Is It Time to Buy a Tablet Computer for Business?

This year continues to see the rise of the tablet PC, the ultra-compact and ultra-mobile alternative to the traditional laptop or netbook computer. Though tablet PCs have been around in one form or another since 2000, it has only been in the last couple of years that they have really started to take off.

Being able to keep your work with you when you’re on the move is clearly an advantage for many business users, but one has to ask whether a tablet PC is really as useful as the advertisers say. The basis of productivity on a PC is typing text and this is something in which tablet computers fall short due to the lack of a physical keyboard. In this way, a tablet PC offers a similar kind of functionality to a high-end smartphone – Internet access and basic productivity software. If you already use a high-end smartphone, you might find a tablet PC rather superfluous.

On the other hand, with Windows 8 due to come out later in the year, tablet PCs are likely to really start taking off in the business world. The latest offering from Microsoft introduces a completely new interface – one that is optimized for the touch screens of tablet PCs, smartphones and other devices. While doomsayers may say that this will spell the end of the traditional PC, the fact cannot be ignored that tablet PCs and other touch screen devices are already becoming the thing of the future.