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

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• five_seven - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link

  I use a Samsung Note 10.1 that I bought for personal use, but I have been slowly migrating it into use at my company. I've had nothing but positive comments about it when other coworkers ask me about what it is I'm writing on. Pretty much use S Note solely for meetings, project ideas, etc. Pretty small use at this point. No one else at my company uses a tablet at this time so hopefully it'll help set the future trend.

• Wolfpup - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link

  I could use a Windows 8 tablet for work, as of course it's a real PC, though 99% of the time it would just be hooked up to a monitor and keyboard, same as my notebook is.
  
  I could even make do with a Windows RT tablet for a lot of things for the same reasons-at least it gives you a desktop, Internet Explorer, Office, the ability to connect external drives, manage storage, etc. RT would actually be a huge improvement for me as compared to Android or iOS which don't even begin to cut it, but still, there's no point when notebooks and desktops and even Windows 8 tablets are so cheap

• Sushisamurai - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link

  Currently, in the private healthcare sector, we (by we I mean my clinic as well as other clinics I see), we tend to gravitate towards iOS due to the simplicity and security of things. However, it's a software issue that's really handicapping us. Our systems/network doesn't integrate well with our healthcare programs, effectively making our devices for reference only. Windows 8 tablets work, but they're too heavy and loading a CD for an outpatient X-ray or diagnostic exam is still limited towards a laptop or desktop (as our software doesn't integrate well currently for tablets of any form)

• Sushisamurai - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link

  By simplicity and security, I mean iOS's locked in feature. The IT guy has run into problems where employees have used the work computers for personal use during down times, effectively compromising the computer's privacy and security, which is a big no-no in healthcare. However, I could see windows tablets replacing our iOS tablets and possibly laptops if they had a thunderbolt dock - therefore our administration sector can bring their work at home, and have a full workstation at work if necessary. But, once again, tablet harddrive space is a little small in my option, and the battery life needs to ideally exceed a 9-10 hour working day, or at least 7-8 hrs with a lunch time charge. Weight reduction would be beneficial as well so physicians like me can carry it from room to room if necessary, pull up the patient charts, write and file a prescription online to the healthcare network (for redundancy and for pharmacists to track prescriptions and abusers), track past diagnostic tests done for said patient on the health network, and be able to review the charts. The system right now is all over the place, and somewhat chaotic (lots of improvements could be done to better streamline the public healthcare sector outside of hospitals)

• JasonIT - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link

  Honestly when I was approached by a few of our mobile users who wanted to migrate to Tablets, I did a lot of research into what their needs were and what the business needs are. Sadly I was unable to find the right solution that met every need for the user and our company.
  
  For a tablet to be successful and useful for us it needs to have the following:
  -miniHDMI out
  -SD Micro card slot
  -1 USB slot for using flash drives & 3g/4g aircards (positioned in the top left of the tablet when in landscape mode)
  -User replaceable battery in the tablet, not just a battery expansion in a jacket.
  -A Docking Station cradle for desktop use with VGA/DVI/HDMI (2 of the 3), Gigabit Lan, 2-4 USB, audio out.
  -A Keyboard&Touchpad cradle with 2-4 USB and extended battery. (Needs to be able to stand up on its on and close like a laptop would, similar to the Samsung ATIV tablet.)
  
  Basically we need a Tablet that can act as a Tablet when on the go for consumption and presentation and portability, that can then be docked as a desktop replacement, and when traveling still be able to carry like a laptop for productivity.

• davidbec - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link

  The Gigabyte S1082 would be what you need. It has USB2.0, USB3.0, Ethernet, HDMI, audio, VGA and an internal 3G PCIe slot, all on the tablet itself. The Dock has another HDMI, VGA, 3USB ports, audio ports, subwoofer and a DVD drive.

• davidbec - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link

  There is a tablet with those requirements already. It has USB 2.0, USB3.0, HDMI, VGA, SDXC, audio, SIM and an internal slot for 3G. All those are full sized ports by the way. The dock has HDMI, 3 USB ports, Ethernet, VGA, DVD drive and 4 speakers.

• JoelSutherland - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link

  I live under a half mile from my office and carry a Surface Pro to and from work each day. Previously I had a 13" Macbook Air.
  
  I am a web developer and use the Pro for everything from Photoshop to running Puppeted VM clones of our production machine. It has sufficient power for this. At work I use the Windows desktop exclusively and run it at native resolution plugged in to an external monitor. I would probably prefer that the native resolution was 1600x900, but I can still see the small type well enough.
  
  At home I use it in 'Metro' mode almost exclusively. The Mail program is unusably bad so I normally fire up Gmail in the Google Search app. I always switch over to Power Saver mode prior to using it as a tablet like this.
  
  I'll be upgrading to a Haswell convertible tablet the moment a good one is released. I'm sold on the form factor but wish it got 30-50% more battery life and was in the form factor of the Surface RT.

• AnonymousFanBoy - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link

  I work for a construction company. We use iPads for industry-specific apps, and take-up has been very rapid and very positive.
  
  Dell recently gave us a couple of Latitude 10 tablets running Win 8 Pro, and our experiences with them were decidedly mixed. Performance was not-so-hot, thanks to the Atom CPU, small RAM load (2GB), and SD-card-as-SSD. Dell gave us small docking stations to use with them, and stylus pointing devices, but no carrying cases, or Bluetooth keyboards.
  
  Battery life was great, and the Metro/Modern start screen was nice, but usability in the Desktop environment was wretched. The styli required much more velocity to record a click than they should have, and you can't pinch-to-zoom the whole desktop environment itself--just windows within apps that support that functionality--so using a finger to tap the close or maximize window controls was *very* frustrating.
  
  Using the on-screen keyboards on 16:9 or 16:10 screens is a waste--literally half the screen (or more) disappears entirely. But Dell didn't include any convenient Bluetooth keyboard options. I used a Logitech keyboard/cover from an iPad--one that had a broken magnetic hinge and could no longer be used as a cover--and it *dramatically* improved the usability of the Dell tablets.
  
  Strangely, I now have a company-issued iPad, and thanks to an $8 RDP client, it's a more useful tablet for running Windows apps than the actual Windows tablet was. I can pinch-to-zoom the *entire* desktop environment in my RDP client.
  
  So in short, outside of the lousy performance (an issue Dell will probably fix with Haswell-based CPUs in the next revision), the Dell tablet was a fine piece of hardware. Most of my gripes are with Windows 8 Pro itself. If MS can fix the OS so that you don't have to use the desktop environment for tablet apps, or to make configuration changes to the OS, it'll be a fine tablet OS. But even Outlook and the other MS Office apps aren't Metro/Modern apps, they run in the Desktop environment. So until MS enables pinch-to-zoom for the entire Desktop environment, you'll still be frustrated.

• dehemke - Thursday, June 13, 2013 - link

  I work in IT Software development in an IT heavy, company. Most of our IT managers, directors, vp's carry either a tablet (ipad & Asus most common), ultralight laptop (MBA), or a hybrid (lenovo yoga has made some waves). There are a few who get by on larger phones (Note 2, S4, HTC One).
  
  Primary uses - email, email, email. Meeting agendas; Note taking, retrieval; task allocation, retrieval (we use a cloud based system); document reading (we used to burn tons of paper for design and brd reviews). The distributed guys also tend to use their to pull up sites for discussion.