subject: What to choose - netbook or tablet pc? [print this page] What to choose - netbook or tablet pc? What to choose - netbook or tablet pc?
Apple iPad was first tablet pc that hit the market hard. This fact rises the question, will tablet pc's replace netbooks in near future? You might think that tablets and netbooks were created for similar purpose, however if you look in more detail, you'll see that these devices are quite different and target different kinds of people. Let's have a closer look on this.
Both portable devices have advantages on their side over each other. When choosing which device is right for you, you must decide what tasks do you plan to do with it. Tablet pc's were created more for content consumption rather than creation. Content creation would be difficult with tablets for few reasons. You wouldn't be able to get a powerful tablet, because of lack in processing power. Listening to music, watching movies, pictures, reading e-books and e-mails, surfing internet, would be just about everything you could do with a table, because most of these devices comes with 1 Ghz processor and few hundred RAMs. Portability is the biggest advantage of tablet over netbook.
Netbooks are more suitable for entrepreneurs, college students, creative people, like podcasters, because of more processing power. Windows 7 operating system and 1.6 Ghz or even higher processing powers, that's modern netbooks stock configuration. You could do a lot more with Windows operating system and actual keyboard, then with virtual keyboard and most likely Android OS on tablet. Basically netbook can run most applications that runs on your desktop. Those applications that doesn't run properly on netbook, most likely requires bigger resolution screen anyways. Only few applications might not run because of the limiting netbook power.
So, before going out and buying portable device, make a list of tasks you would like your device to be able to do. That should help you on your decision. You could say that netboook is for people who need to work on the go and tablets are for those who wants portable entertainment device. So, unless tablet pc's are going to do more heavy tasks, netbooks will always have their place in the market and will always find their buyer.
