Ask AnandTech: Tablets at Work, What are Your Experiences?

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• Streamlined - Friday, June 14, 2013 - link

  I'm an accountant in a manufacturing setting and I love using my iPad as I walk around on the plant floor for taking notes and photos. It's also useful for taking notes in meetings or coworkers offices. A laptop is just too bulky for me. It's also great for showing others my spreadsheets. It sucks that conference rooms are only setup with DVI projectors which excludes my iPad from going up on the big screen. I also wish someone made a budget/forecast roll up software I could use.

• oregonit - Friday, June 14, 2013 - link

  Tablets for business will likely be like the smart phones over the last decade. Tablets have already infiltrated the sales and marketing side of the business, and as more apps become available the more technical side of businesses will start to use them as well. As a private pilot, tablets are great for flight planning which isn't just about consumption of data. I also do some writing for a web site for fun, which I currently like using a laptop, but I think a current tablet with keyboard (provided I could actually use on my lap) would work great. As a systems administrator I think a tablet like the Surface Pro could work for about 90% of what I do, but there is still some stuff I'd be a bit concerned about. Such as that one time I need to plug into a router or switch with an old COM cable. I also keep about 10 applications up and running with 25 separate windows at any given time which makes me a bit of a resource hog. However there is a lot of my job that is just about communication between departments etc. A tablet will work great for communication purposes as I can take it with me anywhere.
  
  In summary, I can see using a common tablet with a keyboard for personal use which would still include data creation. In the long-term, I think a full OS based device like the Surface Pro would be the only solution for systems administration, but I'd be concerned whether it could handle all the apps I run.

• mahck - Friday, June 14, 2013 - link

  I’m going to answer this a little bit more generally than my own personal experiences. I work in IT in a large organization with about 30,000 employees. The tablet landscape in my organization is essentially bifurcated into two disjoint domains due to the different ways that the different types of tablets arrived here.
  
  On the one side we have gradual evolution from the PC to the laptop/notebook and now tablets. In this space we have a number of Active Directory connected machines that are corporately managed. Right now the current standard is based around various models of Lenovo “convertibles’ running Win 7. These machines are not multi-touch and require a stylus when used in tablet mode. We have a few Win 8 tablets starting to appear but these are still few and far between. There is a high degree of corporate control over these machines with an approved Windows image that is applied to all the machines that includes a number of group policy restrictions.
  
  Then on the other side there are the iPads (maybe the odd Android tablet but mainly iPads.) These sort of snuck into the organization through the side door by piggybacking on some of the corporate changes that were implemented when we introduced iPhones a couple of years ago (prior to this you could only connect a Blackberry to the Exchange infrastructure.) It was originally only a handful of business areas that started buying iPads but corporate IT has since formally approved their use. The main difference between the iPads and the Windows tablets though is that the iPads are seen as a companion device and the Windows machines are a primary device. By companion device I mean that they are mostly used for email, calendaring and note taking at meetings. There are a number of reasons for this which I won’t get into but the main thing that would need to change before iPads or Android tablets could fulfil the role of a primary computing device would be for the workstations group to take them on as an endorsed platform. This won’t happen anytime soon as there would need to be a significant investment in porting all of our custom line-of-business applications.
  
  What is actually more likely is that we adopt an MDM solution and start to better manage the iPads, move a few corporate applications onto the platform and start introducing new applications going forwards that are designed specifically for use on tablets. Right now the iPads function a lot like a BYOD device with the only real corporate control provided by a mandatory configuration profile.
  
  I suppose the one technology shift that could significantly alter this situation over the near term would be a virtualization solution that is robust enough to allow full compatibility with x86 Windows without compromising the user experience. But until then, my organization will be treating any non Windows-based tablet as a secondary computing device for the vast majority of employees. We just have way too many legacy applications to be able to do otherwise.

• Bruce Allen - Saturday, June 15, 2013 - link

  Dear HP: Why don't you make a tablet PC for designers, animators and people who actually draw?
  
  We're one of the few remaining customers who are still prepared to spend a ton of money on computers anyway.
  
  Pair a nice big 1080p or higher display with a Wacom pen with a CPU + RAM + GPU (either discrete or maybe Iris 5200 will be enough?) powerful enough for Adobe CS, zBrush, Painter, light Maya use, etc.
  
  Battery life isn't a huge concern for us - we're at desks most of the day anyway. And for those of us who want to take it on the plane... sell us an external battery booster for more money.
  
  Heat dissipation might be an issue... but if you have a big 13" or larger screen I think you can space the components out and figure out a cooling solution.

• raedkrishan - Saturday, June 15, 2013 - link

  What I need is a tablet with a fast x86 processor that can handle photo editing, windows 8, 2 USB3 ports and 4G connectivity. I'm a photographer and I use photomechanic to send my pictures via ftp. The screen must have at least HD resolution at 10".

• Toxophilix - Saturday, June 15, 2013 - link

  My ideal would be a stylus-oriented tablet for note-taking, sketching out ideas etc. Something like the Galaxy Note 10.1 would do fine.
  
  The laptop-replacement type of tablet would be less useful for me.

• nbelote - Sunday, June 16, 2013 - link

  As a mobile device, my Latitude 10 is far easier to use than carrying around a laptop all the time, especially for quick jobs or organization. Its Atom z2760 CPU is enough for RSAT and Office 2013, both of which are very handy on a device you can hold in one hand. I have several legacy applications that I administer that run on the Win8 tablet without issue, and RDP isn't hard to handle on it either, so it's very nice to have a 1.5 lb object with a 9 hour battery life to do all the "heavy lifting" for me.
  
  The 9 hour battery life is what sold me. I need to be able to hustle at least 8 hours a day out of any device I use and my ultrabook, however nice, only nets 6 maximum. For what I do, the Latitude 10 tablet I have hits the mark well. I can leave the laptop in my office and only use it for heavy duty jobs that require lots of typing. The Latitude 10 doesn't have a keyboard dock, nor will I buy it a keyboard case... I just can't justify making it less mobile than it is now.
  
  The tablet can't do 1080p streaming well, but that's an afterthought; we don't stream video at work, I wanted to see if it could handle the MLB.tv app and it cannot. Don't get me wrong, 1080p looks good on the Latitude 10's IPS screen but it's just not built for streaming it. The tablet's a serious let-down in the gaming department, but that's because it's an Atom. It does handle SoulCraft and most Windows Store games, so I can only hope it can do the new Halo game when it comes out. I want to game in my spare time, not just browse the web and read my eBooks.
  
  I'd recommend this type of solution to anyone that can get one, provided you also have a workhorse of a workstation already. Yes, the Haswell tablets will be super powerful and last a while, but they'll also be super expensive. If you can get an Atom z2760 tablet that does what I described above, and that's what you need, drop the ~$500 now and get it over with. ~$1000+ in the future may be overspending, as you'll get a device that's meant to replace a laptop. If that's your goal, great, but I won't give up my 15" screen on my laptop for anything just because it's "cooler."

• nbelote - Sunday, June 16, 2013 - link

  Oh, and the stylus and writing capabilities of the Latitude 10 make for quick note-taking on the fly. I'm pretty proficient with the Win8 thumb keyboard by now, also, as it feels like I'm texting, but I can't doodle with the thumb keyboard in boring meetings, either ;)

• flamea - Monday, June 17, 2013 - link

  no need for godly specs, just for teamviewer/remote desktop/vlc/ssh (to access my notebook or server from everywhere in office wifi range), do presentations, take quick notes, read emails.

• rayazmuthalif - Monday, June 17, 2013 - link

  The question of using it for enterprises has many angles,
  
  1. Using it for official use in place of a laptop/desktop
  Here the concept of convertible tablets in the likes of a Surface Pro, Lenovo Helix, have great potential since they offer laptop computing with the tablet convenience. More than anything most enterprises are very much in the Microsoft world due to MS office reliance, and security policies. For such hence the tablet-ish devices running Windows 8 seems to ideal. However the security issues of ensuring the tablet does not disappear is a concern. However Android and IOS devices stand a chance if the users can live wiith other Office compliant applications, or use some form or remote client such as citrix, etc to use office.
  2. Use of devices for production use
  This is an area i have been looking into at our work place for staff who are on the move, who need to enter data on the run. Smartphones tend to be too limiting in screen size, and here i feel tablets fit in superbly. The need to be Microsoft OS disappears here, and cost, ruggedness, wifi performance, battery performance, and possibly availability of a stylus would be important factors. The cost and flexibility of tablets are huge, but a big issue is the lack of sufficient "enterprise" class tablets is the big issue. It seems only the big names have devices and they charge the sky and moon, making the tablet expansion in the enterprise a poor one.