E Readers Vs. Tablets, What is the Difference; Do I Need Either, and Why Shouldn't I Purchase a Netbook?

I'm sure by now most of you have heard of tablets. But what are e Readers, and what should I spend my hard earned money on? Well there are some differences you need to be aware of. eReaders and tablets use the same underlying technology. One of the primary differentiators for eReaders, is the use of Black and White displays using a technology called E Ink. This was developed in 1997 by the company of the same name. This technology is used in the Barnes and Noble Nook, and the Amazon Kindle.

When e Readers first came out, people used them for their intended purpose, and color technology was not necessary. Early readers used Linux, had a resolution of only 600 by 800, and an incredibly small amount of RAM. In fact, the first Sony Reader only came with 64 MB of RAM, and 2 GB of accessible RAM.

To simplify the process for consumers, the actual amount of physical RAM was under the fine print. Readers were generally sold by the amount of accessible RAM they had, which is a lot different. This is similar to the way in which digital cameras are sold. Consumers are led to believe that the amount of accessible RAM is more important than the amount of physical RAM.

This is indeed the case if your only consideration is to use the device for its intended use.

However, if you wanted to use the first generation Sony Reader to watch videos, frequent social networking sites, or even use the latest version of Yahoo! Mail, you are going to run into some problems. Just how much memory is 64 MB of RAM? Have you ever seen a device running 64 MB of RAM? How old are you?

Personal Computers have not had as little as 64 MB of RAM in over 10 years. Think, the last Pentium computer you had, like the original Pentium processor. Think Windows 98, or even Windows ME. That is how old this technology is. Again, for its intended purpose, 64 MB of RAM is plenty.

Have things changed much since the Sony Reader came out back in 2006?

Not much; I just purchased a color Pandigital "tablet" for $79. This is not a true tablet, it is an e Reader, and it is not that great of an e Reader either. It has 128 MB of RAM; now they advertise that you access 32 GB of RAM, but you need to purchase a 32 GB SD Card, and those aren't cheap. You can find those for $40 online.

Keep in mind that this is the equivalent of having a 32 GB hard drive on a personal computer. It isn't the type of memory that is actually going to come in handy if your computer crashes. It is enough memory to store audio and video, but not enough memory to actually experience audio and video properly.

I hacked into the device, removed the old version of Android it was running and put on Android 2.6, which is about as far as you want to go with this hardware. At the end of the day I am still running with 128 MB of RAM, which is like running with a open pair of scissors. It simply is not enough of memory to adequately play back video.

I have that same 600 x 800 display that was popular with e Readers 7 years ago, so no high definition here. I could play back a 720p video, but I do not have enough on board RAM to execute one.

So again, as in most of computing, the numbers matter. Tablets typically have more accessible RAM than e Readers, because they do more. Contrary to popular belief, tablets are not new devices; e Readers are. e Readers are a proprietary use for tablet computing. Both Microsoft and Apple had tablets in the earlier part of the last decade.

The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is a good example of what Tablets were like when they only had 64 MB of RAM. Apple unveiled the iPod Touch in 2007, an interesting hybrid of an MP3 player, and tablet computing. It only had 256 MB of internal RAM, when the iPad finally came out in 2010, the device still had 256 MB of RAM, but it was enough of a differentiation from the e Readers of its time that it created a buzz in the tech community. The iPad 2 has 512 MB of RAM.

Consumers should know that the 64 GB of storage, that is touted when considering the iPad, is not the same as having 64 GB of RAM. The iPad still has 512 MB of RAM. If you want a lot of RAM in a tablet, you may want to look at what the competition is offering. The Samsung Galaxy and Motorola Xoom both come with 1 GB of RAM.

A cost by cost comparison of a tablet with a netbook is almost always going to see the netbook ahead, every time. Netbooks and notebooks do not need the expensive touch screen technology. Cheaper tablets use plastic, your more expensive variety use glass. Higher end tablets come with faster processors, as well as more memory, and typically offer more memory for storage without the additional cost of purchasing an SD card.

Tablets are not necessarily any cheaper than computers. If you know what you are doing, you can purchase a used computer from a thrift store running Windows XP with the same amount of RAM than a comparatively priced tablet is running. The thrift store may even thrown in the monitor for you, and you can walk out of there with a complete system for $100. If there is no monitor, the technology behind LCD monitors is so old, you can get a flat screen for $35. You end up having a system with a larger display than what a tablet provides, with a real keyboard, and you can do some real computing with that system.

On the other hand, tablets running as little as 128 MB of RAM are still the norm. So you may end up paying several hundred dollars for a system with at least 1 GB of RAM. If you do not know what you are doing you end up paying $500 or more for the latest iPad, and only end up with 512 MB of RAM (but your accessible RAM is built into the device and you do not have to purchase an additional SD Card, then again, for $500 who really cares).

Tablets are nice devices if you want to watch videos, play music, check your email, or visit websites. You can download apps to do specific tasks, but there isn't a large enough screen to do any real work. So they are not very productive devices, regardless of their specifications, unless you can hook them up a larger screen, or a real keyboard. If all you want to do is watch YouTube, get a cheap e Reader, hack it, root it, turn it into a tablet and watch standard definition videos for less than $100, on Wi-Fi. Do not waste your money connecting a tablet to a 3G or 4G plan just to be entertained; you end paying several hundred dollars for a toy.

If you have a smartphone, you do not necessarily need a tablet. Smartphones and tablets do the exact same thing. Tablets are just larger, with more memory, and more resources, than smartphones. Netbooks are still the cheapest value in this day and age; they are fast enough to do basic tasks but powerful enough to get some actual work done, even if you do have to close all of your other applications to get them to run smoothly.