How do you use a tablet?

Many people have different use for tablet technology. Whether you are a professional or you are just using the device in a home environment, your perspective on how you are using a tablet will probably be quite different. From my perspective, most of the people that mix their use of tablet between work and home are using in their business lives to check and send email, do research and review documents that they have created on their PC’s. Some take it a step further and use the tablet as a device to remotely access their notebooks and desktop computers or to help them maintain their servers. I usually have a tablet somewhere near me and I use it at home primarily as an entertainment device, a resource to scan email, RSS Feeds, and other documents, reading text books or novels, listen to audio books, and listen/watch podcasts that are mainly computer industry related. Netflix, Hulu, Xfinity and HBOgo are my favorite video applications, Kindle is my favorite ebook reader, Skype for many of personal calls, Audible for my audiobooks, Amazon MP3 and Spotify for music. I am not storing many pictures anymore on these devices but I have access to SmugMug as my gallery on the internet. I don’t use Facebook or Twitter much directly, however, all my blog posts are automatically posted to both of these to help promote my pages. Data access is a very important requirement to any device that I use. It is important to me that no matter what device I pick up that I can get at the data I need to keep working. Dropbox has been a big part of this for me because of its auto-synchronization between devices and access from any device that has internet access. SkyDrive is starting to become my second choice for document storage and for music I use Amazon. SmugMug is my choice for Photos and YouTube is my choice for my video content that I want to share. With my mobile hotspot and of the devices that I have I have access with every WiFi device I own when I have 3G/4G access. I don’t write much other than email replies on any of the tablets. I find myself needing multiple screens and other software tools that help me to capture images that I use in my posts. I find most of the research I want to do is better served for me by a dual monitor environment which I am not going to get with a tablet. So when it comes to the creative side of using a device I find myself going back to a desktop more than to a notebook or tablet unit. But when I hit the road it is the tablet that I always have with me not the notebook to connect to my world. I wonder when the Microsoft Surface Pro finally makes it to t he real world whether I will be able to use that as my primary mobile creation device or not. The keyboard is going to be a make or break part of the equipment. Being able to run Microsoft applications is going to a big thing as well. It will be interesting to see how it fits into my life.