Tablet computers: a tablet for the healthy?

The idea of a compact computer with a touch screen, which could be operated without a mouse and keyboard, has long agitated human minds.

The first attempts to create such a product were made back in the late dashing 90s, but none of the projects managed to win any significant popularity. The reason for this was the technical imperfection and the absolutely exorbitant prices of tablets of the time.

And suddenly such a boom! Why now all of a sudden and why so drastically? In order to understand the phenomenon of rampant popularity of tablets, let us first take a closer look at the tablet computer – what is it and why.

Tablet computers: what they are?

To begin with, often the same term “tablet computer” or simply “tablet” refers to somewhat different devices. Often, when we say “tablet” we mean:

• Tablet PC – a computer with the processing power of a desktop or laptop computer, equipped with a touch screen and lacking a hardware keyboard.

• Laptop with a rotatable touch screen convertable or transformable .

• Tablet netbooks – the analog of laptop-transformers, adjusted for the smaller size of netbooks and their smaller computing capabilities.

• Internet tablets – compact and relatively low-powered tablets, designed primarily for Internet access.

• UMPC – Ultra-Mobile PC – Ultra Mobile Computers, as a rule, such computers are equipped with 4-7 inches screen and are designed to replace PDA PDA – handheld computers .

  

  So, in order. Tablet PC – this is a super task that engineers at the end of XX century. They tried to create a compact, lightweight and easy-to-use computer with an intuitive touch screen interface.

Unfortunately, the fact that they worked, was not suitable for practical use: to use such tablets “on the run” was not very convenient, because of the size and weight they differed little from laptops of the time suffice to say that the weight of the tablet 90s was about 3 kg .

It is understandable, because the developers have tried to create just the same laptop, but with a different control system. An additional problem was the small computing power of then computers, and the control system on a touch screen requires much more computation than a banal keyboard.

And so control with such a “stupid” touch screen was, to put it mildly, uncomfortable. All in all, this class of technology rather quickly disappointed both consumers and developers.

The developers quickly realized that if a complex and expensive tablet still makes a laptop, then why not do the opposite? To give a “normal” laptop touch screen and rotary hinge.

So, without any hassle, you can get a hybrid, which combines features of both classes of equipment: the user’s choice of control via a touch screen and a classic keyboard. Such devices have occupied their share of the market, but, naturally, they have not become a sensation.

With the advent of a special kind of compact notebook on the market, dubbed the “netbook,” developers have repeated their swivel-screen trick.

The netbook-transformer came along, but impressed users even less than the laptop-transformer. The point is that Internet tablets loom on the horizon. But more about them later.

Another class of mobile computers, which paved the way for the appearance of Internet tablets, are ultramobile computers UMPC .

Rooted in the Origami PC project, organized by well-known companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Sony, Samsung and some others.

The aim of the project was to develop a computer specification with the characteristics of a netbook, but small enough to be carried in a pocket.

The project was a partial success in the sense that the specifications were created and even mass-produced models were developed on their basis in America, the best known is probably the Samsung Q1 , but they did not become really popular, remaining a “toy” for enthusiasts.

One-touch access to the Internet!

And finally, internet tablets. It is these devices became the most popular variety of tablet computers, which rapidly conquered the minds of people around the world. It’s an Internet tablet most often have in mind, saying simply “tablet”.

So what’s the internet tablet phenomenon? Most likely, the demand for such products is ripe for natural causes, not for nothing just before the mass appearance of Internet tablets were so popular netbooks. And after all, these are essentially computers of the same class, differing in their control system.

Naturally, the increased popularity of tablets has contributed to the growth of their consumer qualities: the capabilities of computing technology has increased significantly, allowing the construction of more compact and convenient portable computers.

On the other hand, we should not sweep away marketing lightly: Apple is famous for creating entire segments of the market on its own.

Here and on the market for Internet tablets all was quite quiet and calm, a few years there were products of other companies, for example, relatively popular were Nokia tablets series n700 and n800.

But it was the release of the tablet Apple iPad literally exploded the markets, on a wave of popularity avalanche began to grow interest in tablets as a “new” class of computer equipment.

Tablets from the present

The current market for tablets is experiencing avalanche growth, and so from the variety of different variations of devices blurred in the eyes. Let’s try to put in relative order.

The screen

The first thing a person who encounters a tablet pays attention to is its screen, which occupies almost the entire front panel of the device. In terms of screen characteristics, tablets can be divided into two groups:

Compact tablets with a screen of 4 to 7 inches. These tablets are very handy to carry because of its modest size, it is not uncommon for these tablets have developed functions of a cell phone, and therefore these tablets usually act in this capacity. Characteristic representatives of this type of tablets are Nokia n770, Archos 7 and Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Tablets with 7-10 inch screen. This is the most common and popular screen size. This tablet, of course, no longer can be carried in a pocket, but to watch video or read from a screen is much better. It is 10.1 inches diagonal Apple iPad. This includes the Motorola XOOM and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, and ODEON TPC-10.

The emergence of tablets with screens larger than 10 inches is in principle possible, but unlikely: such a tablet will be too bulky, to call it a mobile device will be too difficult, but it’s still one of the advantages of Internet tablets.

Operating system

Another thing that the tablet user has to deal with all the time is the operating system. It is it that provides the human interface and internal functionality of the tablet.

In addition, the operating system determines the set of software with which the tablet will work. Most of the tablets use different versions of mobile operating systems, originally developed for smartphones:

Since the most popular tablet in the world is the iPad, respectively, one of the most common software platforms is iOS, developed by Apple originally for smartphones iPhone and iPod players.

The Google Android operating system is rapidly increasing its weight in the tablet market, namely its version for tablets Android 3 and its modification 3.1 .

Google’s operating system is free tablet manufacturers don’t have to pay royalties to Google when they use it and is easily portable from one hardware platform to another, no wonder many tablet and smartphone manufacturers use it.

Since many manufacturers make tablets based on this operating system the most significant ones are Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and, until recently, Motorola , it is only natural that Android is currently the most popular OS on this market in the world.

Samsung Galaxy Tab, Sony Tablet S, Motorola XOOM, Archos 7 and 9 and many others are built on android.

Tablets based on the operating system MS Windows 7 stand out. And as a rule, it is the desktop Windows, not Windows Phone.

Basically, it’s understandable: Desktop Windows is put on tablets, so the user gets a familiar work environment on a mobile computer, which is probably the main and almost the only argument in favor of Windows 7 on a tablet.

Since Windows Phone is not widely used and continues to lose popularity, according to Comscore, WP7 market share has dropped 38% since its launch last fall. While it had about 8% of the U.S. market at the time, it now has only 5.8%.

Most manufacturers do not want to associate their devices with an outsider, moreover quite expensive, when there is a free alternative in the form of the rapidly ascending Android.

One of the representatives of the class of tablets based on Windows 7 is the already described in the magazine Consumer.Video&Audio ODEON TPC-10, as well as the new ODEON model, due to hit the American market in early 2012.

If we continue to compare operating systems in the context of Internet tablets we’ll see another fat advantage in favor of mobile OS: Apple and Google have created vast software distribution centers especially for mobile users.

The App Store is available to iPad as well as iPhone users as of October 2011, over 500,000 apps are available for download, with more than 18 billion total downloads .

For owners of Android tablets and smartphones Android Market is available as of July 2011 more than 250 000 programs, the total number of downloads exceeds 4.5 billion .

For Windows Phone users, there is also the Windows Marketplace, I’m afraid we don’t have the exact statistics for it, but it is clearly many times smaller than the App Store and Android Market.

Nevertheless, users of Windows 7 desktop version are deprived even of this and have to look for the necessary programs on their own.

Processor

Finally, we should not forget that a tablet is a computer, which means that its functionality depends directly on the computing power of its processor, as well as on its architecture:

Of all the processor manufacturers for internet tablets only Intel makes chips compatible with the usual IBM PC platform x86-compatible .

Since Windows 7 is only capable of running on this platform, accordingly, at the core of all Windows tablets is Intel Atom. By far the most advanced member of the Atom family is the Z670 processor. All other microprocessors for tablets are based on ARM architecture.

The iPad tablets use the A5 in iPad2 and A4 iPad processors, which were developed specifically for Apple.

At the core of the development is a dual core ARM Cortex-A9 A5 or ARM Cortex-A8 A4 . A5 contains two main cores with modified ARM Cortex A9 architecture, running at 1 GHz, and a powerful graphics coprocessor PowerVR SGX 543MP2, which is 9 times more powerful than the PowerVR SGX 535 graphics core from A4 , used in the previous Apple A4.

Since the details of the A4/A5 architecture are not disclosed by Apple, these processors are not used anywhere else but the company’s products, and iOS is installed there, an objective comparison of these processors with competitors is difficult. All we know is that Apple claims that the new processor is twice as powerful as the A4.

Nvidia Tegra 2 is a new star on the market of hardware platforms for mobile devices. According to the results of independent comparisons particularly at Computex 2011 when comparing two tablets based on Nvidia Tegra2 Motorola XOOM and Z670 Inte Marco Polo 2 running on Android 3 OS.1 first showed significantly more performance.

It is understandable: the ARM architecture was originally created for mobile applications, while the Intel x86 architecture in the long evolution of the desktop computer has become surrounded by a large number of different additional instructions sets and other “improve”.

So now even the procedure of decoding commands before their execution becomes a non-trivial matter, especially under conditions of limited power supply a powerful processor requires high-capacity and heavy batteries as well as a high-performance and similarly heavy cooling system .

As you can see, the variety of modern tablets is very impressive. Undoubtedly, everyone who wants to buy an Internet tablet will find a device “for themselves. We hope that our article will help you make the right choice.