As you can probably guess, it refers to available bandwidth with the higher number meaning a faster connection is possible. Wikipedia explains what the number actually mean:

3G

3G allows simultaneous use of speech and data services and higher data rates (up to 14.0 Mbit/s on the downlink and 5.8 Mbit/s on the uplink with HSPA+)

4G

A 4G cellular system must have target peak data rates of up to approximately 100 Mbit/s for high mobility such as mobile access and up to approximately 1 Gbit/s for low mobility such as nomadic/local wireless access, according to the ITU requirements.

Note that just because a certain speed is possible, it does not mean you will always get that speed as many factors will influence the speed (signal strength, network congestion, etc.).

So now when you are bombarded with the never ending “our service is better than theirs” commercials, you at least know what the actual services they are advertising are capable of.

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What Is 3G/4G Service?

Before continuing, let me define tablet in the context of this article: I’m talking about a one-piece device with a screen of at least 14 inches in size, which is a complete computer, and no tactile keyboard (meaning virtual on-screen keys only). I am not referring to tablet-like notebooks with the swing-around screens because those do have tactile keyboards and are technically two-piece.

Here is me in my usual snarky self complaining that there is almost no good use for a tablet. I did manage to think up a few ways one could be used. More on that in a moment. First the video:

Now before you all hang me out to dry from what I said, here’s a few things to note.

I seriously question whether a one-piece tablet device has any real purpose.

Let’s compare the tablet to other types of computers.

Netbook

This is the second most portable computer there is. It sells well because it’s dirt cheap, achieves excellent battery life, you have several choices of OEM (Dell, HP, Acer, Lenovo, etc.) and it does exactly what it was designed to do without complaint. The netbook exploded in sales in 2009 and shows no signs of slowing down as of yet. It put back a much-needed boost into the computer industry to get people excited about computers again.

The most important thing about a netbook is that it is a usable computer. I use mine every day. Comfy keyboard, zippy operation for the most part, easy wi-fi, it works – and it’s paid for.

iPhone/Blackberry

This is the most portable computer there is. The iPhone is the darling of the cell phone industry at present showing that you can in fact do wonderful cool and useful (keyword there) things with a smartphone. The Blackberry has continued to make improvements over the years and has a very dedicated following. Both the iPhone and Blackberry are the ultimate in usable portable computing

Kindle

I mentioned this in the video above. Some people don’t like e-readers because they’d just rather buy a book instead – and that’s fine. But what makes the Kindle great is that like the netbook, it works exactly as advertised. You know exactly what you’re getting, what it will do and moreover what it won’t. The price point is still a little high for what it is, but the point is that it is usable and there are no surprises. And that’s a good thing.

Where does a tablet fit in to all this?

A tablet..

• ..is not a replacement for a netbook because it will be at least twice the price and only do half as much.
• ..is not a replacement for an iPhone or Blackberry because it won’t fit in your pocket, and it’s seriously unlikely it will make phone calls. But even if it did, would you really want to spend the cash on a separate post-paid plan for it? I’ll answer that for you – no, you wouldn’t.
• ..is not a replacement for a Kindle because once again, it will be twice the price for something you already have that does the job – and does it better.

The tablet is also not a replacement for a PC or standard-sized laptop either. It will be slower and the upgradeability of it will be slim to none.

Where does a tablet fit in?

Nowhere, that’s where. It replaces nothing, and adds nothing of value to your digital life whatsoever.

PCMech reader CHALLENGE!

Before getting to the challenge, here are a few uses for a tablet (some of which I mentioned in the above video):

• An interface for a home security/climate system.
• An interface for a home media entertainment center (and a really expensive one at that).
• A menu at a restaurant.
• A pad for use at hospitals so doctors and nurses can get quick access to pertinent patient information.

The challenge to you, the reader is this:

Can you tell me ANY practical use that would qualify having a one-piece style tablet in the home?

Remember, this is a one-piece slate that has at least a 14-inch screen on it.

I am very interested to hear your answers on this one. In addition, if you think I’m wrong (and that’s fine) on any of the points I made above, tell me why I’m wrong. I want somebody to prove to me that the tablet has a legitimate practical purpose other than what I mentioned above – which isn’t much.

One final note: Remember the PADDs they used on Star Trek: The Next Generation, like this?

For base of reference, a Kindle is only slightly smaller than the actual size of most PADDs.

Post a comment or two. Tell me a good practical use of a tablet. If you can’t think of one you can alternative say, "Screw the tablet, I want a PADD!" Yeah, me too.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

PCMech Reader Challenge! Find A Practical Use For A Tablet

To summarize, having your battery in a ‘constant’ charge state will reduce the life of the battery, so it is good to occasionally fully discharge it. I have been following this procedure with my cell phone battery and find that the battery lasts several years holding a good charge.

I recently switched to a laptop to replace both my home and work desktop computers and I typically run on battery power, only charging when needed. I know this reduces the performance of the machine, but very seldom do I need to utilize these resources, so I don’t really notice it.

Do you have any laptop battery care tips or tricks you use? If so, please share in the comments.

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Laptop Battery Care When Always Plugged In

GSM, the cell phone protocol we all know and love, has had one leg of the GSM encryption it uses (which uses a 64-bit algorithm by the way) cracked. However nobody really seems to care due to the fact that consecutive packets are transmitted on different frequencies. In plain English: The likelihood of anybody tracing the exact route of one of your calls even with the GSM-cracker knowledge is slim to none.

New Yorkers really, and I mean really, hate AT&T right now. Well, let’s see here. If you’re an iPhone user in New York, life sucks for you right now. Dropped calls, 3G overload, and so on, and so on. Maybe this is an instance where you can blame it on a population problem. After all, New York City is the most densely populated region in the United States to the tune of 8 million people. To put this in perspective, I live in the major city of Tampa, Florida, and it "only" has just shy of 341,000 people. But even if you added in the entire metro Tampa area, that’s still "only" 4 million people compared to New York City’s 8.

Population statistics aside, the problem with AT&T’s network isn’t population but rather bad future planning. Their network is overworked, overloaded and simply can’t accommodate the masses. New York City in particular is a mess because yes, they probably have more iPhone users than anywhere else. But remember, the problem isn’t just limited to NYC. San Francisco has had their fair share of AT&T complaints as well.

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Three Tales From Wireless Land

I do champion automotive GPS technology because they are always better than those cheesy foldout maps you find at rest stops and convenience stores.

However I’ve never denied the fact that a proper road atlas will always give you more useful information, and furthermore give you a much better idea of the road layout for wherever you’re traveling.

When it comes to proper road atlases, look no further than Rand McNally. While it’s true the Motor Carriers’ series is the best-of-breed (and most expensive) of the lot, most people would go for the  Deluxe Midsize road atlas (totally worth it because it’s spiral bound – no folding of maps required).

What do you get with a road atlas that you don’t with GPS?

Several things, actually.

Border crossing information

If crossing into Canada or Mexico, GPS doesn’t tell you a thing other than how to get to the border. The atlas will give you tips and pertinent information on what may be required of you when you reach a country border.

Simplified list of phone numbers/web sites for hotels and rental car chains

GPS only lists phone numbers for locations if you specifically look them up one by one. The atlas gives you a list right up front.

Mileage charts

GPS has no mileage charts to speak of other than as-you-program-it. The only time you’re made aware of how far you’re going to travel is when plotting individual routes. The atlas has over 5,000 of them that you can flip to in the book at any time.

The Rand McNally road atlas has been around for 86 years

GPS was introduced in 1975, but was not made available for consumer use until 2000. Consumer products (like Magellan, Garmin, TomTom) were not widely available until about the mid-2000s.

What this all means is that automotive GPS technology, while great, is still a very young tech and isn’t even close to having 10 years worth of true automotive in-the-field use. It is a technology that’s still going through its growing pains, so to speak.

The Rand McNally atlas has been around since the 1920s, so it’s a fair assumption to think McNally has the map thing down pretty good.

Should you use both?

Yes, I do recommend using both.

I personally believe automotive GPS should be in every car. Saves time, decreases stress significantly and gets you where you want to go.

I also believe everybody should have a proper road atlas. Whether you’re a road warrior or not, the information contained within those pages is valuable.

Where do you get one of these proper atlases?

You can order one from the McNally web site as linked above, at Amazon, or at any major bookstore such as Border’s or Barnes & Noble.

For the GPS haters out there..

I’ve encountered a few of you on occasion, and you all say the same thing:

"I tried GPS a few years ago – IT SUCKED. All I need is my atlas and I’m happy."

Most of you are truckers.

I have some tidbits of info you would be interested in.

Garmin now has a trucker-specific offering, the nuvi 465T. It has a preloaded NTTS breakdown directory and specialized routing options for big riggers. So you can’t say GPS is a "cars-only" thing anymore.

Automotive GPS now compared to even as little as two years ago is notably better in the way it routes. It is perfect? Obviously not. But it’s far superior compared to older offerings. My nuvi 255W is light years better than the old StreetPilot c340 I had years ago in every way.

And it goes without saying that if you’re in the US, go Garmin. (If UK, go TomTom.) Why? Because Garmin routes the best in US/Canada/Mexico. Does it have as many features compared to competitors? No. But it routes best and that’s what counts the most.

Remember, I never told you to throw out your atlas nor would I ever. But I am telling you that If you tried GPS before and the experience was bad, go Garmin this time around. The price point is much lower, the technology has improved significantly and you’ll truly get some good use out of it. It won’t be "that thing I paid $x for that sits on my dash and does nothing".

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GPS vs. Road Atlas

You will either think this is cool, or incredibly tacky.

The Onkyo DX has DUAL screens. And it is a laptop. It folds down much like a standard laptop (you can watch the little animation on the product page).Each screen is 10.1 inches and works at 1,366×768 resolution. So, it is kinda like a netbook with dual LCDs.

Under the hood, it has a 1.6 GHz Athlon, 2 GB RAM, and it comes preloaded with Windows 7.

Of course, you pay more for the stereo view. And you’ll have to have it imported from Japan.

But, hey, you’ll get stares in the coffee shop with this thing.

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Dual Screen Laptop – Onkyo DX

That said, if the games you like to play are not hardware intensive then using a netbook as a gaming machine might be an option. By design, the netbook is lightweight and small (albeit not as small as a dedicated portable gaming machine) with a respectable screen size. Additionally, the cost is very reasonable and many great games are available for free.

If I were to use a netbook as a gaming machine, I would load it up with Freeciv and a boatload of games from Abandonia. Of course, you can still use it for everything you can do on a ‘normal’ computer (i.e. Internet browsing) which is a big plus.

Again, I’m not a gamer but is something like this reasonable?

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Using A Netbook As A Mobile Gaming Machine

Thankfully we don’t have to deal with that anymore, right?

Wrong.

A smartphone’s browser interface more or less acts the same way our desktop PCs did in the late ’90s.

While it’s true that 3G connectivity – when it works – is faster than dialup was, you’re still stuck waiting for things to load. And when it does load, the browsers that smartphones have are watered down to the point where many "regular" web sites are simply unusable on a mobile device.

Developers are making continual improvements to make smartphones more usable, but the overall browsing experience hearkens back to a day when internet browsing was a chore at best.

Using the iPhone as an example, it only has a 480×320 screen resolution. That’s lower than VGA spec which is 640×480. Anybody who uses an iPhone or like mobile device knows full well that the browser has "creative" ways of getting around a resolution so low. And you have to use those creative ways (such as zoom and pan in/out) else you can’t browse with it regularly at all.

For you older ladies and gentlemen that think the kids today don’t know what it was like to browse the internet Web 1.0 style, they do because current browser technology and network speed on a smartphone is pretty darn close to the mark of what a browsing experience was like in the late 1990s.

How long will it take smartphones to graduate to a desktop PC’s level of web browsing?

Indeterminate. But there are three things that will kick-start mobile browsing forward exponentially.

The first is the network itself. 3G is just too darned slow. Better than EDGE, yes, but still slow. The next-gen network for whatever it will be called should fix that ill in short order.

The second is the hardware, namely the processor. Newer chips will be introduced within the next five years that run faster without adding any additional heat. (It’s always the heat that’s the big deal by the way.)

The third is the software, but that’s being attended to right now. All the major players have good solid OSes for their respective platforms. Better mobile browsers like Opera Mobile (which does do tabs very well by the way) means a better mobile browsing experience.

A problem all software developers for smartphones face is having to work around – meaning not with – the aforementioned points above. It seriously curtails development when your biggest roadblocks are the processing speed of a smartphone and the network in which it connects to. Shades of how software development used to be for PCs? Oh, yes. Even the programmers have to deal with Web 1.0 era style crapola.

I want to make clear that I’m not saying smartphones are unsuable. They obviously have their place in the modern tech world, and tons of people use them on a daily basis. However you have to admit, browsing on one is very reminiscent of the usability problems we had years ago.

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On Mobile, It’s Web 1.0 All Over Again

"Advanced Device" in plain English: Smartphone. If using a non-Smartphone, you don’t have to worry about this.

The exact verbiage from Verizon is this:

Beginning 11/15/09, customers purchasing an Advanced Device with a 1 or 2 year service agreement will be subject to an ETF of up to $350 if they disconnect service prior to the minimum term. The $350 ETF will decrease $10 for each month of service completed.

If you’re asking, "So what was the previous ETF?" The answer is $175 – which was already a snow job to begin with.

What’s the justification for the ETF increase? Answers vary. Some say it’s Verizon attempting to keep people from buying a high-end smartphone, immediately cancelling service then hocking the phone on eBay for a quick buck. Others believe it’s Verizon’s way of keeping you locked in, because with an ETF so high it costs too much to cancel.

Whatever the reason, the ETF increase just plain sucks.

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Verizon To Raise Wireless Cancellation Fees

This directly pits Google up against major GPS manufacturers like Garmin and TomTom. Here is what it’ll be able to do:

• Live traffic data
• Search by voice or text (in plain English)
• Satellite or Street View
• Turn-by-turn navigation

Here’s why I think this is an industry changer. GPS turn-by-turn has traditionally been something you have to pay for. Garmin and TomTom both sell their devices as well as the maps. Sure enough, it costs a bunch of money to make GPS maps. Now, Google is coming in and doing it for free.

Proof that this affects the GPS market lies in the stock market. Both Garmin and TomTom saw significant drops in stock price on the news.

That drop represents a BUNCH of money in market value – gone because Google came in and said they’d do it for free.

Both Garmin and TomTom have something to worry about here – big time. Google Maps Nav isn’t a crappy product. Google Maps is extremely robust. The satellite and street view is something no regular GPS can pull off.

The only saving grace for these companies, for now, is that Google Maps Navigation will only be on the Android platform. Suddenly, Android has a new shine to it. It is only a matter of time before we see it move onto other platforms, including the Iphone.

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Google Maps Navigation – The GPS Remade