The Pros and Cons of Using Tablets in the Workplace

Using tablet computers has many advantages if you are using them at home and personally as they have such an intuitive interface and pleasant design that means you don't need to load anything up or squint at a dark screen.
At the same time tablet computers also don't have half the problems that a PC does meaning you can save yourself a lot of hassle if you aren't a tech whiz yourself. And this would conceivably be a huge boon in the work place – meaning you can reduce your IT support bill and meaning that you can spend less time with no one being able to work because the computer says no...
But does a tablet computer lend itself to a workplace environment? Or are there any good reasons not to use them and to stick with a PC? Here we will look at the pros and cons of each answer.

Pros

On the plus side, using a tablet computer as we have already seen means that there's a lot less to go wrong and means that you will find that all your members of staff are easily able to pick it up and get stuck in without any real obstacles preventing them from doing what they need to.
At the same time this ease of use and understanding also applies to when you want others to use your tablets such as clients. Often you will want to show a client an example of a design, or an expenses sheet, or a website, or something else that relates to your dealing with them and in any of these situations being able to pass them a tablet which they can easily hold in one hand and understand is far preferable to a laptop.
Then there's the matter of cost, and actually a tablet is much cheaper in many cases than an equivalent PC – and there are plenty of Android tablets on the market for only a couple of hundred dollars. They're easier to transport too and get less hot, so they're ideal for working on the train.

Cons

There are also numerous downsides to using tablets in your workplace though which also need to be taken into consideration (there's a pun there actually), such as the fact that they aren't as useful for advanced productivity – word processing for instance is hard work using the touch screen keyboard which takes up half of what you're looking at and has little haptic feedback.
You can get around this shortcoming of course by using a physical Bluetooth keyboard, but even then it's still fiddly doing things like spread sheets when your big fingers keep selecting multiple cells. There's also the slight problem that a tablet is unlikely to have very good compatibility and you will find that there are all kinds of software packages that just don't exist on there. There is not really any very good Word Processing software on a tablet for instance with things like Documents to Go lacking a spell check and Quick Office Pro lacking a word count. Then there's the difficulty with writing from a source such as the web without having to continually flick between things. Panel Writer is possibly the best option (which addresses this issue), but this lacks support for tables and for images etc. so still falls short of the mark.
In short then tablets don't quite hit the mark as full PC/laptop replacements, but are very useful for taking on the road and for interacting with clients. As such the best scenario is really to have both where possible. But if that's not an option? Then practically it still has to be a laptop that you choose or a desktop PC.

Author Bio:
Matt M is a technology blogger who loves to write various articles on topics like outsourcing your IT support, latest gadget reviews and trends in IT world.