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A tablet computer is a mobile computer comprising a flat touch-screen and is operated mainly by touching the screen which has a size of 7 to 12 inches. Larger than a mobile phone or a personal digital assistant, the tablet PC has an onscreen virtual keyboard, a digital pen or a stylus rather than a physical keyboard. Microsoft coined the term ‘Tablet PCs’ for tablets that were targeted as note taking device, data capturing and field work devices. However, they failed to gain importance and fame in the broader perspective. The tablet computer market got a huge up-thrust when Apple through the introduction of iPad in April 2010, became a household name. iPad heralded a trend of tablet computers from various brands and the competition for these smart portable PC began to gain ground. Today Tablet computers are growing rapidly in acceptance and are now part of mainstream learning through the use of student tablets in most Universities and High Schools. As of now, there are as many as 80 tablets from various companies ready to take on the iPad from Apple, which is a market leader in tablet computers. The brands include Xoom from Motorola, Samsung Galaxy Tab from Samsung, BlackBerry Playbook from Research in Motion, Toshiba Thrive from Toshiba, Via Tablet from Vizio, Asus tablet. In fact, Hewlett Packard released its TouchPad with much fanfare but discontinued it because it was finding it difficult to get enough market penetration compared to the more established brands. Most tablet computers run on the Android 3.O Honeycomb, Google’s mobile operating system. Features of Tablet Computers 1. Touchscreen- The touchscreen for tablet computers are of two types- resistive and capacitive. Resistive touchscreens can respond to any kind of pressure on the screen. A stylus and fingernail can be used on the resistive touchscreen. However, with modern tablet computers relying increasingly on multi-touch, resistive touchscreens have found less support these days. Capacitive touchscreens do not have a high level of precision detection as resistive ones but they are more responsive. They respond to pressure from conductive material, which is why they respond to touch from finger tip and not the stylus or the fingernail. Capacitive touchscreens are being increasingly used in both smartphones as well as tablet computers that responds to multi-touch. 2. Storage drive- The big tablets make use of storage drives which are similar to laptops but the smaller ones use drives like mp3 players or have an board flash memory. You can also finds ports for removable storage like Secure Digital Cards. 3. Accelerometer- This is a unit which can identify the physical movement of the tablet, making it suitable for convenience and portability. The accelerometer functions to identify the direction of the tablet relative to the center of the earth. 4. Bluetooth- Since tablet PCs are computers on the move, WI-FI connectivity is an obvious thing. Bluetooth is used commonly for communicating with local devices compared to a wired USB connection. 5. 3D-The next leap for tablet PCs is the 3D technology. There are 3D slate tablets with dual lens, which come with blue-red glasses as accessories for enhanced viewing pleasure.
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