Monday 19 September 2011

Samsung Windows 8 Tablet - the computing solution for education! No longer is iPad an option!

This little machine ticks almost all the boxes. It is pictured here in 'laptop/desktop' mode, where the table part is docked and a bluetooth keyboard is in use.

It is a tablet, so it it highly portable.

You can easily use a normal full size keyboard.

It can be used as a normal laptop

It sports a USB slot as well as mini HDMI and many other connectors.

You can use a tablet pen to write directly on the screen (which is a huge advantage over iPad.) This benefits maths as you can write formulas directly onto the screen.

It runs a full operating system unlike iOS - on Windows 8, you can do anything that you could on a normal PC - laptop or desktop.

Battery life seems to be 9 hours (if it is indeed the same as the Samsung Windows 7 machine).

Downside? The only downside I can see is that it runs a 64GB SSD Hard Drive. Now, I like solid state drives and it would be essential in a device like this, but being limited to 64GB could be a problem (note: the largest iPad is 64GB). With the increase in cloud computing, windows live and windows skydrive, this may abate this problem slightly. There is also the opportunity to expand via USB Keys.

Students

Students can carry the tablet part to school with them easily, as it is highly portable. They can use the on screen keyboard and get full functionality as with a laptop (as opposed to the iPad).

Caution: There has been some discussion that Win8 will not support Flash. Whilst this initially seems a concern, ultimately if Win8 does not support flash, then software and website developers will be forced to change their programming to support HTML5 and possible more native apps.

If you haven't watched the Windows 8 Keynote from the Windows Build conference, I highly recommend it. I'm Excited!

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