Galaxies of Tablets

So I was reading an article (and I'll link it if I can find it) which was suggesting that soon most people will be giving up their humble PCs in favour of the newer, shinier Tablet. It's so new and shiny I felt the need to capitalise it there, do you see?


We've established that I'm a little bit of a geek, so I've been playing with a tablet for nearly a year, and a Samsung Galaxy SIII for a week and a half now!


Of course I'd previously wanted to have an iPad, but without the inevitable hassle of actually owning an iPad. You know, the derision, the ridicule - that sort of thing. Oh, and the fact that there appear to be no free apps, and that the most popular app one year was the jiggly booby app. I won't lie - that's a brush with which I have no desire to be tarred! Android seemed the logical course, given that, at the time, Windows was SO not a contender in the tablet market, and Palm? Well let's just shimmy on past that little missed opportunity, shall we?


Many tablets were looked at - some more longingly than others, until the day the eeePad dropped onto the front step. Yes, you've guessed it. Our postman will leave expensive stuff on the step, and yet the day he had a parcel not even addressed to my house, he left me a collection card. The Links of London bracelet? In the flower trough on the porch.


I love my pad. I sit in bed and watch movies, read comics (the 10" screen is just perfect for Manga) and I post witty little Twits. Tweets. Whatever. With the SIII, it's even better! I'm no longer tied to wireless networks, and have unlimited 3G. I can roam the countryside, watching YouTube videos in the pastures, posting Twits willy-nilly from anywhere. Well, anywhere with a 3G signal.


The screen is mahoosive and glossy. I expect they could make it better, but I'm not so sure I'd notice if they did. What I'm trying to say, in my ham-fisted way, is that the screen is gorgeous. Gorgeous, I say! And of course, the device is nicely portable, so I could actually USE that shopping list I downloaded for the pad. After all, the tablet is hardly the device you take shopping with you, is it?


And lightweight - did I mention lightweight? Given the size, it's hard to believe it's actually a whole 7g lighter than the iPhone 4s. I know, a barely noticeable difference, but hold both phones, one each in your hands, and suddenly 7g will seem quite a lot. Indeed, one concern was that this phone is a brute and there's NO WAY I'm tucking that puppy unobtrusively into my bra - so how the blazes would I carry it round? Well, that hasn't been a problem - except of course for bra thing.


In fact, it's SO damn useful that there have been days in the last week and a half that I've not actually turned on my computer. Yep - I hear your gasps of disbelief! Who'd-a-thought it? Sian, not turning on her PC as soon as she comes home, to get her fix of the interwebz? Except that I wasn't being denied anything. It's all there on the S3.


With ONE, quite important actually, exception.


Sure, I post those witty little twits, I comment on Facebook posts. I compose little emails to my friends. I can do all this, and relatively quickly too, because I purchased a slide keyboard. "What's that?" you say, "What's a slide keyboard?" As simply as possible, it's an on-screen keyboard on which you slide your finger through the letters which make up the word you want to type. Because of the way it works it requires a degree less accuracy a normal phone on-screen keyboard. If I miss a letter, it'll have a stab at working out which word I really wanted. This doesn't always work out, and sometimes it doesn't have the word in its word-banks. Thus you do get some interesting (but, unlike Apple, not smutty) autocorrections.


But nothing comes close to the ability to hack out 35WPM on a proper, old-fashioned keyboard. There's a reason I like the little nobbles on the F and J keys - once you can touch type, you find your index fingers moving inexorably back to those keys, leaving your brain to work on what it was you wanted to say, rather than the fact that you have to SEE every single thing you peck at on the smooth and shiny surface.


I can't imagine how long it would take, and how little hair I'd have at the end, to type this blog into either the pad or the S3.