How to Choose The Right Tablet for You

Are you wondering how to choose the right tablet computer?  Choosing just the right tablet computer is difficult when you plan to use the device for personal use, considering the increasing number of alternatives and wide range of features and characteristics. Tablet selection is an even greater challenge when that tablet will spend some time in the business trenches, intermingling with such things as remote information access, firewall security structures, unified communications and cloud-based services.

Usefulness

The first thing you need to think about when choosing the right tablet computer is what you want to use it for.  Tablets are still new to the world of computing (relatively) and they are still finding their place in our lives but generally speaking they are not the perfect replacement for a laptop.  There are those power users who can turn a tablet computer into a laptop but it requires a lot of rethinking how you work and the applications you use.

Tablets are used for consuming (80%) and the rest (20%) would be using it for doing actual work or creating things.  So ask yourself what you you want to do with your new tablet computer.  One thing to keep in mind is that you might have no clue what you want to use it for. The bottom line is thinking about what you want to do with your tablet computer.  Since they are still so new and since there are tons of apps being introduced everyday and with new capabilities then ideally you just want to have a general idea of what you want to do with one.

Hardware

We tend to read hardware specs and judge a computer based on what has the “most” or the “fastest” or the “largest”.  But when choosing the right tablet computer, try to choose based on what you want to do with it rather than the hardware specs.  If you look at this chart about the top tablet computers, you might notice that the hardware specs are nearly the same for all of the tablet computers.

Software Environment

One of the things people are finding is that the software (apps and operating system) are what drives the user experience on the tablet computer.

The apps are arguably one of the most important things to consider when choosing the right tablet computer.  First of all, realize that most of the tablet computers you will buy have a default set of apps. But that’s not going to be sufficient if you plan to do anything with your tablet computer beyond the very very basics. 

If you are choosing a tablet based on the apps you can get, then you might want to head over to the Android Marketplace and then head over to the Apple App Store and browse around the various categories to see what fits your needs based on what you decided for your needs and hardware interests.

Additionally, you want to also think about the future when in comes to software on the tablet computer.  The iPad and iPad 2 are 100% Apple and thus, when there is a new version of iOS then you get that upgrade.  With the Android tablets, the vendor of your tablet (Motorola, Samsung, etc.) may choose to wait to issue an upgrade if Google releases a new version of their Android Operation System.  This may not even be an issue to most people so if you are choosing a new tablet computer, just keep this in the back of your mind but don’t let this be the final decision-making factor.