What's the difference between tablets and laptops? I don't see any differences when it comes to the ability to dual boot. The ASUS Transformer line has been around for a while now, showing that the line between tablet and laptop is blurring. Also, Canonical/Ubuntu seems to be gunning for tablet market share in the future. Do you think they'll have their own hardware?
I don't see any reason to separate out tablets and laptops when talking about dual booting, OS concerns, etc. A tablet is just a laptop with a touch screen and optional rather than mandatory keyboard.
In some respects, laptops are the same as tablets. They serve a purpose, the hardware configuration is controlled by a single entity and they are relatively closed. Yet, you think they are different. The answer is that laptops have always been like they have, and tablets have generally always been in a closed state. There is nothing really 'unique' about a tablet that doesn't make it a general computing device, it just has a different input system.
Now personally I love general purpose hardware, because purposes change, and the software on the device should be able to change with it. I don't think a laptop would be viable for me unless I could change the software. You might bring up phones, but there is a reason for that. They used to be embedded systems, designed for a single purpose (and usable only for that purpose). These days they are general purpose devices that also make phone calls (even if this single purpose drives many design decisions).
I've also done crazy things like install an alternate firmware on my router, why, because it gave me more features. This is why I like general purpose devices, and my freedom to change their software to suit my the specific purposes I want. Tablets aren't fundamentally different from a computer, they just have a different skin.
> What's the difference between tablets and laptops?
Usage patterns. A laptop is just a mobile general purpose computer, to restrict it by restricting say it's OS, you have removed the general purpose nature of the device and this is a loss of functionality.
A tablet on the other hand is an appliance. It has more in common with your toaster, microwave, refrigerator or your DVD player. It is intended to basically do one thing and hopefully do it well. Just like no one really complains that you can't toast bread with a refrigerator, having a tablet sort of locked to one OS isn't exactly that strange of a proposal.
But what about the new line of hybrid devices that are showing up? If I add a touchscreen to a laptop and make the keyboard removable is it a tablet? If I add a keyboard to a tablet is it a laptop. The whole tablet is an appliance/laptop is a computer line or reasoning is flawed from the outset and the lines will only become more and more blurred with time.
Because I see tablets as a device that really needs software that's been design for it. It a package that I buy to have it work out of the box. Tablets aren't laptops without a keyboard, they are their own thing.
Laptops have a long tradition of multiple OSes giving a pretty good experience and being open to multiple OSes.
I don't see any reason to separate out tablets and laptops when talking about dual booting, OS concerns, etc. A tablet is just a laptop with a touch screen and optional rather than mandatory keyboard.