The Top 5 Reasons to Buy a Tablet

Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Motorola Xoom--tablet PCs are flooding the market. But does anybody need one? We give you five reasons why a tablet is a useful tool.
As one new tablet PC announcement after another surfaces these days, you may be asking yourself, "What does a tablet give me that I don't already get out of my computer or smartphone?"
Initially I had purchased the device to browse my massive library of digital comic books, but soon I found it useful for other, more-practical tasks. I started taking the iPad to meetings and using it to do quick Web searches, and it became my preferred way to read and respond to e-mail.
With the Motorola Xoom and other Honeycomb-powered tablets in the works, and with HP announcing its Web OS-based TouchPad, consumers will have a much bigger pool of devices to choose from. Although a tablet may not totally replace your PC anytime soon, using one has its benefits. Here are my top five.
Portability
Next to ordinary computers, tablets by design are comparatively lightweight and relatively easy to carry around. Many of them may still be too heavy to hold in one hand, but they're great in your lap or on a surface. Reaching for a tablet to browse the Web during TV commercials is much easier than getting up, going to your desk, and booting up your computer. Even laptops, which are supposed to be mobile devices, can take a while to start, and they often get uncomfortably hot after a short period of use.
As for using a smartphone, you do have easy access and instant-on, but it's nice to be able to view an entire Web page as opposed to the mobile site or an oddly rendered version on a smartphone's much smaller screen. Plus, there's something about being able to hold a Web page more naturally in your hand, as opposed to staring at it on a laptop screen or monitor. It makes you feel like the future is here.
Productivity
I don't expect anyone to type out a proposal using a tablet's virtual keyboard. However, a tablet in the workplace can be quite helpful for handling basic tasks, like checking e-mail or managing schedules. Here at work, I use a stand to hold my iPad up next to my monitor so that I can use it as a second screen. I leave the Mail app open, which lets me quickly see if I have new messages. For meetings you can jot down notes and download any relevant documents you may need to reference, into the tablet. That way, you won't have to shuffle through a pile of papers searching for a specific chart or diagram.
Students may also find the iPad useful, particularly if you have to carry several books on a day-to-day basis. If those books are offered digitally, you may save some money (and possibly your back) just by packing them into a tablet that also can double as a laptop.

Entertainment
Tablets are great for entertainment. Since a tablet is basically just a large screen, it's a stellar device for watching movies and TV shows. When you're trying to watch an epic movie like Inception, a 3.5-inch screen just doesn't cut it. With services such as Netflix and Hulu Plus, you don't even have to fill your tablet's internal memory with video files; instead, you can stream entire libraries of material directly to your device.
You can also find games to add to your fun. I think I've sunk more hours into Angry Birds than I have into any other game I currently own. Having touch-based controls on a tablet forces developers to get creative, leading to truly unusual gaming.
Adaptability
Games are not the only thing you can download into your tablet. One of the beautiful things about tablets is that most of them--the ones worth the money you've paid, at least--have some sort of marketplace where you can purchase additional apps to give your device a whole new level of functionality. Love to read the news and stay on top of current events? Download a few news apps. Love to tweet and spend all day on Facebook? Grab some social networking apps to stay in contact with friends.
Although it's true that you can customize your computer as well, installing apps on a tablet is a much cleaner and simpler process. You don't have to deal with product keys or registration codes, and most apps download and install in seconds. Tablets also are a good tool for road warriors who need the functionality that their phone lacks but who don't want the size and weight of a laptop or netbook to slow them down.
Battery Life
One of the reasons I prefer carrying around a tablet as opposed to a laptop is the superior battery life you get from a tablet. My laptop can go for only about 2.5 hours before I have to plug it in, whereas one can get almost a full day's use out of a Samsung Galaxy Tab or an iPad. Even HTC Droid Incredible smartphone needs to be plugged in at least twice a day, more if I've been browsing the Web with it. Having to carry a charger as well as a laptop (not to mention trying to find an available electrical socket) gets to be inconvenient.

Microsoft Needs to Break Its Windows Addiction for Tablets

The news out of this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona illustrated, for the nth time, just how quickly the tablet market is evolving into something considerable--and it's evolving quickly. Within the next few quarters, we can expect tablets powered by quad-core processors and running Android 3.0, competing head-to-head against next-generation devices from Apple and Hewlett-Packard.
Increasingly, it seems that Microsoft is willing to sit this battle out in the near-term. The next version of Windows will support SoC (Ssystem-on-a-chip) architecture, including ARM-based systems. Considering how ARM chip designs currently dominate much of the mobile space, that suggests Microsoft's "Windows 8" will at least partially target the tablet market -- whenever it finally comes out. In the meantime, a handful of manufacturers (Dell and HP in particular) are manufacturing limited-run Windows 7 tablets for the enterprise. Emphasis on the word "limited."
Throughout the latter half of 2010, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer pledged that consumer tablets running Windows 7 were in the works. "You'll see new slates with Windows on them. You'll see them this Christmas," he told an audience Oct. 5 at the London School of Economics. "Certainly we have done work around the tablet as both a productivity device and a consumption device." He offered similar comments during his keynote speech at July's Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, and to The Seattle Times in September.
Then came January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where Ballmer used his keynote to ... not mention tablets at all. Instead, he chose to focus on Kinect, Windows 7 on laptops, and Windows Phone 7. Microsoft's CES booth featured a handful of tablets, tucked away among the PCs and Xboxes, and they all seemed aimed at the Asian market--in marked contrast to companies like Samsung, which seemed uniformly determined to turn their respective CES areas into Tablets 'R Us.
Windows has earned Microsoft untold billions of dollars over the past few decades. A product like that exerts its own special type of gravity on a company. But Redmond's seeming determination to port Windows onto tablets, a form-factor seemingly more suited to lighter operating systems like iOS and Android, seems to me a recipe for disaster: trying to graft that user interface--built for larger screens, physical keyboards, and mice--onto a tablet is the tech-world equivalent of trying to make an elephant ride a unicycle. That's not what it's meant for, and nobody ends up happy.
Maybe the next version of Windows will offer something radically different and tablet-centric. In the meantime, I feel it wouldn't be out of the question for Microsoft to consider porting a modified version of Windows Phone 7 onto the tablet form-factor. And why not? Windows Phone 7 is built for touch-screens, and its emphasis on side-scrolling suggests it could adjust to larger screen real estate. Certainly those developers working on Windows Phone apps would appreciate the chance to sell to more than one device type.
But Microsoft won't do that, because of Windows' continued grip on their corporate culture. And so we wait--or not--for the company to make its big consumer tablet play.

Microsoft Needs to Break Its Windows Addiction for Tablets

The news out of this week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona illustrated, for the nth time, just how quickly the tablet market is evolving into something considerable--and it's evolving quickly. Within the next few quarters, we can expect tablets powered by quad-core processors and running Android 3.0, competing head-to-head against next-generation devices from Apple and Hewlett-Packard.
Increasingly, it seems that Microsoft is willing to sit this battle out in the near-term. The next version of Windows will support SoC (Ssystem-on-a-chip) architecture, including ARM-based systems. Considering how ARM chip designs currently dominate much of the mobile space, that suggests Microsoft's "Windows 8" will at least partially target the tablet market -- whenever it finally comes out. In the meantime, a handful of manufacturers (Dell and HP in particular) are manufacturing limited-run Windows 7 tablets for the enterprise. Emphasis on the word "limited."
Throughout the latter half of 2010, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer pledged that consumer tablets running Windows 7 were in the works. "You'll see new slates with Windows on them. You'll see them this Christmas," he told an audience Oct. 5 at the London School of Economics. "Certainly we have done work around the tablet as both a productivity device and a consumption device." He offered similar comments during his keynote speech at July's Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, and to The Seattle Times in September.
Then came January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where Ballmer used his keynote to ... not mention tablets at all. Instead, he chose to focus on Kinect, Windows 7 on laptops, and Windows Phone 7. Microsoft's CES booth featured a handful of tablets, tucked away among the PCs and Xboxes, and they all seemed aimed at the Asian market--in marked contrast to companies like Samsung, which seemed uniformly determined to turn their respective CES areas into Tablets 'R Us.
Windows has earned Microsoft untold billions of dollars over the past few decades. A product like that exerts its own special type of gravity on a company. But Redmond's seeming determination to port Windows onto tablets, a form-factor seemingly more suited to lighter operating systems like iOS and Android, seems to me a recipe for disaster: trying to graft that user interface--built for larger screens, physical keyboards, and mice--onto a tablet is the tech-world equivalent of trying to make an elephant ride a unicycle. That's not what it's meant for, and nobody ends up happy.
Maybe the next version of Windows will offer something radically different and tablet-centric. In the meantime, I feel it wouldn't be out of the question for Microsoft to consider porting a modified version of Windows Phone 7 onto the tablet form-factor. And why not? Windows Phone 7 is built for touch-screens, and its emphasis on side-scrolling suggests it could adjust to larger screen real estate. Certainly those developers working on Windows Phone apps would appreciate the chance to sell to more than one device type.
But Microsoft won't do that, because of Windows' continued grip on their corporate culture. And so we wait--or not--for the company to make its big consumer tablet play.

Is Web OS Just Helping Microsoft Build a Better Version of Windows?

Last week Hewlett-Packard announced it will be bringing Web OS to PCs. In an interivew with the Seattle Times, HP CTO of Personal Systems Phil McKinney says that HP isn't ditching Windows, but will integrate Web OS with Windows. "It will be a combination of taking the existing operating systems and bringing Web OS onto those platforms and making it universal across all of our footprint," McKinney said. "It's not virtualization. It's an integrated Web OS experience we're looking to bring."
On the subject of Web OS in the enterprise McKinnley said:
The key is what we see as the consumerization of IT. Look at how many technologies going into the enterprise are really decided by the consumer. I go out and buy a consumer phone, bring it into the workplace and say, 'I want my e-mail on this consumer phone,' right? I buy a pad, I bring a pad in.
What you're seeing is this collapse -- this lack of differentiation -- that's going to happen between what is a consumer technology and what is an enterprise technology. What the enterprises really want is manageability, security. There's an entire Web OS roadmap to build in all of the security models so not only is it a great consumer device. But it will be the best and most friendly enterprise device that allows the enterprises to manage it, control it, secure the piece of information that's important to the enterprise, but all in one device experience.
Bob Warfield likens this to New Wave, a graphical desktop environment introduced by HP in 1989.

It's probably a little too early to draw comparisons between Web OS and New Wave, without seeing exactly how Web OS will integrate with Windows. But Warfield isn't optimistic. "The little things it adds that have been demoed so far are all obvious things Microsoft should be building into Windows and in fact will have to build if they want to make their Nokia partnership perform as it should," Warfield writes.
What sorts of things? Warfield elaborates. He thinks Nokia and Microsoft need to focus on doing a better job at serving Windows users than Android and iOS. "HP is showing some fascinating new developments," he writes. "For example, the ability to see your phone's instant messages on your PC without having to go get the phone in the next room. That's the kind of stuff Nokia-Microsoft should be doing for Windows."
Warfield sees HP basically in competition with Nokia/Microsoft for third place after Android and iOS. I would add RIM to the competition for that spot as well. Which means the enterprise security angle McKinney mentioned will be important in this power struggle.
Warfield thinks HP is giving Microsoft a big advantage here, just as the company did when it introduced New Wave. "It introduced some cool stuff that Redmond promptly scooped up and marginalized through various releases of their own," he writes. "Their [Microsoft's] engine is not particularly innovative, but if someone else can show them what to do that's in a format not too far removed from what they're familiar with they will grind that stuff out like nobody else."
What do you think? Is HP just helping Microsoft build a better version of Windows let me know?

Bulk of browsers found to be at risk of attack

Bulk of browsers found to be at risk of attack
About 80% of browsers and their plug-ins need updating, says researcher
About eight out of every 10 Web browsers run by consumers are vulnerable to attack by exploits of already-patched bugs, a security expert said today.
The poor state of browser patching stunned Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of security risk and compliance management provider Qualys, which presented data from the company's free BrowserCheck service Wednesday at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.
"I really thought it would be lower," said Kandek of the nearly 80% of browsers that lacked one or more patches.
BrowserCheck scans Windows, Mac and Linux machines for vulnerable browsers, as well as up to 18 browser plug-ins, including Adobe's Flash and Reader, Oracle's Java and Microsoft's Silverlight and Windows Media Player.
When browsers and their plug-ins are tabulated together, between 90% and 65% of all consumer systems scanned with BrowserCheck since June 2010 reported at least one out-of-date component, depending on the month. In January 2011, about 80% of the machines were vulnerable.
Even worse, about 30% of browser plug-ins are perpetually unpatched, a rate triple that of Windows, where Qualys' data has shown that, on average, about 10% of all PCs never receive Microsoft's patches.
When plug-ins were excluded, browsers fared better: Only about 25% of the scanned machines had an unpatched browser on board last month.
Kandek read those results as proof that browser updates were applied more regularly by users. "The lower percentage shows that updating works pretty well for [browsers]," he said.
Unlike most plug-ins, browsers either silently self update -- as does Google's Chrome -- or automatically check for new patches, a practice of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) and Mozilla's Firefox.
The most likely plug-in to require a patch is Oracle's Java, which was outdated on more than 40% of the scanned systems. Adobe's Reader was second, with about 32% of the computers reporting a vulnerable version. Apple's QuickTime took third, with less than 25%.
Java was also in the top spot last year when Qualys unveiled statistics from BrowserCheck's first three months of operation.
"I bet that most people don't even know that they have Java, or how it installs," said Kandek. "Exploit writers have recognized that, and have been adding Java exploits in their toolkits."
Although Oracle usually releases Java updates quarterly, last week it rushed out an emergency patch to quash a critical bug.
Kandek said he sees two solutions.
"A single updater would be the right thing [to have]," he said, referring to calls he's made before that Microsoft take on the responsibility for patching important third-party plug-ins.
"All the different patching mechanisms are confusing, a bit of this and some of that," Kandek added, arguing that that was one reason why so many plug-ins go unpatched.
A second answer may come with the newest round of browsers -- such as Firefox 4, IE9 and Chrome -- that support HTML5, the Web standard that can handle the audio and video processing now done by many of the most popular plug-ins, including Flash, QuickTime and Windows Media Player.
"Moving more functionality into the browsers with HTML5 would help, because then you don't need those plug-ins," Kandek said.
He also applauded Google for updating Flash alongside Chrome, and for integrating a bare-bones HTML-based PDF viewer into its browser, moves rivals have not mimicked.