tablets - News, Features, and Slideshows

Features

• ​Vendors grapple with excess channel inventory as tablet and PC struggles continue

  The worldwide PC market experienced its fourth consecutive quarter of negative growth.

• Three things to consider before ditching your laptop for a tablet

  For a few years now I've been watching tablets develop into ever more potent machines, with an eye towards making the jump from a laptop to a slate for my mobile workstation. Sure, people have been working on iPads for years, but until recently it's always seemed like a bit of a hack to me.

• How to choose between the iPhone 6, Plus, and iPad

  Like a great many people, I'm planning to pre-order one of the new iPhones, but I'm still on the fence about whether to order an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.

• Apple's 12-inch iPad makes no sense at all!

  Apple intends introducing a <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2599404/tablets/big-ipad-pro-q1-release-date-itbwcw.html">12.9-inch iPad model</a>, and there's some who may think doing so makes no sense at all. They're wrong. Here's why:

• The 6 best tablets for getting work done in 2014

  A few years ago, it was easy to scoff at the idea of using tablets for productivity. The hardware was too weak, and the software was too limited, so turning a tablet into a work device made sense only for a few fringe users.

• Technology leapfrogging: How the Cloud, tablets and phablets advance tech adoption

  There's something to be said for traditions. After all, they're proven entities that have worked for decades. But while that standard Sinatra song may still find an audience at the weekend cookout, the same can't be said for standard technologies.

• Why Samsung needs to move beyond Android - and Google

  Samsung depends on Google's Android OS, but needs to find a way to differentiate itself from rivals who also use Android if it's to grow and thrive.

• Ten years after: HP's primordial Windows XP tablet versus Surface Pro 3

  The HP Compaq TC1100 is only 10 years old, but in mobile computing years, it's laughably archaic.

• Reach out and touch: The notebook isn't dead

  The notebook was king for many years when it came to mobile productivity. In the age before mainstream Cloud adoption, there simply was no other way to get work done outside of the office. This changed, however, with the evolution of smartphones and the introduction of tablets.

• Perspective: The Surface Pro is Microsoft's latest premature introduction problem

  Microsoft has become mildly famous -- in hindsight -- for being early, far too early, to important technology products and trend swings. Is history repeating itself with the Surface Pro 3?

• Microsoft's money pit: Surface has lost $1.2bn

  Microsoft has lost more than $1.2 billion so far on its Surface tablet business, an expensive experiment that makes tomorrow's revelations of new hardware an important milestone for the "devices" side of its corporate-refashioning strategy.

• 10 things we want to see in Microsoft's Surface Mini

  If Microsoft indeed intends to release a shrunk-down Surface Mini this month, as an invite for a "small" Surface event suggests, merely downsizing the tablet's design to fit an 8-inch frame ain't going to cut it. Sure, the Surface Pro 2 and Surface 2 are beautiful pieces of kit, but they're made for big-screen productivity--the Surface Pro is essentially an Ultrabook without a keyboard. That experience won't translate well to a smaller form factor, better suited for content consumption than content creation.

• Office for iPad vs. iWork: The battle for tablet productivity

  Once Office for iPad was announced, I couldn't wait to stage a bare-knuckled battle with iWork, the productivity suite that's held down the fort on iPad for four years. I pitted Apple's Pages, Numbers, and Keynote against Microsoft's Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps, respectively, to determine which better provided all the tools one would need in at typical work environment.

• Microsoft and Google aren't happy with mutant Android-Windows hybrids

  Microsoft may be comfortable with Windows Phone and Android splitting time on a single phone, but when it comes to PCs, fuhgeddaboutit. Google also isn't too thrilled with the idea of Frankenstein Android-Windows computers, and at least one PC maker may have to dump the hybrid devices from their lineup as a result.

• Microsoft's quandary: Big profits from software or shrinking margins with devices

  For all his talk of "devices and services," when Steve Ballmer hands over the reins to a new CEO, he will leave an economic powerhouse that prints money by making software, but makes little on anything else.