A friend of mine (yes-it is a friend and not me) has a laptop on its last legs-he is unsure about replacing with a tablet or another laptop. He doesn't use the keyboard much, so he is leaning to a tablet.

Any thoughts from the experts out there? It is apparently an urgent issue for him.

Thanks.

Have a Macbook pro and iPad - use both for different things...would never consider typing tons of information on the ipad without a traditional keyboard

he needs to go for the tablet!

that's my next purchase

IMO it depends on what he wants to do with it. They are not the same thing at all. If he wants to do anything with it besides run some flash apps and check the internet he pretty much needs a laptop. A tablet is essentially just a cell phone without an antenna.

I love my iPad. I use it for email, internets, stuff like FB and YouTube, etc. I still have my PC for things like doing my taxes and storing pictures. I wouldn't do any serious work on the iPad.

I use my Nook for almost everything, it has Office Lite; I can check emails, the web and read without lugging around a laptop.

Storage, yes. Laptop will have a more storage. But, if your friend stores pictures and stuff in the cloud, it won't matter.

Your friend could consider a touchscreen laptop, possibly one with a detachable keyboard or a rotating screen.

I have a tablet now and I love it for reading and surfing but I prefer the lappy for Emails and multimedia due to its DVD drive. Then I do all things that require any amount of typing on the desktop or lappy as I am a slow typest but I am still much faste on a keyboard than I am with 2 thumbs or one finger on the tablet.
Like others have said they are not the same thing nor are they ment to used for the same things.

Well, since we've come to the conclusion you really don't work...this should work quite nicely for you.

It will. Because the cloud is only as good as the connection. Most laptops have better methods and faster connections. Even so, what happens if you cannot connect or the cloud server goes down?

I would think a Speak and Spell would be about his speed

I have a pad. And I have a computer....somewhere.
I use the pad 10 times as much as I use my laptop. But there are a few things I prefer the laptop for which have already been covered above.

I am in the process of buying my wife a new laptop. I live in a college town and these back to school specials are amazing. I found a 5hr battery life laptop with a 13.3" screen. My wife wants small but computing power. The laptop has an I5 processor and is only $469. That is a boatload of power and processing capability, slightly larger than a tablet but less battery life. Basically no tablet could even compare to this. But the price of the most up to date ipad is not far off.

I have a Samsung Galaxy tablet that I love for internet, email, and reading, but I still like to have a desktop for banking, photo editing, and the most essential computer function: gaming. My wife has a laptop. Just from looking over her shoulder, I'm pretty sure all it does is facebook and solitaire.

We bought a tablet over a year ago and I never use it. I prefer the laptop since my phone can do everything the tablet did. Maybe I should give that tablet away to a nephew or something...

You could give it to me! :-) I want a tablet so I can use it for lyric/chord sheets...will save me a ton of organizing...but I haven't had the budget to buy the tab yet (plus the foot pedal to turn pages)...sigh...

any update on this, has your little buddy decided on anything?

We purchased a new laptop for the wife this weekend. I noted the specifications of the tablets and they hardly had HD space available to even hold windows. Basically everything has to run in flash or be very small for tablets to use them at that limited capacity.

You could use an external HD but that still stores the data transferred in DL memory so your HD will fill up anyway. You can get a more robust tablet for ~$800. But at that rate you might as well go with an ultra small notebook that can do 10x more.

It really seems like a tablet is just a bigger iPhone in most cases, or vice versa.

I have heard it explained that way as well. Probably a little easier to surf on, but pretty much like a phone.

Tablets are good for consuming but a laptop is better for producing. Hope that makes sense because I am too lazy to explain it.

^^^ agreed!

A long time ago tablets were all we had.

Oh Pale! You are such a good sport.