The trouble with tablets...

Kirk dealing with tablets Tribbles

[disclaimer - I wrote this a year ago but it still seems valid]

...is that once you've got one you need want a few of them. I really like the 7 inch tablet for casual browsing and it's exactly the right size for carrying around, but you can't make phone calls on it. If you want to do work then the 10 inch version is great for a portable device, but bloody hell it's heavy, and bulky.

Once you can also write on a tablet - the windows 8 tablet that I've been used has really good handwriting recognition - you also realise that the potential for this to be a go-to bit of kit in place of a notepad is enormous. However there is no way on earth I am going to start lugging around a lump like a 10 inch tablet that weighs the best part of a kilo to meetings out of the office.


Once you start writing on a tablet you also notice that the potential for sketching out ideas and even proper drawing is also immense but that the screen-space gets used up really quickly, even with pinch zooming and massive artboard sizes, so you need a really big tablet type monitor at your desk connected up to the graphics packages and a decently beefy CPU.

So what you need is a mobile for quick lookup and photos/snapshots, 7 inch for notes on the go, a 10 inch for detailed notes and hugemungous creative pad for the heavy lifting.  

There are paper ways round this like the Moleskine/Evernote but what they really do is highlight the need for some kind of device that removes the pain of getting work into the digital realm but still allows a a degree of tactility.

Wot yoo lookin at punk?!

What we're coming to is the culmination of a trend that begins with laptops and ends up with a modular and partly wearable set of personal technology. We're heading towards a point where computing isn't just mobile but also augments reality and is on the person; Google glass is already happening and if they can solve that "looking like a prize idiot" problem I will buy one.

The promise of these devices is that they all work together to provide a digitally enhanced reality, the risk is that we will become dependant on them and because of their hardware nature they will proliferate beyond what's actually helpful.