Mine is still mostly a consumption device. Really carrying my MBA around doesn't require any more effort than the iPad. I can see the phenomenal battery life being attractive to them though.

[Jason Dunn]

It's all about the scenarios. I had a laptop I kept in my media room, for accessing email/web while watching TV. Once I got my iPad 2, I never touched that laptop. Yes, it was capable of doing much, much more than the iPad 2...but it didn't turn on as fast, didn't last as long on a battery charge, required maintenance like all Windows laptops, etc. So I sold that laptop and haven't missed it very often. Too many compromises for me with the laptop in that scenario...yet when I need to edit photos, even though I can technically do it on my iPad, I don't because I don't have access to the software I prefer (Lightroom), the images I want to edit (the SD card workflow on an iPad is a kludge without a real filesystem), etc.

For many people at work, especially people in meetings all day, it's less about creation and more about consumption (maybe some light note-taking). So I can see a tablet being successful in that scenario.