What is a Tablet

What's a Tablet PC?

 

In the Ancient Near East, clay tablets (Akkadian ṭuppu(m) 𒁾)[1] were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age.

Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a stylus often made of reed (reed pen). Once written upon, many tablets were dried in the sun or air, remaining fragile. Later, these unfired clay tablets could be soaked in water and recycled into new clean tablets. Other tablets, once written, were fired in kilns (or inadvertently, when buildings were burnt down by accident or during conflict) making them hard and durable. Collections of these clay documents made up the very first archives. They were at the root of first libraries. Tens of thousands of written tablets, including many fragments, have been found in the Middle East.

 Following their earlier tablet-computer products such as the Pencept PenPad^[27][28] and the CIC Handwriter,^[29] in September 1989, GRiD Systems release the first commercially available tablet-type portable computer, the GRiDPad.^[30] All three products were based on extended versions of the MS-DOS operating system

.In 1991, AT&T released their first EO Personal Communicator, this was one of the first commercially available tablets and ran the GO Corporation's PenPoint OS on AT&T's own hardware, including their own AT&T Hobbit CPU.

Today Tablet PCs are compact, ultra-portable entertainment devices that let you read email, surf the Internet, read eBooks, view photos, play games, listen to music and watch video files. Most tablets are based on a smaller operating system, which allows you to purchase and download additional applications from supported stores. Tablet PCs do not have a CD/DVD drive and will not run Microsoft Windows or its applications. Tablet PCs function as a secondary device for casual entertainment purposes, and are not meant to replace a computer. They are ideal for use around the home and on the go with Wi-Fi or 3-4G mobile broadband connections (pay as you go, contract may be required for service). 

 Tablets are comfortable when grasping it in one hand -- an easy task for small and large hands. Though some are slightly heavier than comparable tablets, it's not tiring to hold for long periods of time. Its design is sleek,

 The Google Nexus 9 succeeds in checking the necessary boxes to be one of the best tablets of 2014 A tablets to check out.

  Tablets may include physical buttons (for example: to control basic features such as speaker volume and power) and ports (for network communications and to charge the battery). They usually feature on-screen, pop-up virtual keyboards for typing. Tablets are typically larger than smart phones or personal digital assistants at 7 inches (18 cm) or larger, measured diagonally.[1][2][3][4] One can classify tablets into several categories according to the presence and physical appearance of keyboards. Slates and booklets do not have a physical keyboard and typically feature text input performed through the use of a virtual keyboard projected on a touchscreen-enabled display. Hybrids and convertibles do have physical keyboards, although these devices typically also make virtual keyboards available.

 

 

 

 

Tablets, like conventional PCs, run multiple operating systems (though dual-booting on tablets is relatively rare). These operating systems come in two classes, desktop-based and mobile-based ("phone-like") OS

 

Here a list of OS that a  singal tablet you buy migth come with one of these operating systems

 

Android is a Linux-based operating system that Google offers as open source under the Apache license. It is designed primarily for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Android supports low-cost ARM systems

 

The iPad runs iOS, which was created for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Although built on the same underlying Unix implementation as MacOS, its user interface is radically different. iOS is designed for fingers and has none of the features that required a stylus on earlier tablets

 

In October 2012, Microsoft released Windows 8, which features significant changes to various aspects of the operating system's user interface and platform which are designed for touch-based devices such as tablets. The operating system also introduced an application store and a new style of application optimized primarily for use on tablets

 

Firefox OS is an open-source operating system based on Linux and the Firefox web browser, targeting low-end smartphones, tablet computers and smart TV devices

 

Nokia entered the tablet space in May 2005 with the Nokia 770 running Maemo, a Debian-based Linux distribution custom-made for their Internet tablet line

 

WeTab OS adds runtimes for Android and Adobe AIR and provides a proprietary user interface optimized for the WeTab device. On September 27, 2011 the Linux Foundation announced that MeeGo would be replaced in 2012 by Tizen.^[

 

Blackberry OS

The OS is based on the QNX system that Research in Motion acquired in early 2010.

 

Tablet use by businesses has jumped in the 2010s, as business have started to use them for conferences, events and trade shows.^[147] In 2012, Intel reported that their tablet program improved productivity for about 19,000 of their employees by an average of 57 minutes a day.^[148] In the US and Canada, it is estimated that 60% of online consumers will own a tablet by 2017 and in Europe, 42% of online consumers will own one.^[149]
As of the beginning of 2013, 29% of US online consumers own tablet computers, a significant jump from 5% in 2011.^[150] As of the beginning of 2014, 44% of US online consumers own tablets.^[151] Tablet use has also become increasingly common amongst children. A 2014 survey found that touch screens were the most frequently used object for play amongst American children under the age of 12. Touch screen devices were used more often in play than game consoles, board games, puzzles, play vehicles, blocks and dolls/action figures. Despite this, the majority of parents said that a touch screen device was "never" or only "sometimes" a toy.^[152] As of 2014, nearly two-thirds of American 2-to 10-year-olds have access to a tablet or e-reader.^[153] The large use of tablets by adults is as a personal internet-connected TV