The evolving tablet, not as lame as you think
Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 11:54 am
I hear it a lot, too damned much in fact, 'you need a PC to run real wargames'.
It's both a foolish assertion and one made by someone that doesn't know much about hardware and software as well.
The first big splash was the iPad. Much larger screen than before, and yes it was ghastly expensive to even the well off.
That is now so utterly yesterday. The iPad no longer owns the market, and regardless of how many Apple fans have bought iPads and how many iPads have sold, the truth is there are a LOT of non Apple tablets out there. Oh I know this. I had to freeze my ass off last December just so I could know I would even have the chance to pay a lot of money for a non Apple tablet. Waited in line for 2 hours crack of dawn so I could get 1 of 3 only items. Yep that had 3 and they sold in 5 minutes to people that had tickets. I got a refurb and demanded it be replaced with a factory sealed item. Not happening, as chain wide they didn't last the morning. I offer to pay the difference and get the same price reduction on the next model up. It too was gone very soon.
I really like my tablet, and the thing is, it has already undergone one model upgrade which will be usurped by 2 other models before the year is up.
Yep, Apple has a lot of competition for this product.
So saying they have no use to you, that they are a fad, that they won't last, that they can't really do anything. Keep telling yourself that if you wish, just don't expect the marketplace to care about your opinion.
I have a PC, it works fine. My laptop is now more powerful than my desktop, as tech does not stand still. My tablet is not as powerful yes, but, I don't expect that to last long. Soon my laptop will be old and in the dust. And as the computer world uses months, not years to drive things into obsolete status, you can bank on tablets to be serving up dust to your PC.
Yes a tablet has screen size limits. Screen size only means so much though.
Yes I can't realistically play War in the East on a tablet. But WitE is not representative of all of wargaming.
I personally think more highly of Battle Academy than I do WitE. I think BA has done more to save wargaming than WitE (assuming wargaming ever needed saving from more than grogs that think only WitE is a real wargame).
Real wargamers also known it was SQUAD LEADER that made ASL a name of great renown, not the other way around. And to listen to a lot of computer wargamers, you'd think they would refer to Squad Leader as a 'lite game'. Utterly ludicruous of course. And I bet you could run Squad Leader on a tablet if they made it into a program. I wouldn't even be surprised if VASL would be a problem now that I think of it.
So I personally am pumped about every indication that our wargame software sources here at Slitherine are increasingly developing to take advantage of tablets, because tablets are growing by leaps and bounds. And all you get with a PC is a large monitor, which frankly isn't going to be enough real soon. Not when my tablet and my TV and my laptop are increasingly getting used to talking to each other.
You PC sticks in the mud can just keep your puny 23 inch wide screen monitors eh.
It's both a foolish assertion and one made by someone that doesn't know much about hardware and software as well.
The first big splash was the iPad. Much larger screen than before, and yes it was ghastly expensive to even the well off.
That is now so utterly yesterday. The iPad no longer owns the market, and regardless of how many Apple fans have bought iPads and how many iPads have sold, the truth is there are a LOT of non Apple tablets out there. Oh I know this. I had to freeze my ass off last December just so I could know I would even have the chance to pay a lot of money for a non Apple tablet. Waited in line for 2 hours crack of dawn so I could get 1 of 3 only items. Yep that had 3 and they sold in 5 minutes to people that had tickets. I got a refurb and demanded it be replaced with a factory sealed item. Not happening, as chain wide they didn't last the morning. I offer to pay the difference and get the same price reduction on the next model up. It too was gone very soon.
I really like my tablet, and the thing is, it has already undergone one model upgrade which will be usurped by 2 other models before the year is up.
Yep, Apple has a lot of competition for this product.
So saying they have no use to you, that they are a fad, that they won't last, that they can't really do anything. Keep telling yourself that if you wish, just don't expect the marketplace to care about your opinion.
I have a PC, it works fine. My laptop is now more powerful than my desktop, as tech does not stand still. My tablet is not as powerful yes, but, I don't expect that to last long. Soon my laptop will be old and in the dust. And as the computer world uses months, not years to drive things into obsolete status, you can bank on tablets to be serving up dust to your PC.
Yes a tablet has screen size limits. Screen size only means so much though.
Yes I can't realistically play War in the East on a tablet. But WitE is not representative of all of wargaming.
I personally think more highly of Battle Academy than I do WitE. I think BA has done more to save wargaming than WitE (assuming wargaming ever needed saving from more than grogs that think only WitE is a real wargame).
Real wargamers also known it was SQUAD LEADER that made ASL a name of great renown, not the other way around. And to listen to a lot of computer wargamers, you'd think they would refer to Squad Leader as a 'lite game'. Utterly ludicruous of course. And I bet you could run Squad Leader on a tablet if they made it into a program. I wouldn't even be surprised if VASL would be a problem now that I think of it.
So I personally am pumped about every indication that our wargame software sources here at Slitherine are increasingly developing to take advantage of tablets, because tablets are growing by leaps and bounds. And all you get with a PC is a large monitor, which frankly isn't going to be enough real soon. Not when my tablet and my TV and my laptop are increasingly getting used to talking to each other.
You PC sticks in the mud can just keep your puny 23 inch wide screen monitors eh.
