best tablet for my wife

[bozza72]

Hi all ive talked my wife into going a bit more mobile with her work and she is thinking a about a surface 2 (pro). she would like to know if she will be able to use adobe captivate 7 & photoshop or is a tablet the wrong way to go ??
we know next to nothing about windows 8.1 or tablets although i do love my lumia 920.

any help, hints, links or advice would be great cheers

 

[dznk]

Yes, she'll be able to use those Adobe programs, but only if you got a tablet or device that runs Windows 8 (Windows 8.1 which it is now). Windows RT does not run any Desktop based programs like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Thunderbird, etc. If you got a Windows RT based tablet it would only run apps from the Windows Store, so as she wants Desktop based programs it will have to be the full Windows 8.1 that she would need.

Surface Pro 2 is a great top end device, I hope to get one myself at some point. Surface's are more than a tablet as they can have a touch or physical type cover attached, have the kickstand at the back and supports a digitizer pen. It really is a high end laptop crammed into a tablet format, so you have the power underneath to use it as your main machine.

There are quite a few tablets out there with Windows 8 on now which is good to see. If she is running the likes of Photoshop she would indeed be better with a higher spec'd one like the Surface Pro 2 which you mentioned or something like the Dell Venue 11 Pro which can come with Intel i3 and i5 processors. This also supports a digitizer pen if she wants to use one and a keyboard which you can attach to it (these are additional to the cost of the tablet).

There are also many different laptops that could fit the bill, with being fairly slim and powerful, but obviously she will always have the keyboard attached. If she wanted something really portable, the Surface Pro 2 is probably the best choice.

 

[thejoyofsobe]

if she wants to use Photoshop reliably she needs to stick with a Wacom stylus solution like the Surface Pro or its successor Surface Pro 2. I love my Sony Tap 11 but the N-trig stylus and Photoshop issues have yet to be resolved IIRC.

 

[bozza72]

thank for quick answers, il pass this info on & see what we come up with .
cheers

 

[anony_mouse]

It really is a high end laptop crammed into a tablet format, so you have the power underneath to use it as your main machine.

This is the critical point about the Surface Pro - for better or worse. Do you want a high end laptop with such a small screen? Is it really viable to use Photoshop, etc on it? Or would a laptop with a larger screen be more useful? Only you can answer that, of course.

 

[Doctor Pork]

The Surface Pro is actually not best seen as a laptop but as a really good modern Tablet PC. This is a completely different type of device that has been around for years and different tablet PC hybrids predated the iPad by years, they just never reached the mass market as they targeted quite small groups of productivity users and were much more expensive than the iPad. It can used as a tablet or a laptop replacement, but the whole point of these devices is that they combine both use cases in one device, and that you got an active digitizer for drawing or hand writing. If you want to use than in PhotoShop, it might very well be a better buy than a regular laptop as long as you can get by with the screen.

Microsoft Tablet PC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It is inherent in the form factor that there are some compromises compared to a laptop if you just use it as a laptop. Complaining about the small screen when used as a laptop is about as useful as complaining that a 15 inch laptop does not have the same screen real estate as a 27 inch desktop monitor, Well, if it had, it wouldn't be a laptop... The Surface Pro can pretty much run every single program made for Windows except for some games and other programs that actually use all the power, but the same is true for every laptop that is not a 17 inch gaming beast or workstation.

If you use a USB 3.0 dock or the docking station, you can just plug it in and use it as a desktop when needed by using an external monitor, keyboard and mouse for the cases when you need a larger screen. It is not like a 13 inch display is ideal either...

 

[anony_mouse]

It is inherent in the form factor that there are some compromises compared to a laptop if you just use it as a laptop. Complaining about the small screen when used as a laptop is about as useful as complaining that a 15 inch laptop does not have the same screen real estate as a 27 inch desktop monitor, Well, if it had, it wouldn't be a laptop... The Surface Pro can pretty much run every single program made for Windows except for some games and other programs that actually use all the power, but the same is true for every laptop that is not a 17 inch gaming beast or workstation.

I'm not complaining about the screen size of a tablet - it's smaller and lighter which is good. I am very happy with my tablet. But a 10.6 inch screen (as the Surface Pro 2 has) is much smaller than a 15 inch screen, or even a 13 inch screen. Put one in front of the other to see what I mean. Remember that the area of a screen increases by the square of screen diagonal length (for the same aspect ratio). An 13 inch screen has 50% greater area than a 10.6 inch screen. A 15 inch screen is double the area.
In my experience, something like Outlook is just about usable on a 13 inch screen, but a 9 inch screen is too small. But that's just my experience.

If you use a USB 3.0 dock or the docking station, you can just plug it in and use it as a desktop when needed by using an external monitor, keyboard and mouse for the cases when you need a larger screen. It is not like a 13 inch display is ideal either...

I can see the Surface Pro replacing a desktop and a tablet if you use a docking station. Ironically, for me it doesn't replace the laptop, which has a screen that's usable (if not ideal) for work and is portable enough to carry.
But as I said, the OP must decide this for themselves. I'd recommend trying a Surface in a shop first, preferably running the software she will use.