With Amazon about to release the new Kindle, this has left a lot of small business owners wondering if it may not be the right time to pick up a tablet. And in many cases, a tablet PC can be good for owners. Under what circumstances is a tablet right for you? Well, that depends largely on personal factors, but we can give you three good scenarios right here.
1. You need information right now.
If you find yourself in a situation where you need information quickly, and you need very specific information quickly, a tablet PC’s touch screen controls can help you find information rapidly and without a lot of delay. Finding information in a desktop PC, or even a laptop, requires you to boot it up, go through the various processes of startup, then go into the specific folders and rummaging around or trying to activate the search menu. A tablet greatly streamlines things by putting much of your information either on your network or directly on your desktop.
2. You need information where you are.
If you’re the kind of person who spends a lot of time away from your desk–here I think immediately of people involved in real estate sales or managing assembly plants–but you still need information like schedules or costs or even where somebody is at the time, then a tablet PC is going to go a long way toward giving you the information you need, where ever it is you actually happen to be at the time. You’ll have access to your email, to the internet at large, to the company intranet, most any information source out there you need, you’ll have it. Whether you’re making a presentation to clients or trying to get your suppliers in line, you’ll find you’re seldom at a loss for words with a tablet PC handy.
3. You don’t need much more than information.
The one great failing of a tablet PC, compared to a laptop or a desktop PC, is one of power. Even the iPad 2, pretty much regarded as one of the all-time greats in tablet computing, can’t stand up to the sheer processing power of a laptop from three, four, maybe even five years ago. If you’re doing a lot of programming, or simulations, or anything else that requires a lot of processing muscle, every tablet you’ll come across will be sorely underpowered for the task.
If you fall into any of those three categories, then you may want to check into a tablet. Sure, you may not need something like the iPad 2–and considering that Amazon’s tablet is looking to retail under $300, most small businesses will find this fits into the bottom line with relative ease.