“…a tablet is, crucially, a more shareable computer. A laptop, with its fragile hinge-ware and space-gobbling keyboard, is just not comfy to share. A tablet is easier to bring to the café, easier to hand across the table or along the sofa, easier to seize in the heat of the moment, easier to hold up in triumph, easier to set aside when you need to meet someone’s eyes.
How big a market is that? Anyone who says they know is lying.”
-Google’s Tim Bray, co-creator of XML and now Android Developer Advocate, discussing the new Samsung Galaxy Tab, and tablet computers in general. The Galaxy Tab has a 7″ screen (almost 30% smaller than the iPad screen) and runs Android 2.2 (Froyo).
That was certainly our experience from the beginning with the iPad. Sarah Perez noted when her arrived that it was Easter weekend and took it to a holiday gathering. You can read about the eye-opening experience she had in her post iPad: The First Real Family Computer.
I just handed my visiting niece our iPad as soon as she woke up. Her four year-old sister greeted me on my last trip to her house with a shout of “Hi Uncle Marshall! Did you bring that iPad??”
