Remember when nobody at your house could make a phone call at night because someone wanted to get on the Internet? Once on, you’d click a web page and wait 30, 60, or 90 seconds for a page to load. And that page was 90% text? Finally, you got DSL. At least you could be online and the phone. Then the Internet decided to become more graphic and video intensive.

For years we have been hearing about how awesome video conferencing will be. It exists, but it’s not that great. Connections drop, web traffic slows things down, and the list goes on. Even though some companies offer 50MBPS, the average U.S home Internet user is clocking in about 6.7Mbps. For as much as we live online today, that isn’t all that fast. Continue Reading…

2012 saw digital books outsell print books for the first time. A dominant reason for this are tablets such as the Kindle, Android, and iPad. Sales of laptops have declined in the last 18 months and were dismal during the holiday season. Windows notebook sales dropped 11% while Macbook sales were down 6%.

Photo by p_a_h on Flickr

As tablets become more popular, many are leaving behind the laptop or Netbook in favor of the smaller and lighter tablet. My 17″ laptop weighs about 12 pounds. It doesn’t travel with me anymore. I take my iPad and Bluetooth keyboard. I still need use my laptop for photo editing (non-Instagram stuff at least), but almost everything else can be done on my iPad.

Many business users are traveling without their computers, opting for iPads as well. I like being able to leave my iPad in my bag going through airport security. This is not an option with a laptop (thanks a lot, Bin Laden). Apps are now available that include 48-track recording studios, full video editing, and even AutoCad software for engineers and architects. Those are some LARGE files.

Apple has noticed. On Wednesday they announced the upcoming release of the iPad Retina with 128GB of memory, doubling the largest memory option currently available. That kind of storage rivals the 13″ Macbook Air. Nom-business users will now have twice the storage for music and HD movies.

While I don’t see tablets ever killing off the laptop, this is the kind of thing that will certainly bring the sales of tablets closer to that of laptops. Mobile computing is rapidly changing.

Do you use your laptop or tablet more? Would you use a 128GB on an iPad?

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