On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 17:25, Will Stephenson
I'm very interested in hearing how those of you with tablets + keyboards get on with them as general purpose computing devices, to see where the market is going. How useful are they? What tasks do you need the PC/laptop for? Is it just for better performance, or are there some things that are just not possible? Are those 'legacy things' like playing optical discs that can also be carried out using more current technology like streaming video, or things that are intrinsically impossible on a tablet?
I am concerned about the future of the consumer Free Software 'market' as tablets displace PCs and locked down proprietary or only notionally Free operating systems replace general purpose OSen and platforms. It would be a great pity if the effort we've expended over the last 15 years to fight a monopolist was wasted because the userbase skipped happily into a totalitarian state's walled garden while we were fighting each other over widget sets.
As a general purpose computing device it's fine. I find my tablet to be very useful overall. The combination of general computer with GPS, accelerometer etc is nice to have (when apps take advantage of it). There are a lot of tradeoffs with a tablet running Android... you do not have any reasonable office suite, you have limited CPU capabilities, websites are a hit/miss for usability (sometimes they are slow, sometimes they won't load at all, or you are forced into a low functionally mobile edition even though you have the browser set to Desktop) Personally I'd love to be able to strip off the Android OS and install/run openSUSE (or any other Linux) but so far, that hasn't been done with any measure of success - the closest I've seen on the tablet I have (Acer Iconia A500) is to run Ubuntu from an image file and use VNC to connect to it. So to answer your specific questions: - It's very useful overall, and I'm happy I bought it. I use it almost every day for general browsing, answering emails etc etc. - You still need the PC/laptop for things like working on documents, graphics and so on. There are a few tools that give you rudimentary office suites but they are lacking in too many areas to be really practical. As an aside, the upcoming Windows RT tablets with a "full" MS Office installed will really be an Android killer for a lot of people. - I use the PC partly for better performance, typing long text content is easier on the PC keyboard (you can plug in a normal USB keyboard, but the responsiveness still isn't 100% on the tablet when you type) - Streaming video is generally not too much of an issue with the tablet, but you can easily hit the proverbial wall with CPU capabilities if the stream is HD. - Playing DVDs... never tried. I suppose it's be possible with an external USB DVD player, but.. not practical. If you look at the efforts that the KDE guys have put into the tablet with Plasma Active I could see myself easily moving over to that over Android IF.. IF they brought it out in a larger screen size. The current model is too small for my tastes/preferences. Alternatively, as I mentioned earlier, I'd be more than happy to install openSUSE on the tablet I've got, but I don't know anyone who has managed it yet. C. -- openSUSE 12.1 x86_64, KDE 4.8.2 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org