Over the last few days I’ve been playing with the idea of using a tablet as an alternative to a traditional laptop. Most of my use with a computer is for note taking and light programming, both of which require minimal computational resources. Although, granted I use a lot of virtualisation, which needs a beefier computer.

I’m thinking that if I were to have a server/desktop in addition to a thin and light machine, I would be able to do the majority of my work on the latter, while using the former for more complex tasks. I was looking at the traditional laptops for this, although I’m finding that many of them are rather expensive and attempt to suit most of the features I would require if it were my only computer. As such, I started looking at ARM based laptops, like the pinebook pro, which runs full Linux distros. The problem with this is that it is a fairly niche product with limited support, and only alright specs. Over the last few days, I started to look at tablets as an alternative.

Tablets have fairly decent designs, long battery life and decent power, suggesting that they could be capable for alternate computers. In addition, if they run android, it is possible to get a Linux user-space with apps like userLAnd and a VNC viewer. For me, this makes android tablets much more attractive than their iPad counterparts as they can be used offline, whereas most suggestions for using iPads like this suggest using them as remote terminals to servers. This is also possible with android. Being able to run Linux means I can run Emacs, which I use for my note taking and most of my programming. It is also possible to compile software in the Linux environment.

I’m currently looking at trying out the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6, with its keyboard attachment as it has a track pad, making it more laptop like. It seems like it’d be a pretty good option to try this whole concept out, as it has plenty of ram and a relatively new ARM processor. The main problem with it is the price, as all together its about $1200, where my laptop only cost $2000 and is significantly more powerful. Additionally due to the whole COVID thing, I don’t really have a use for a portable machine, as I’m not travelling a low at the moment. Maybe I’ll end up trying it out if it comes down in price or I find a good deal. Maybe I’ll also find a cheaper alternative instead.