TABLETS Six appeal
Tablets
have been around long enough for you to figure they are not yet ready to
replace your workhorse desktop or notebook. They might be outselling PCs and
laptops, but they continue to remain devices that are better to consume content
than create it. However, the sheer convenience of lounging in your couch with
your tablet is something that even the slimmest notebook cannot match. The
writer looks at six aspects that are fun to do with the tablet
Gaming
It’s tough to compete with pure-play
gaming consoles that hook up with your gigantic television screens, but the
zippy processors under the hoods of tablets are making hand-held gaming very
addictive. This is clearly an area where your laptop can’t compete with the
tablet. There are platforms that allow you to download a host of cult games
free of cost. Many tablets offer more screen space for a compelling gaming
experience. But, if you are one of those occasional gamers that need the odd
stress-buster, the seven- or eight-inch tablets will do just fine.
eBooks
You might miss the smell of that new
paperback edition, but a growing number of bibliophiles has switched to eBooks.
Amazon’s Kindle led the way, but its bookstore has kept both Android and Apple
in the mix. The nifty-embedded eBook dictionary now present on all platforms is
a great tool to expand your vocabulary. It’s not just the cost factor, the
convenience of carrying all your eBooks on a long holiday is impossible to
imagine with your book collection. Nothing beats the form factor of the seven-
or eight-inch tablets for eBooks. It explains the phenomenal success of a few
of the tablets that offer the perfect screen size (that of a paperback book!)
to flip through the eBooks.
E-mail and social media
Almost all leading social media
platforms have apps optimised for tablets, and make best use of the larger
screen. Just perfect if you don’t like to stay connected on social networks
through the day with your smartphone. Unless you are typing that rare long
e-mail, tablets work really well. The large screens are handy to view
attachments while the on-screen keyboards are easy on your thumbs.
Videos and movies
With a battery life that outclasses
most laptops or smartphones, tablet is the perfect ‘go to’ device when the
in-flight entertainment does not meet your approval; there’s a storehouse of
movies you can buy or rent. And if you already have a collection of your
favourite movies, you can easily move them to your tablet. Even if the tablets
don’t come with an extendable memory option, with in-built storage ranging from
16GB to 64 GB and cloud storage, you are more than covered if you need to make
space for your top 10 movies!
Web browsing
With an app for almost every
conceivable need and a dedicated search bar in most tablets, you don’t need to
entirely depend on your web browser. When you do need to browse on your tablet,
there’s a choice of browsers other than the in-built custom browser. Some of
the tablets may not Flash videos, but it’s good news that a lot of sites have
started moving from Flash to support hassle-free browsing.
News and other apps
Whether its utilities such as flight
and train schedules or lifestyle-related apps such as recipes or gadgets, a
large of number of intuitive and fun-to-use apps is making web browsing almost
redundant. The world’s best news sources offer apps specifically designed for
tablets with a pleasing user interface. In addition, cool apps simulate a
magazine experience by aggregating news and updates (including social media
feeds) from different sources on a single platform.
Ashwin Rajagopalan
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/gadgets/six-appeal/article4717712.ece
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