3 Things We No Longer Need Laptops For

For the past twenty years, laptops have turned out to be the number one computer of choice. It’s very rare to find someone who does not own a laptop these days. However, with the constant technological advancements being made, laptops could easily become less of a necessity by time, and that is due to it being replaced by other more convenient devices. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the appropriate choice for everybody, however, tablets in particular, might just take their place in the coming years.

Let’s have a look at the things that you no longer need a laptop for:

1. For Portability

In the year 2010, Steve Jobs had declared that the era of post-PC was right around the corner. He likened the situation with that of trucks. He said, “When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that’s what you needed on the farms.” But when cities began to rise, cars became popular along with things like power steering and automatic transmission, and this, he said, is going to be a similar situation with PCs. “PCs are going to be like trucks,” Jobs said. “They are still going to be around.” However, he said, only “one out of x people will need them.”

So what’s meant to replace PCs? According to Jobs, tablets like the iPad will soon replace PCs as thanks to advances in chips and software, everyone will be able to do tasks that they would otherwise only be able to do on a traditional computer such as video editing and graphic arts work. Not to mention that, these are often much cheaper the PCs and also designed to be more portable. In fact, they can perform a wide range of functions that you might require while you are traveling.

2. For Productivity

Although most people will tend to prefer using laptops to work or study, tablet devices are becoming increasingly popular amongst students and adults alike. This is due to a number of reasons. The first one being, that once again tablets are small and lightweight and therefore are incredibly easy to carry around with you. Secondly, nowadays you can get yourself a Bluetooth keyboard to pair up with your tablet for less than thirty dollars.

Moreover, you can use one of the many office products on your tablet, or you can also use Google products like Google Docs and Google Sheets. Whilst tablets will not completely replace laptops in this respect, for sometimes it gets difficult to work on tablets for long periods of time, or, in many cases, you would need to use particular software that cannot be downloaded on tabltes. However, for simple daily tasks, it is needless to say that tablets are more than suited and convenient.

3. For Entertainment

Watching TV series, streaming movies, and listening to music, can now all be done from a tablet and phone too! The former one is preferred of course due to the screen being bigger, but a lot of people actually do use their phones a lot whilst they are on a train or a plane to watch movies. Bottom line is, you no longer need a laptop to do all of this.

Entertainment can fit in your pocket or a small bag! Even Netflix is available on these small, portable devices. And we haven’t even gotten to the best part yet: you can tune into all the action of online gaming on both mobile and tablet. Whatever games you like, you can bet you will find it on the App Store or Play Store, or even be able to play the game online on your browser.

Bottom line

As you can see, nowadays it has become super easy to to replace your laptop with other devices. Mobiles and tablets already enjoy a large popularity due to being an instant access point to social media, but now tablets and phones can actually perform a lot of other things that only laptops could up to a few years ago. Again, this is not to say that laptops are irreplaceable, for some tasks require way more computing power than a tablet has to offer, and would be more appropriate to use in such situations, but, as Jobs put it, it might not remain a necessity for a number of people to have. At this point, we can only wait and see.

Tom Parillo

I am interested in all things technology, especially automation, robotics and tech that helps change how society will live in the future.