With all the tablet news and happenings going on in the last couple of months I have been thinking about what it is that I want from and in a tablet. There are a couple of categories of concerns. One, the physicality of the device and two, the usage of it. Answering what I think those two categories should resolve to will drive what the tablet I want is like.
The tablet should be neither too big nor too little. 10” is probably the maximum size while 7” is probably the minimum. Anything large or smaller would either be too big to carry around or too small to give enough screen size to fit my use cases. The dimensions will be driven by the screen size and the aspect ratio of the screen. Pesonally I don’t need a 16:9 aspect as I don’t really see myself watching movies on a tablet. I think 4:3 would lend itself better to use as a web and other text content viewer. The main problem I would have with a 16:9 ratio is that the screen could end up too narrow in portrait mode. A 4:3 ratio would give enough width in portrait mode and also also more height in landscape mode, both of which would make web surfing easier. The tablet should be easy to hold and light enough to carry around for more than 5 minutes at a time. The 4:3 ratio could yeild a more balanced feel for the tablet as well.
My use cases for a tablet center around consuming content. I am not going to be creating much of anything on a tablet. Mostly I feel I would be reading web sites. Mostly news and blogs. I don’t need much if any local storage, I don’t really care all that much if the apps I use are running locally or are web based. A good browser and a decent onscreen keyboard would be the focus of what I need. I am not sure that I would need a full feature OS on a tablet, not for what I think I would use it for. Don’t need full Windows or OS X, I would be fine with Chrome OS, Android, or even WinMo 7.
