Back in the 1970s, when flare pants and neon-coloured, knee-high boots were the coolest things around, calling your friends while being away from home was completely unheard of. But all that changed with the arrival of the first Motorola mobile phone in 1973, and between 1990 and 2010, the number of cell phone users has increased from 12.4 million to over 4.6 billion. Today, trying to find a teenager who doesn't own at least a simple cell phone is like looking for an Indian who hasn't heard of Shah Rukh Khan.
Similarly, while laptops were initially as alien to the population as cell-phones, it's becoming increasingly rare to find a member of the new generation who doesn't own a laptop. This phenomenon of new technology constantly being created and replacing the old has now become so familiar to the youth that we don't cast a second thought towards junking our two-year-old Dell for the latest Mac- Book Air.
Take over
But with the release of the iPad in April 2010, and the iPad 2 less than a year later, the question is whether the tablet technology will replace laptops. And the growingly obvious answer to that question? Hell, yes. Don't get me wrong, laptops are great; they cover all of our internet needs, presentation outlets such as Excel and Powerpoint, and connections to various other devices like music players, data sticks, CDs, etc. But what happens when we need to relax with a cup of chai on the verandah and want to read our book and listen to music at the same time? Alright, we have our music players and good old paperback books for that. Then, what about when we're on a flight and want to browse through the old movies we have stored, but also want to have all our emails downloaded immediately when we land? Can our music players do that? Admittedly, the new touch-screen generations of music devices come pretty close, but their small screens are a setback.
Disadvantages
The laptop can do all four of the things mentioned, but their glaring problems are becoming more and more of an issue: they're too heavy to carry around just for music, too big to get out for a few emails, too easily sapped of battery for a movie or two, and too awkward to read a book with. It's really no wonder that the tablet is replacing the laptop. Okay, so a tablet is handy for all these little things- what now? One would be right in bringing up this question, since lounging out on the verandah is not the top consideration when most people buy new devices. A tablet, while it might not have the screen-size of an average laptop, is becoming increasingly user-friendly in its format, its graphics, and most importantly, its applications. With millions of applications for the iPad, and hundreds of thousands for the Galaxy Tab and IdeaPad, not only for fun and games but also for work, education, business and other professional fields, office-goers and students alike are making the switch over to tablets.
While all these new innovations in tablet-technology are proving to be great reasons to support the replacement of laptops by these amazing new devices, one must realise that the laptop-tablet transition will never be fully complete until the cord is cut between the two- literally! When tablets finally evolve enough that they don't need to be connected to a laptop or desktop to sync, upload or transfer data, the era of the tablet will finally begin.
Samvitha is a student of American International School
