On 07/07/2012 21:38, charles wrote:
In article o.uk,
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sat, 7 Jul 2012 20:41:05 +0100, Tim wrote:

We can find plenty of sites that compare each with themselves, but not
one that compares Tablet v Laptop.

They're a bit apples and oranges, i.e., not directly comparable.

Agreed, I'm looking at the netbook/laptop/tablet thing ATM and coming
down on the side of a small tablet. My use will be email/web and some
document reading (word and pdf) whilst travelling.

I've paid a couple of visits to PC World to have a bit of "hands on" and
that has confirmed my hatred of the touchy mousey thing on
netbook/laptops and the lack of a touch screen annoyed me as well. I have
a feeling that somewhere there is a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 with my name
on it. The 10" jobbies seem a bit cumbersum in the hand.

The dead flesh mouse rectangle things are downright annoying. You
generally need an external mouse to stay sane. Only a handful of
portables have mouse substitutes I consider even vaguely adequate.

Minor irritation with tablet devices is the touch screen ends up smeared
with fingerprints. I have both. The tablet gets used a fair amount
casually for looking stuff up on the web from the living room without
going off to the office where my main computer resides.

I would not want to type much into a tablet device...

It really depends on what she wants to do on it. I can't help thinking
that the screen on laptop is in the wrong place, too close, too low, for
comfort when on a desk. The keyboards are a bit squidged as well I make
use of the seperate arrow keys and insert home delete end, with shift.
Having them buried would be PITA for me for my normal home use.

I've had a number of laptops over the years, but I agree that lack of a
"full size" keyboard is a drawback. Mind you, some come with a "docking
station" so that you can use them with an external keyboard and monitor. I
almost always plug in an external mouse ( Muji - the japanese run stores -
have a nice small one with an extendable lead for not a lot of pounds).

You can also have a full size keyboard plugged into USB.

I've also just bought a tablet but it is a completely different animal.
It didn't take me long to get an external keyboard for it - but that
virtuallly doubles its volume. It does make using it easier, though.
Yesterday, I used it on ebay and got myself a bargain.

It really all depends on what you (or she) is trying to do.

Yes. It would help to know how it will be used. Browsing the web almost
anything that will talk to your network is OK but for serious data entry
or photo editing it really matters how good the keyboard, pointing
device and screen size and layout are. I find many laptops these days
have far too fine a pixel pitch for the screen size YMMV.

Certain brands of laptop have annoying customisations that result in
errant behaviour. Notably keyboard lockups and power management suspend
resume issues that can be annoying when peripherals vanish. It is really
very annoying when the keyboard locks up and disables the on-off switch
for instance. Certain older Toshiba models have this feature.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown