Tablet Recommendations

[Charlie Woody]

Just being reading the Laptop Recommendations thread laptop-recommendations-t70885.html and saw some mentions of Tablets.

Later this year, funds permitting, I would like to get a tablet if I can be satisfied that I could do the following on it:

1. View, edit & save Excel sheets & Word documents and maintain the existing laptop format so I can easily use them on my Dell laptop or new tablet. Last time I was in John Lewis in Exeter I looked at the Samsung note but it uses Polaris Office for these functions which seems to work quite differently to the Microsoft I am used to; also not sure about compatability with existing files and current laptop. I have quite a lot of Excel sheets (all formula are pretty simple stuff) & Word docs saved on my laptop, which I would want to access easily. Did n't have time to look at the ipad so don't know how it would handle these files.
2. Ability to print direct from tablet using my current printer - HP Photosmart C4280 - Not sure if either the ipad or note could do this.
3. HDMI - so I can watch iplayer etc on TV screen.
4. SD card slot so I can upload pictures from my camera easily.
5. Not sure how I could easily transfer the files between laptop & tablet. I have heard of "Cloud" storage but wonder what would I do if internet connection was down - last year we had no internet for a week and without access to these files I would find life a little difficult!
6. Don't want to have to buy other hardware or software to make any of above functions work as if I bought a new laptop they would work so why should I have to pay extra to make a tablet work.
7. My technical knowledge / ability is limited so it needs to be simple to use.

So having given you my long wish list if there a tablet (10" as I thought the 7" too small a screen for comfortable viewing) that would meet this criteria?

 

[UTMonkey]

My research for tablets was a couple of years ago so things may have changed. There are two requirements in your post that you may have difficulties with at least with an android tablet..

Printing - you will likely need to pay "some" money to purchase the software to enable print functionality, but we are only talking pounds.
Editing office documents. All very doable, but my experience tells me that the ergonomics of updating these types of documents using a tablet could be irksome for you. That said I am using my Asus transformer to type this response, it would take me a quarter of the time to do this on a PC but it is convenient in so many other ways.

One thing you should look into, is to make sure the tablet has a capacitive touch screen and not resistive (cheap). All top end tablets have this so Samsung's, Asus will should meet your needs nicely. If you notice a really cheap tablet chances are it has a resistive screen.

Good luck

 

[Tim_H]

Charlie, I suspect the lack of an SD card would preclude a Kindle Fire HD, but I am using mine to type this and find it is an excellent tool for email, web browsing, YouTube viewing etc.

It has Bluetooth, WiFi and HDMI. I download photos from my phone camera by Bluetooth.

I have the 7 inch screen but they now do a bigger screen, not quite 10 inches though.

I have Mobi office suite pro which is compatible with Word and Excel and you can pay for some Android apps to allow you to print.

My only gripe is that it does not recognise Flash player so some videos do not play on the web.

The main advantage is the price, which is significantly less than other tablets.

Just a thought.

 

[UTMonkey]

The flash issue is a bit of a problem until HTML5 comes into its own. There are websites that give you information about how to hack your tablet to enable flash support but I haven't tried it.

 

[RogerS]

Using the keyboard on a tablet would do my head in!

 

[Lons]

You don't need an SD slot as long as it has USB as you just need a card reader which costs pennies. Can use this to transfer files between pad and laptop as well. The Ipad unfortunately does not have USB which is a real pita and also in my experience means that to print, you need a server or a wifi printer. I changed my HP for an Epsom X600 for exactly that reason as at £60 it was cheaper to get than take the risk of buying suitable hardware which wouldn't work with the HP. (anyone want an HP btw?) - plus it was a good reason to buy a new printer :wink:

Don't have any experience of the android tablets though my Samsung S4 phone is very close to being one!

Bob

 

[Tim_H]

Haven't tried a card reader with the Kindle Fire HD, sounds like a good idea.

I find using a tablet keyboard is much easier than a mobile phone! I still struggle with the predictive text though, glad I turned it off on my phone, I have not worked out how to do that with my Kindle!

The only problem with getting a tablet is you will struggle not to tap your PC or laptop screen.

Whatever you get Charlie remember it will be out of date in about six months if you are lucky!

 

[Jbonevia]

Have you looked at the Microsoft Surface RT or Pro? Should do all hat you want.

 

[Charlie Woody]

Have you looked at the Microsoft Surface RT or Pro? Should do all hat you want.

Only very quickly. The word & excel compatability is attractive, but the lack of apps is disappointing. May need to look at it again. Thanks.

Do you use them by the way?

 

[petermillard]

Surface Pro was the only tablet I could think of that would tick every box on your list - but then it’s a PC in tablet form, essentially, and comes with a lot of compromises. Haven’t used one in anger, but my wife's work was trialling them and I played with one for a little while - wasn't keen personally, neither fish nor fowl. Battery life was poor for a tablet, and you lose a lot of storage to the OS; it's priced like an UltraBook laptop too

One thing I might suggest - if your Internet goes down regularly, perhaps a tablet with a 3G connection might be a good idea? Also, if your Word and Excel docs are pretty straightforward, perhaps the online versions available through Microsoft Skydrive would be good enough? Easy enough to try it out - it's free to sign up.

HTH Pete

 

[chippy1970]

My wife and eldest son have nexus seven's . I've used them and I'm impressed

 

[Gary Morris]

I looked into buying a tablet - so much jargon! In the end I settled for Ibuprofen.

 

[Eric The Viking]

Charlie, see my post in the other discussion on this.

You do not get full Office compatibility on a tablet running Win 8 - it's not that straightforward. The tablet version of Win 8 is quite different behind the scenes, and the compatibility with PC Windows 8 has limitations. Most significantly, you cannot run normal Windows apps on it, and Microsoft's app store is much smaller than those of iOs and Android

There are no versions of MS Office (apart from Office 365) running on tablets, as far as I know.

On Android, Polaris Office does let you create and save as .xls simple spreadsheets, but it isn't Excel. It will read and correctly display most functions in pre-existing files, but I've found that, although it will show things like headers and footers in Word docs, I haven't yet found out if you can make them from a cold start. there are also Google Docs too, that will display and let you edit spreadsheets too on-line.

On an iPad, you can display excel files, but only as attachments to received emails, and you can't edit them. In part this is because an iPad has no concept of 'files' as such and the filestructure isn't accessible to the ordinary user.

Keyboards are not an issue. If you want one, use a Bluetooth one. I use an Apple keyboard on my Android (Samsung) tablet, and exactly the same keyboard on my mobile 'phone and my wife's iPad - it looks a bit odd (on the phone especially), but it works just fine. I bought it for her but she usually prefers the on-screen one (oddly she can touch-type and I can't!). Once paired it just works when you turn on Bluetooth on the device and tap a key. I'm told you can use a Bluetooth mouse in the same way, but I've yet to try it (my tablet has a very handy stylus).

Printing I've already explained elsewhere. Direct Office isn't the only app out there that does it, but it is British (Oxfordshire), and it works well for me. It's not a frequent requirement, but it's nice to know I can if I want to.

Hope that's useful. Personally I'd either go Samsung (I like having a proper stylus), or Google Nexus. If you have a phone that will act as a WiFi hub, you don't need 3G/4G on the tablet, which saves battery life and cost. I do it with my Galaxy S3 mini and it works really well.

HTH,

E.

 

[Charlie Woody]

Eric

Thanks for that.

From my brief play in John Lewis with the Samsung I too liked the stylus features.

My concern is that I found Polaris Office quite different from Excel, Word etc and until you clarified was not sure if I could view, edit and save an excel sheet created on my laptop on the tablet so that I would have the most up to date version on both machines. However I have had a very quick look at Peter Millard's suggestion of Microsoft Sky Drive which may work. Just not sure if it would work with my Office 2007 version or my Windows Vista Home Premium or laptop (hammer)

If it did work then that might be the best solution. I wonder if anybody uses it with a similar set up i.e. Dell laptop, Office 2007, Vista Home Premium and Samsung tablet?

 

[Eric The Viking]

I use Office 2003 mainly, withthe add-ons to ccope with the new (XML) file formats. It works with those, I think (certainly with Word docx). I'll check in the morning.

E.

 

[petermillard]

There are no versions of MS Office (apart from Office 365) running on tablets, as far as I know.

Office 2013 Home & Student comes with Surface RT, and full Office 2013 for Surface Pro is in the Windows Store.

On an iPad, you can display excel files, but only as attachments to received emails, and you can't edit them.

I'm sorry, but that's just nonsense. There are many apps for iPad that will open, edit and save docs in MS Office format - including Apple's own Numbers, Pages & Keynote. Document transfer *can* be done by email, but is easier through iTunes or iCloud (windows users will need the iCloud control panel installed) or easier still, with a third-party cloud service like DropBox. It's true that there's no file structure visible to the user on iOS, there are literally hundreds of apps in the App Store that will do the same job, wether they're full File Manager-type apps or simply apps that turn your iThing into a big USB thumb drive; I use one called FileBrowser that let's me connect to any shared drive on my network over wifi.

I also use third-party apps for printing - FingerPrint and Printopia - as I like to keep paper copies of all work-related docs for the accountant etc... They we cheap and work well.

@ Charlie - I think you'll have as much trouble transferring docs between the various versions of office on a PC as you will transferring PC -> tablet -> PC which is why I wonded if SkyDrive apps might not be a better starting point; cheaper too

 

[Eric The Viking]

I've just checked: Polaris Office does save all the XML-based MS Office (2007-onwards) formats. It looks like you just type '.doc' at the end of the filename to change it from '.docx' and vice-versa (ignore the extension you're prompted with), but the help is non-existent so I'd need to test this properly to be certain. But hey, it's free with the device!

I have to say, for writing on the tablet, I actually use Jota+, which is a programmer's text editor - no frills at all, and absolutely no formatting, just simple text editing. I detest Word and the way it wastes resources, even though I've published a book with it in the past. For example, people who send out meeting agendas as Word docs, with full formatting (usually spelling howlers) and the company logo at the top - WHY???

So Polaris Office's weaknesses in the WP department don't bother me that much. The Excel equivalent isn't that bad really. It does graphing (bit clunky, but it works and offers a variety of styles of graphs and charts) . don't know how well it supports things like ranges, data sort etc., but the workbooks I import seem OK.

Don't get me started on Powerpoint though. I don't care if it raids my bank account, as I won't be using it unless someone puts a gun to my head. Read (or Google) Edward Tufte and the Space Shuttle...

Hope that's useful,

E.

(typing on an Apple keyboard, connected to a Samsung device)

 

[Eric The Viking]

Sorry Peterm. You're right, of course. iTunes is not an option for us, however, as the Macs in the house are too old to run compatible versions. Mine are the only PCs, and as they're used for work I am not happy with them being used for moving files to and from the iPad--too risky.

You can't use USB devices though on the iPad, which is a PITA. You can with Android. This is especially annoying for photography, as I can't import Canon raw files to it. It will see a USB storage device with a DCIM structure, but ignores anything without a .jpeg/.jpg extension.

Regarding Office, I have been misinformed, it seems. I'm not sure it's the whole story, anyway, as the Surface doesn't run native PC code. Isn't Skydrive involved somewhere for file transfer?

E.

 

[RogerS]

..... iTunes is not an option for us, however, as the Macs in the house are too old to run compatible versions. .....
E.

Are you sure? I am running iTunes 10.7 quite happily on a range of Macs from a PowerPC through an iMac (or two), an iPod Tiuch and a Macbook Pro.
Avoid version 11 at all costs though.

 

[Eric The Viking]

It's what I was told by the Apple Store. We were looking at a new iMac though, so it might have just been an attempt to persuade us to buy. It certainly won't work on the G3 tower, which was the target machine, nor will it work as a print server for the iPad (using Apple s/w, again, so they told me). I couldn't be bothered to pursue it, and she rarely needs to print anything from it, so it's not an issue in use. As I said Direct Office works for me, and I think there's a binary for iOs, if it ever becomes a big thing.

E.