Ask AnandTech: Tablets at Work, What are Your Experiences?
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 12, 2013 3:13 PM EST
The tablet market has grown tremendously over the past few years. What started as a content consumption device for consumers has transformed into a device that has started to pull sales away from traditional notebooks. The obvious next step for tablets is towards the enterprise and business users.
As my usage models tend to be a bit unusual, when tasked with finding out how people use tablets for work my initial thought was to go to you all directly. So, how do you or could you use use tablets for work? What possibilities do you see for tablet use in work going forward? Respond with your thoughts in the comments, a lot of eyes will be watching this discussion and you could definitely help shape design decisions going forward.
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thesavvymage - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link
thats 100% because of the atom processor in it. later this year with the new atom chips, that will change significantlydavidbec - Friday, June 14, 2013 - link
I second. Silvermont will change everything.gbecker - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link
For my work in the tablet can only replace a note pad, because I would need a big screen 2x 24"and lots of memory 128GB. I'm work um CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics).Pyperkub - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link
I used to use David Seah's Printable CEO pdf's on a clipboard to track my days. I ended up with stacks of paper all over my desk. Now I use my tablet with a stylus as my clipboard replacement (using the pdf along with the Android program LectureNotes) for my daily task/note tracking. I also keep pdf manuals on it, mark up pdf's of documents while on the go, etc. AnyConnect/RDP is always there if I need it too. It's been a godsend in cleaning up the paper piles on the desk.Pyperkub - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link
It's a Transformer, but I haven't needed to get the keyboard yet.hlovatt - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link
I use an iPad at work most days. It is far better in meetings than a conventional laptop even something as small as an Air isn't as good as an iPad. The screen up presents a psychological barrier where as a paper notebook or iPad doesn't. Also I find Notes, Safari, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote great in meetings, you can make live updates that are automatically synced back to your laptop on your desk and you can easily pass an iPad round.rusty1404 - Friday, June 14, 2013 - link
At my company we use tablets for:VoIP telephones. (Bluetooth headsets)
Google apps (which we use for work)
text, gtext
email
sales and marketing, those pretty IPS panels and our flickr account work very well together.
We use google+ to interact socially internally within the company
We use instagram for much the same
We now use the new google hangouts apps because it was a disaster before.
I use the ideapad yoga and a Nexus 7 GSM and it's quite pleasant, just takes some getting used to
A few things we would love to do with our tablets:
make GSM calls (the fact that I can't use the device which is fully capable of doing this drives me wild, if I could make GSM calls on my Nexus 7 I would never use my iPhone again)
Find a decent time logging app which uses the camera and GPS, which our employees can use to clock in/ clock out on site for payroll/management purposes.
Tablets with cloud services have enabled us to grow at 250+% per annum, and we still have no VPNs, Active Directory, Domain Controllers, no Outlook anymore (!), we are not tied down to physical locations.
We have 4 offices in 2 countries and 50 odd employees.
It is still a bit of a hassle to get everyone to utilise these services, but the result over time is that the way we work, communicate and interact is becoming more seamless, and more ubiquitous.
DaBoSSs - Friday, June 14, 2013 - link
Full access to the EHR - can enter orders, review lab/ECG/etc. x-rays limited image quality, but can. Video stuff like echocardiography - frame rate can't keep up, so still must use desktop for that.From a practical standpoint, full access and use of the EHR from my Xoom tablet. Many docs here use the iPad, haven't seen any mini's. We access via Citrix.
DaBoSSs - Friday, June 14, 2013 - link
Full access to EHR - frame rate too low for video, but everything else. System uses Citrix for accessmike8675309 - Friday, June 14, 2013 - link
Back in about 2006 I purchased a Toshiba convertible laptop. A nice little M400 with 1400x1050 12.1" display and Core 2 Duo machine. I used it as a laptop doing development, and then used it in meetings as a tablet using onenote. I curse the day the motherboard died, a good 5 years later.I can't imagine having a tablet in a business environment and not being able to use a tool like OneNote. As such, I don't use a tablet. Those around me that do basically have Ipads and use them in meetings to keep up on systems problems or e-mails. Most use some sort of stylus with them. More are using either their corporate issued laptop (worker bees) or have something else in an ultrabook form (director level).
If I were to buy a tablet like device today it would be the Surface Pro. I have a kindle for book reading and a laptop for everything else. If I'm going to get a tablet it needs to be able to handle everything else, not just watching movies. I have a Television and Roku/PS3 for that. Now for my wife, we just bought a new machine. Went with a cheap i5 powered laptop, mostly due to the casual games she plays need Java and didn't see a good value proposition in any tablet that could handle Java, not compared to the full blown laptops available.