I did an exhaustive study of tablets for a university I worked for. This was to determine the best device and if they are ready to replace laptops for daily use.
What I found after months of requirements gathering, testing in a lab and real world field testing was:
- tablets are great for information consumption but poor/limited for information creation
- all platforms (iPad, Android, Surface, Blackberry) had strengths and weaknesses
- the cost of fully outfitted tablet equals a solid ultrabook for Total Cost of Ownership
At this point all platforms have a good compliment of software, mobile device management (key for business use) and peripheral devices (attachable keyboards, etc.)
One false promise is the cost being lower. In a business setting, outfitting with dongles for connecting to projectors, monitors, etc., software to provide functionality with enterprise apps, and licensing costs outside of enterprise agreements tips the scale to ultrabooks.
The one advantage was the size/weight of a tablet.
All said an done, I have a great i7 ultrabook and no tablet.
YMMV
I can't see tablets taking over for full productivity. There's only so small one can go before a human needs to have a larger interface. I mean, it's not like humans are getting smaller to keep up with the technology.
There's a reason why the old super small cell phones have disappeared and the mainstream larger screen smart phones are becoming more popular...screen size!
But doing even Excel tables on a tablet without a mouse or a larger expansive screen and a much quicker typing full size keyboard?
Doesn't make sense.
All that aside, i really haven't been thrilled at all with my Google Nexus. Compared to the iPad, it has far less stability. It occasionally random reboots reminding me of a young, unpolished OS like Win95. I've recently had wifi issues, hanging my router after a tablet reboot, with no apparent fix in sight. I had no recent upgrades to the OS (even though Android 5.0 is now out, i'm still on Kitkat 4.4 and have been for months) yet this problem started up last week. Some Google apps had major updates, but none of that should have affected the OS and wifi.
In doing some research, it seems quite a number of people are having random wifi issues with no single fix to solve it and no indication that it is related to failing hardware.
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62934
