@dredmorbiusThe Case Against Tablets
As I hunt for new computing hardware, I’m coming to the conclusion that tablets are simply a mistake. And yes, strongly informed by using one as a primary device for 5 years.
An ultra-light laptop has better utility and vastly superior privacy.
The one killer function, reading documents, seems better served by an e-book reader. ...
I'm exploring this question on Diaspora, with some good suggestions. Upshot is that tablets do most things poorly and virtually nothing well. And the landscape fully sucks.
Text reading and possibly notetaking is the major exception. And for that, an e-ink reader is the preferred option.
I'm surveying what uses people have, multi-response, with a goal more of completeness than representation. Please explain "Other".
https://joindiaspora.com/posts/880e5c403edb013918e1002590d8e506
@dredmorbius@shelenn Being the obsessive I am, I'd archived that (and very nearly all other) Joindiaspora post:
https://archive.ph/https://joindiaspora.com/posts/880e5c403edb013918e1002590d8e506
The Massive Markdown Table of Shit lives!!!
@dredmorbius@toot.cat@shelenn Also, I did end up purchasing the Onyx BOOX Max Lumi, a 13.3" e-ink tablet, based on Android.
As a bookreader it's excellent. It's also quite good for podcast playback (large flat structures make good speakers, quelle surprise), and I'm finding its handwritten notetaking ability far more useful than expected. I do wish it had more onboard storage (64 GB, updated to 128 GB in the OBML2), and I'd aim for ~512 GB - 1 TB, which would still be quite reasonable (Apple's iPad Pro has up to 2 TB storage). Part of that is for books, but podcasts also suck up considerable space.
Battery life as an Android device is fairly typical: a full day's usage, generally. If used as a book reader, with all other elements off (backlight, WiFi, Bluetooth), the advertised days of battery are attainable. That's not my typical pattern. Web browsing is astoundingly power-hungry.
The display is delicious.
As a general compute device, though, it has all of Android's deficiencies.
Termux remains The One Android App Which Does Not Precisely and Exactly Suck.
EinkBro, an e-ink optimised Web browser, is superior to anything else, though it still has numerous issues (mostly ranging around persistence and content management). My second choice is actually w3m under Termux.
Pocket still gets worse the more you use it. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_it_gets_worse_the_more_you_use_it/