With the growing popularity of tablets, many people are finding more use for them than just being toys for gaming and multimedia consumption. With a couple of fine-tuning, you can turn a tablet into a productivity tool and make it feel like the laptop you use for everyday work.
Before everything else, pick the tablet that’s best suited for your work. There arguably isn’t a tablet yet that can be considered the “laptop killer,” but the ones already available in the market are – to some extent—capable for work. That said, it’s recommended that you pick one with at least a 10-inch display.
A bigger screen estate tends to boost productivity. Do you intend to run legacy applications? Then consider the Microsoft Surface or other slates running on Windows 8.
As for tablets running other mobile operating systems, you’re going to need equivalent apps for the programs you frequently use on your laptop. For instance, apps like Quickoffice and Kingsoft Office lets you open and edit Microsoft Office files, while Photoshop Express is a fine mobile alternative to its full-blown, desktop counterpart. If you can’t find a good substitute for your programs, you can always use your tablet to access your work laptop remotely.
Of course, if you want to do some real work on your tablet, you better pair it up with a keyboard and even a mouse. More data can be entered when you use a physical keyboard, which also frees up the part of the display that would have been consumed by the on-screen keyboard.
Despite the suggestions above, there are still compromises to be made when you work from a tablet. Limitations of its mobile OS, the relatively smaller screen, and other weaknesses will certainly affect your workflow. But once you adjust your work routine, your tablet may actually make your work much easier.
