Laptop or Tablet, which to buy?

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ColinJ

Puzzle game procrastinator!
Which you can pick up for silly money these days ... I saw some in the window of Hebden Bridge's computer shop going for £75!
 

buggi

Bird Saviour
Location
Solihull
i would go for laptop as tablets are good for t'internet and music, games etc but not great for doing "real work" on.
also you need to go and discuss memory and "processor" with someone who knows what they're talking about. (ie Intel inside) as this can make a massive difference to how well your laptop performs.
and you need to up your game with your spending allowance. 400 quid will get you the sort if shoot I have but 700 will get you a quicker one with more memory (trust me, my phone is quicker)
Apple Macs are good, people rate them, but again there is a vast difference on storage, some don't have DVD facility and it's pricey for a good one... You can get a laptop that is the dogs bollox fron another manufacturer for that money. Some new laptops double as a tablet
bottom line... Do your homework and spend more than £400
 
My laptop is more powerful than my old desktop PC. I can plug the screen, keyboard and mouse from the desktop into the laptop, and set it up to use the laptop screen as an auxiliary screen to extend the desktop. There isn't a great deal of point in having a desktop PC any more, unless you need a very powerful machine!
.

I guess we are all using computers for different things and some do some jobs better than others.

Standing up for the desktop - there are lots of reasons to go for them.
OK you can plug a decent mouse, decent feeling keyboard and eye level screen into a laptop but that slightly defeats the point as you are turning it into a desktop.
The setup and discipline of sitting at a desk is good and often ignored. I can get neck, back and wrist problems so need a good setup. Sitting hunched up over a laptop is no use if you are there for 8 hours.
With a desktop, you can buy a really powerful one really cheap and all the components are easy to chop and change or to upgrade. Disc drives break, monitors go, keyboards break, all a quick and easy job to sort out on a desktop. Expensive on a laptop. Over the years I have also upgraded desktops as things have moved on. More difficult on a laptop.

With my work I deal with lots of emails and write lots of letters each day. I touch type and so find a desktop keyboard and the screen much higher than the keyboard to be essential. Then out of work I just wrote a 9,000 word submission and am about 70,000 words into a novel. Other things like internet browsing are secondary uses.

I have a laptop but it gets used perhaps once a month at most. If I do use it then it is for doing my usual work at a different location and then I find it really frustrating to use and it slows me down to about half the speed of typing or just using the mouse. That may be me as certainly people write novels on laptops and seem to get on OK with it.

I would like to try the painting app on the ipad as that looks really good.
 

martint235

Dog on a bike
Location
Welling
Agree with OTH. I still have a powerful desktop in my home office and sometimes it shares the desk with my work laptop. I'll often transfer work between the two if for example I'm working on a large spreadsheet (14" screen or whatever it is on the laptop just doesn't cut it compared to the 22" on the desktop). On the other hand I can't take the desktop downstairs to slob on the sofa while waiting for emails to come in. Ditto, the powerup times of the laptop and the desktop (inconvenient location notwithstanding) I use a tablet for basic searches and personal emails while still slobbing on said sofa.
 

zizou

Veteran
I use my tablet the most however for typing it isnt much use - particularly for documents but even emails or forum posts. If needing to type more than a couple of sentences then it becomes an inconvenience.
 
OP
OP
PeteXXX

PeteXXX

Cake or ice cream? The choice is endless ...
Photo Winner
Location
Hamtun
I've taken the plunge with a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3
It's nearly set up now but some easy things are more trick, but I'm getting there!
 
I guess we are all using computers for different things and some do some jobs better than others.

Standing up for the desktop - there are lots of reasons to go for them.
OK you can plug a decent mouse, decent feeling keyboard and eye level screen into a laptop but that slightly defeats the point as you are turning it into a desktop.
The setup and discipline of sitting at a desk is good and often ignored. I can get neck, back and wrist problems so need a good setup. Sitting hunched up over a laptop is no use if you are there for 8 hours.
With a desktop, you can buy a really powerful one really cheap and all the components are easy to chop and change or to upgrade. Disc drives break, monitors go, keyboards break, all a quick and easy job to sort out on a desktop. Expensive on a laptop. Over the years I have also upgraded desktops as things have moved on. More difficult on a laptop.

With my work I deal with lots of emails and write lots of letters each day. I touch type and so find a desktop keyboard and the screen much higher than the keyboard to be essential. Then out of work I just wrote a 9,000 word submission and am about 70,000 words into a novel. Other things like internet browsing are secondary uses.

I have a laptop but it gets used perhaps once a month at most. If I do use it then it is for doing my usual work at a different location and then I find it really frustrating to use and it slows me down to about half the speed of typing or just using the mouse. That may be me as certainly people write novels on laptops and seem to get on OK with it.

I would like to try the painting app on the ipad as that looks really good.

Until recently I would agree with your observations on a desktop but things change. My motherboard went recently and it was impossible to get a new one, things have moved on.To repair it I needed to get a new motherboard, processor, memory and graphics card. Once this was not the case. Needless to say I didn't. I've moved my laptop up to primary and effectively set up a good docking point, ditched my old style data backups and have just bought a home NAS. Now I have the discipline of a desktop with the portability of a laptop if needed.

I think there is no reason to have a desktop unless you want it for gaming, multi-screens or have some wonderful peripherals which need attaching. Even laptops with universal docks can run multi-screens. It comes down to personal preference I think.
 
I have an iPad and a dying laptop. I've just bought a Sony Vaio Tap 20 which is somehwere inbetween. It runs windows 8, comes with wirless keyboard and mouse and a lovely 20" screen, just like a computer. But, as it's touch screen and all-in-1, you can use it as a tablet too - just a very big one! It has a built in stand so you can caryy it around, fold the stand away, whatver. It's absolutely amazong. Got it £100 at the Sony store in TCR.
 
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