Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Tablet/laptop/3 in 1 thingies.....

I recently upgraded my tablet from an old faithful (but yes, definately laggy) Asus T700. It was indeed laggy but OK for it's day. The worst problem that it had was true to all older tablets and even some new. Older versions of Android lacked a trim feature for the SSD and so it grew annoyingly slow over time. Eventually, I got so mad with it that I chanced rooting it and upgraded to Jellybean. It had built in trim and after that all was good (but still some lag.)

My new is the Samsung Galaxy Tab S (the "S" being the important part.) It's has an 1.9GHz "octo-core" with 3 Mb of RAM. I'm only 2 weeks in but so far it has been very snappy with everything I have asked it to do. Zero lag so far. I have lots more to say about it, but I'll cut it short here unless you are interested. My bullet point was, No Lag.

Regarding the Surface Pro.
I've only toyed with my co-workers. He is satisfied with it as his travel device. His laptop is obviously faster but the surface is not exactly "laggy" either if not overtaxed. It does everything he wants it to do for short stints.

What he tells me is that if he has extensive keyboarding to do, he takes his laptop instead as he finds the cover/keyboard to be tiring to use over time and a bit harder on the fingers. His job does not require much multi-tasking. I'm not sure I could do my job on it. I never have less than 10 apps open and one of them, "Netformyx," is a HUGE resource hog.

If you do serious computing, I agree with those who say above that there is still no substitute for a good laptop. My tablet is strictly a recreational device. I'd never do my job on it but I'd sure miss it's convenience if I didn't have it.

I'm trapped on a super boring call so I'm spending way too much thought time on this, but hopefully it's useful.

Once you get yourself a new device, you should try loading Linux on the old PC. Even with just a Celeron CPU, there are versions of Linux that would turn that PC into a zippy speedster again. Plus all the apps are free!

My work laptop actually dual boots to Linux now. When I travel or use it at home, I boot into Linux for nearly every time, except for when I need to use "Netformyx". "Libre Office" is fully featured and has yet to spit out anything incompatible with MS-Office for me.

Just a thought instead of junking it.

My BB Playbook's battery finally won't take a charge after 3 years, although it still works on the charger. So time to retire it I guess.

After reading the above & exhaustive net research I went to our local Future Shop (we have a great one here) & bought a Titanium Bronze (what a classy colour) Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5" tablet during the last day of their sale. I didn't really want to spend that much on a throw away device, but WTH, everything seems to be that way now!

After playing with it for half an hour or so, I was sold - absolutely stunning display. So, got 1 for my wife (ha!) for Christmas. Interestingly I checked out Best Buy USA & they don't even seem to carry the 'S' models in their online store unless I was looking in the wrong place. Also, many Samsung tablets were actually a better deal up here. Weird....

TAM

Funny stuff. I went to futureshop today as well and picked up the Tab S 10.5 but in white. I won't get to play with it though because it is a gift.

I liked the white as well but I thought that it would look a bit dirty after a while...

TAM

The bronze Galaxy Tab S 10.5 is exactly the tablet I have as well. As mentioned previously, I can't say enough good things about it. It's very fast, super light, super thin and the display is definitely, absolutely stunning!

My wife has the regular Samsung Galaxy Tab 4, 10.5 and while she is also very happy with it. However, the extra dollars for the upgrade to the "S" model was worth every penny for me.

My only pet peeve was solved with a button press. I turned off the auto-multi-window option, whatever it's called, but for those who are used to a small screen on thier phones, it may be useful. I can still do a split screen in certain apps when required but I just didn't like the device deciding when it should happen. Luckily, it was optional.

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

Thanks for all the input guys. I know what I need to do now, and that's just get a new lap top.

But now I'm thinking I need to get the ol' lady a tablet for Christmas. She has an Iphone, and it's become a body part. Should I stick with the Ipad, or do you think an Apple user could figure out a Galaxy?

The nice thing about sticking with one ecosystem is that the apps she has for the iPhone will also work on (and in some cases include a version specifically for) the iPad.

Since we have a desktop & laptop for home use, I use a tablet for travelling only - wifi for checking weather, road conditions, email & for checking into the Axiom Forums because I don't want to miss anything, ha! Also, minimal apps if any - some word games for my wife. We have no data plan on our free, elcheapo Telus supplied Android cell phone so there is no texting & no outrageous roaming fees when we head south to the desert every year.

My previous BB Playbook was a 7 incher & I found that it was too small to use easily. I waffled between 8 vs 10 inchers for the longest time, but the 10 incher finally won out as I don't go out walking with it - basically it is used in a hotel room. You won't see me using a cel phone/tablet at a restaurant or taking selfies in front of Caesar's Palace - a rarity these days it seems...

TAM