Choosing Between a Laptop and a Tablet
By Andrew Patricio
June 14, 2017
Product Discovery
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A personal computing device is a must-have for every small business. Even if your work is offline, you still need a computer to invoice clients, pay vendors, and market your business. If you’re looking for a new computer, you may be surprised to find that today’s tablets can pack a computing punch that is making some choose them as their primary computing device. So which is right for you? Answer these questions to help you choose between a laptop or tablet.
Do You Type a Lot?
The biggest difference between a tablet and a laptop is the keyboard, or lack thereof. If you’re a writer or spend a lot of time creating PowerPoint decks, a laptop may be the way to go. If you’re, say, an interior designer who needs a lot of easily-manipulated visuals and something to email people on when not on their phone, perhaps a tablet is best. Of course, many tablets have keyboards that you can add to your setup, but doing so adds cost and may cause problems in transportation, therefore limiting their portability.
Do You Have Access to Power All the Time?
There is a big difference between the battery life of a laptop and the battery life of a tablet. So if you’re always on the go, or working far from a plug, take a closer look at a tablet. While the battery life of laptops have climbed to five to eight hours, many tablets can run ten hours or more before it needs to power up.
Do You Use the Cloud?
If most of your work is primarily done and saved to the cloud, think Dropbox, Google Docs, OneDrive etc., then you don’t need all the storage capacity of a laptop, or its heft. But if you need the storage and the performance, see next question, then a traditional laptop may still be best.
Are You a Graphic Designer?
If the answer is yes, you need a laptop. Unless you are looking at Microsoft’s Surface Pro, a tablet just doesn’t have the capacity to run Adobe’s Suite or other intensive software so stick to a laptop.
Do You Need to Choose?
Today’s laptops are getting more features of tablets, like touchscreens, while tablets are getting more computing power, blurring the line between the two. And then there are crossovers like the Microsoft Surface Pro and iPad Pro, both of which bridge the divide so you might not have to choose one over the other after all!
Do You Type a Lot?
The biggest difference between a tablet and a laptop is the keyboard, or lack thereof. If you’re a writer or spend a lot of time creating PowerPoint decks, a laptop may be the way to go. If you’re, say, an interior designer who needs a lot of easily-manipulated visuals and something to email people on when not on their phone, perhaps a tablet is best. Of course, many tablets have keyboards that you can add to your setup, but doing so adds cost and may cause problems in transportation, therefore limiting their portability.
Do You Have Access to Power All the Time?
There is a big difference between the battery life of a laptop and the battery life of a tablet. So if you’re always on the go, or working far from a plug, take a closer look at a tablet. While the battery life of laptops have climbed to five to eight hours, many tablets can run ten hours or more before it needs to power up.
Do You Use the Cloud?
If most of your work is primarily done and saved to the cloud, think Dropbox, Google Docs, OneDrive etc., then you don’t need all the storage capacity of a laptop, or its heft. But if you need the storage and the performance, see next question, then a traditional laptop may still be best.
Are You a Graphic Designer?
If the answer is yes, you need a laptop. Unless you are looking at Microsoft’s Surface Pro, a tablet just doesn’t have the capacity to run Adobe’s Suite or other intensive software so stick to a laptop.
Do You Need to Choose?
Today’s laptops are getting more features of tablets, like touchscreens, while tablets are getting more computing power, blurring the line between the two. And then there are crossovers like the Microsoft Surface Pro and iPad Pro, both of which bridge the divide so you might not have to choose one over the other after all!