Tag Archives: tablets

Gartner Says Tablets are Top IT Trend for 2012

Posted on by gregl

Tablet technology is changing the computing paradigm, according to Gartner analyst David Ceary. “The implications for IT is that the era of PC dominance with Windows as the single platform will be replaced with a post-PC era where Windows is one of a variety of environments IT will need to support,” he told his audience at the recent Gartner Symposium in Orlando.

In commenting on the Gartner finding, TechRepublic.com chief editor Jason Hiner writes: “From both an employee and customer standpoint, tablets have been driving a huge change in the way people interact with information over the past two years and the process is likely to accelerate in 2012 as the price of tablets drop, Android’s tablet software improves, and Microsoft gets into the game with a legitimate play in Windows 8.”

Number Two on the Gartner list for 2012 is mobile-centric applications and interfaces. “When building user interfaces for multiple screen sizes and operating systems, new types of tools are needed to take the data feeds from applications and transform them so they are usable on the target device,” Ceary noted. “There is no automatic way to do this — it takes engineering skills to design the right outputs.”

The big surprise on the Gartner list was cloud computing’s slip from Number One for 2011 to tenth position for 2012. One reason, Ceary said, was that cloud computing is being absorbed into other operational IT areas.

To learn about Gartner’s other top trends, click here.

Tablets Usurping Laptops for Good Reason

Posted on by gregl

The rise of the tablet in business is nothing short of phenomenal, and technology writer Jack Wallen says it’s totally understandable.

“Tablets are not only here to stay, it will only be a matter of time before they have fully and finally usurped the laptop as the go-to hardware for the mobile business user,” he writes on TechRepublic.com “After you get past the acclimation period for the keyboard, the tablet is an amazing tool for portable business—or even casual—usage.”

He’s compiled 10 reasons to support his contention, with the top reason being power consumption. “The tablet blows away the laptop with regard to power consumption,” he writes. “On average, I can get a full day out of a tablet on a single charge. A laptop? Not even close.”

Immunity to viruses is another point in favor of tablets, as is cost-effectiveness, connectivity, and user-friendliness, among others.

Of course, portability is big in the comparison. “You can lug around a 4-to-12-pound laptop or a sub 0.5-pound tablet. Which do you want when you’re going through airports, taxis, hotels, conferences, meetings, etc.? You’re going to choose the tablet every time,” Wallen writes. “But not just because of weight. The ability to work with a tablet in confined spaces totally overshadows the laptop.”

To read more of Wallen’s comments, click here.

PC Era is Over. Long Live the PC!

Posted on by gregl

One member of the small team that 30 years ago built the original IBM PC, says the PC era is over. Done. Kaput. But the PC’s demise is not the result of new technology replacing the venerated machine, but by the new role PCs are playing in today’s world.

“PCs are being replaced at the center of computing not by another type of device – though there’s plenty of excitement about smartphones and tablets – but by new ideas about the role that computing can play in progress,” writes Mark Dean, one of the PC’s original designers in 1981 and today IBM’s CTO for the Middle East and Africa. “These days, it’s becoming clear that innovation flourishes best not on devices, but in the social spaces between them, where people and ideas meet and interact.”

Dean admits his primary computer today is a tablet.

“When I helped design the PC, I didn’t think I’d live long enough to witness its decline. But, while PCs will continue to be much-used devices, they’re no longer at the leading edge of computing,” Dean believes. “They’re going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs.”