Will tablets eventually replace laptops? [SERIOUS]

Already I see due to the mobility required in my job I cannot work with a conventional desktop. At the same time I do much more than just checking emails and surfing. So I have to have a laptop that I can lug around, station at any place and work with it.

However there are times, such as waiting at airports, travelling and such when using the laptop is cumbersome and a tablet-like device would be welcome. Also sometimes I plan to catch up with some work late in the night at home, but after reaching home I just don't have the time to open the laptop, switch it on, wait till the booting is over, login and then wait yet again, and then finally start working. Instead if I had a device which powered on instantly and could occupy lesser space on the dining table, I could catch up with some work.

A convergence where there are tablets attached to docking stations and we can attach external peripherals such as keyboards, mice and pendrives would probably be the best.

My thought is more on the software front. There is no single OS on all the hardware that we seem to be running. Most popularly the office machines are running Windows. If you own any smartphones, you are using either Symbian, Bada, iOS, Android, WebOS or some such. Laptops could again be either Windows or Linux or Mac. With such a diverse software platform, there is a very small number of apps which can actually work across the platforms, specially when anything more serious than emails and surfing is planned.

That's what I like about a Windows tablet. Full Win7 solves the software issue as well as saving the trouble of learning some funky Android package's idea of how to do things. It is amazing how variable the UIs get from device to device, but Android is a bag of stuff to add other stuff to rather than a stable generic OS.

Windows 8... well we'll see. I found Metro more than a little off-putting and went back to Win7 on my tablet.

Platform makes difference only for platform dependent utilities you wish to install locally.
We are experimenting with VPN and Citrix on tablets. I personally like Citrix because of its much simpler setup and maintenance; you can publish practically any app (remote desktop is my favorite) installed on the server for any user (or AD group).
Since all you need is connect to Citrix farm via webbrowser it makes it platform independent - once connected, you may connect to your remote computer within that network or directly access any published app.
This scenario makes tables even more attractive than any average consumer can imagine.

But Citrix is nothing the average user will invest in, it is fairly pricey.

You can do much the same thing at a basic level simply by using an RDP client to connect to a desktop system's Remote Desktop service or a server's Terminal Services service (now also just called Remote Desktop though depending on licensing you get 2 admin sessions or many application user sessions).

Most of what Citrix adds are server management tools, some clients with better compression, and the ability to lock users into a sort of kiosk/single app mode, etc.

Personally I'd rather run local applications for most things, but it does have its place. Get a Windows tablet and you already have the RDP client at no extra charge.

I'll add that in large scale Citrix shops users tend to hate it with a passion.

I'm talking about corporate usage not personal. Citrix is a very robust tool that allows different things without having them installed locally. You can practically access anything that's beeing published under your profile.
What can you do with RDP if you don't have access to your network? Nothing, it's pretty useless at that point.
User may "hate it with a passion" for one and only one reason: Citrix admin failed to do his job (believe me I've seen it many times and the reason is always the same, admins don't know much about it).
When Citrix is implemented as it is intended people love it with a passion (how can you not? it's fantastic!).

edit: just want to respond to your "large scale Citrix shops" comment - we are very-very-very large Citrix shop and almost nothing runs on local machines enterprise wide (dev machines might be different from average business user).

I used to work in one where there is a very large Citrix deployment used for a large line of business application. It is horribly expensive to operate and every time I talk to anyone there it is the first complaint they bring up. This is very common, users hate it with a passion and no qualification.

Part of this is the cruddy performance compared to their home PC experience. But I'll grant that a lot of it is that they feel it locks them out of the guts of things (databases for example). There are a lot of "MS Office weenies" who have the bizarre idea they could do fantastic things if they could link Excel or Access or something to corporate data.

So I'm not saying they are justified, but they they still do hate it. I have seen forum posts from others expressing very similar opinions.


The sad thing for me is that in the one case at least I'm responsible. We had been in search of an alternative to conventional PC deployment over a WAN for this big application in 1997. We had to phase out a dying platform that made tiered distributed computing fairly easy and avoided heavy software deployment burdens. I started researching Citrix and suggested it might be a solution in one meeting. Behind my back they were off and running.

After 3 months learning more from Microsoft and Citrix reps and talking to actual customers I was horrified. But my recommendation to slow down and seek other options went unheard. Some idiot ran off half-cocked to upper management and hard-sold something they knew nothing about.

The rest is misery, er, history.

The funny part is the "reinvented on Citrix" application was at least until recently 95% VB6.

For the past 8 years or more they've been desperately trying to replace it. The first failure was Ajaxy HTML clients and a .Net back end. Then they rebooted the effort and tried WinForms clients. Then they backed off and tried WPF.

Performance is so bad the Citrix/VB6 beast dating from 1998-99 still lives and breathes. About all they've managed is to rewrite some of the related public-facing Web applications in ASP.Net from the previous ASP. At vastly higher cost in servers and ongoing support I might add.

Citrix is not horribly expensive and users experience like I said (and you basically confirmed it) is net admins qualification - withouth the last you won't get anywhere (btw, performance depends on setup and what we have is awesome).
But I guess enough of Citrix - whether you like or not it allows accessing enterprises from practically any platform.
And that is my point: you don't have to be tight to Windows (and you are "promoting" it very hard), iOS, Android or something else - just get yourself a tablet that fits your budget and that would be it for most part.

Well you certainly don't need Citrix products at all to do that.

There are RDP clients for most platforms, and you can use them with Microsoft's free and cheaper-than-Citrix products.

Here's one for Android, first hit that came up: http://www.xtralogic.com/rdpclient.shtml


Somebody is riding his hobbyhorse here and it ain't me! ;)

RDP is not as secured as Citrix and may require login in to vpn first. Therefore many large organizations allow using it only inside firewalls.
You have to be open minded to not only MS products and stop dragging toward that direction.
This thread is all about tablets and their future and I don't think MS is going to play major role in this segment - even with w8 under way they are already far behind everybody.

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Originally Posted by RhinoBull

This scenario makes tables even more attractive than any average consumer can imagine.

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For various reasons I don't think this will be mainstream in the next few years. Core infrastructure such as power and connectivity are still an issue for many regions. On top of that once the concept becomes a reality you are looking at migrating the corporates onto a cloud from where the tablets could access the various apps.

Yes, I would love to have a tablet which could run the same OS that I run on my laptop and desktop, so I don't have to learn new interfaces and new apps. I would also have the ability to write small scripts/productivity apps which I can port to any of these devices. I struggle to overcome these challenges today with so many technological platforms.

Oh, how I wish I had learnt Java!

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As bandwidth improves, coupled with virtualization and remoting, the tablet won't replace the desktop/laptop, but will allow you to take your laptop/desktop with you.

Doing any serious work (something which requires more than a few minutes work) just cannot be done on a screen the size of a large paperback, no matter how thin, light or powerful it is. How many developers are willing to throw away their dual screen high resolution monitors with several square feet of real estate, to a fraction of that? More power is not the only criteria for a workstation.

The tablet will be consistent as an (the) entertainment device, and for that reason alone will be exceptionally popular. A lot of minor work can be done on the smaller device - the portability when not attached to your home base will be useful when some apps come along to assist in that - but will certainly not be a replacement.

Developers may not be the target audience for the tablets.

I would not argue that opinion but I think it depends on how fast OS (any mobile os) is going to evolve - I hope the change is coming soon.
Imagine doing presentation in front of your client and being able to quick fix embarassing errors right on your tablet... Would you care for dual screen at that point?

I think that with the growing accessory market for tablets and docking stations, tablets could be a viable development platform. I can easily see a workstation that contains 2 monitors, a keyboard and a mouse, and possible external storage (I don't see people trying to run their SQL Server off the tablet) all plugged into a docking station where I can come in drop in my tablet, hit a key, and I'm off to the races. It's not really all that different from my current setup with a laptop. Then, when I need to go to a meeting, I just grab the tablet and go...

I doubt they will replace laptops or desktops, but I wouldn't at all be surprised to see tablets make huge headway into the business market.

-tg

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Originally Posted by techgnome

I think that with the growing accessory market for tablets and docking stations, tablets could be a viable development platform. I can easily see a workstation that contains 2 monitors, a keyboard and a mouse, and possible external storage (I don't see people trying to run their SQL Server off the tablet) all plugged into a docking station where I can come in drop in my tablet, hit a key, and I'm off to the races. It's not really all that different from my current setup with a laptop. Then, when I need to go to a meeting, I just grab the tablet and go...

I doubt they will replace laptops or desktops, but I wouldn't at all be surprised to see tablets make huge headway into the business market.

-tg

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You have described my exact setup - laptop - docking station - 17inch screen on laptop - 26 inch monitor attached. Terabyte backup device...

I take laptop with me to visit clients 2 or 3 times a week - developing on a mobile device is a requirement in my life.

Putting a tablet in that same spot as my laptop would only happen when the tablet had the same horsepower and visual screen area as the laptop.

At that point it's a laptop - right?

I personally believe that tablets are for consumption and also minimal data entry use (teachers in schools use tablets to score students - with the tablet showing a "paper" like entry screen).

I developed a POCKET PC app for phy ed teachers to score students in the field on things like mile-run and push ups and what not. If I had known that PPC's were a dinosaur from the get-go I would have pushed for tablets to be used instead. That's where they fit in my world - imo...

That's my exact setup too... I still think tablets could have the potential for a similar setup... with one exception... the case I was describing wouldn't use the tablet's screen, except maybe to display my outlook calendar... but there would be two monitors actually sitting on the desk. At least until they start making 15 & 17 inch tablets (I can only imagine how much they would weigh).

Oddly, I've been resistant to getting a tablet for these very reasons... but since my laptop at home bit the dust, I'm realizing that I don't really do any development at home, and that what I have been using it for, is exactly what a tablet is best at... internet content consumption. So now I'm reconsidering getting one.

-tg

So, it appears that the real question should have been: Will tablets and laptops converge so completely that you can't define the difference between them. If that was the question, then I'd be inclined to say that the answer is: Yes.

As for Citrix, I'm halfway between Dilettante and RB. We have it, some people love it, I don't use it much. The difference appears to be bandwidth related. While some people use it to do development from home computers on network servers, I find that the speed is often too slow for me to do that seemlessly. I'm not sure if that is because my connection speed is only so-so, or if it has to do with a bottleneck downtown. It may also be due to the fact that such a solution doesn't really fit with my work style. While I do tend to use a laptop for development while at home, I also use that laptop for development when I am elsewhere, including places where a network would not be available. Therefore, I need things to be local for times when I have no alternative. That, alone, keeps me from trying Citrix more, but my few experiences with it have been mixed, and that seems to be the general consensus here. Some love it, others...not so much.

OK, how about this setup: A portable tablet with a built-in projector and three USB ports, one for the keyboard, one for the mouse and the last for external storage? Or maybe use wireless peripherals?

A built in projector can be used for presentations, it can also help you view the tablet screen on a bigger area (resolution is not a problem), which will help some oldtimers like us to adapt to the smaller real estate and still be as productive (or unproductive).

We have some local branded mobiles, selling for under 8k (approximately $150) which come with projectors. So incorporating a projector should not be a costly proposition.

For the cost of the projector, I can get rid of a docking station, in the best case I wouldn't need anything else.

With tablet processing power meeting the laptop/desktops even moderately heavy applications could be run entirely on the tablets.

This design keeps the tablet as portable as it is, while eliminating one of the biggest drawbacks of the small display size. With external keyboard attachments it would make a heck of a combo.

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Given all this... I'm actually considering one of these: http://www.asus.com/Eee/Eee_Pad/Eee_...sformer_TF101/

honeybee - for those that do presentations, which I don't, that would be great. There are portable, light-weight projectors that are smaller than a16oz water bottle (Pica projectors come to mind) and if you want to reduce the amount of stuff to cart & carry, there are "projection" keyboards... a little device that projects a virtual keyboard on to the top of your desk, then senses the keystrokes by how your fingers break the light plane. Plus they are making mice smaller and smaller as well too....

-tg

Somebody needs to make a projection mouse. It would be the same idea as Kinect or a projection keyboard, but would interpret finger motion into mouse action.

EDIT: That suggests a certain motion that would stand for "Cancel last action!"

Isn't that exactly what the Kinect for Windows is all about? I wish one of my clients wanted us to implement something with Kinect - it would be nice to play with...

Maybe a tablet with a holographic display would be the ticket...

Admit it. If you had a holographic prejector the absolute first thing you'd do is implement Princess Leia pleading "Help me, Obi Wan Kaszlamany!"

You could cue it for every time you open another user's thread in the DB section.

:lol:

I would say that the Princess was my Oracle - but that would get the MS Sql folks in a dither :bigyello:

Well, the touch screen on the tablets would make the mice kinda obsolete, wouldn't it?

The projector idea is not simply for presentations, I could use it at home or office to work on a much bigger screen than what the tablet offers me.

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"Well, the touch screen on the tablets would make the mice kinda obsolete, wouldn't it?" - not really.... I can't draw a form or controls as easily with a touch screen or pad as I can with a mouse.

"The projector idea is not simply for presentations, I could use it at home or office to work on a much bigger screen than what the tablet offers me." - true... if you have a wall/screen/space that will work... at the moment, I don't... and I tend to work on my lap at home a lot... not sure how that would work with the projector.

-tg

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Originally Posted by techgnome

I can't draw a form or controls as easily with a touch screen or pad as I can with a mouse.

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True but you can make adjustments in the properties window (will take few extra minutes + a bit of frustration for some people).
But I do agree mouse would be much more convenient tool.

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true... if you have a wall/screen/space that will work... at the moment, I don't...

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You could project onto a monitor. It'd be the perfect size and shape.:thumb:

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Originally Posted by techgnome

.... I can't draw a form or controls as easily with a touch screen or pad as I can with a mouse.

if you have a wall/screen/space that will work... at the moment, I don't... and I tend to work on my lap at home a lot... not sure how that would work with the projector.

-tg

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You could use the stylus for drawing objects. In any case the device would have the capability to hook up a wireless keyboard and mouse (or maybe wired ones).

For your kind of usage scenarios, you would have to live with the tablet screen. I don't think your kind of use allows for any other display techniques. But again this type of usage would not be a majority usage, IMO.

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IT's moot anyways... since most tablets run Droid or some other non-windows based systems, I wouldn't be able to do development on it. Also, there's no way I could do development on a tablet unless I have the same or similar setup to what I have now with the laptop - external monitors, mouse & keyboard. I suffer from tremors in my writing hand (I'm a south paw), and I have tried styluses before, while a little more precise than using my fat fingers, I still have trouble with them. For some reason, nothing seems to beat the precision I can get in my (for now) still steady right hand with a mouse.
But since I don't seem to do any development at home any more, it I don't need something all that powerful, and a tablet would fit my needs perfectly.

-tg

The MacBook can run Windows in a virtual machine, all we need now is a VMWare version for the Android platform.

The software platform would be a challenge by itself, no doubt. But providing the ability to attach an external keyboard/mouse and the ability to project the display onto something bigger should make the tablet much more widely usable than at present.

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http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/01/...s-get-over-it/

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Will tablets eventually replace laptops?

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Short Answer - No

Long Answer - Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

They more likely will exist side by side and both will probably be superseded by something else.

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Originally Posted by NeedSomeAnswers

Short Answer - No
Long Answer - Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

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As always opinions vary. Time will tell.