Microsoft EVP Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog post last week that Windows powers over a billion active devices globally. This might sound like a healthy number, but according to ZDNET, the Microsoft annual report for 2022 said that more than 1.4 billion devices were running Windows 10 or 11. Given that these documents contain material information and have allegedly been pored over by the tech giant’s lawyers, we can safely assume that Windows’ user base has been quietly shrinking in the past three years, shedding around 400 million users.
It’s Linux for me but I also have to assume tablet culture plays a role too.
Are people really actively using tablets? I thought that was more of a hype and is now something that lies around and gets occasional use on the couch, but not really productive.
I’ve been using tablets since the first generation (Galaxy tab), and I must say that it kind of veered to that side after a while, since getting a convertible laptop. A few years back I got a Huawei tablet with a pen and keyboard, that had impressive battery, and it took the place of my convertible. While I’m a Linux-Android-occassional Windows guy, I now use an ipad (As much as I hate to admit, in the tablet space they are vastly superior), with keyboard and pen, for most of my away needs, and for general around the house stuff. I do a lot of graphic design and photo stuff, and thanks to Affinity’s suite, I can actually do real work on the thing.
As a student, yeah, I see lots of people using tablets for their work instead of laptops.
please tell me they have those little external keyboards which would make them basically a shitty laptop
Your average computer user is mainly using it for interacting with various web based services and playing media. Don’t need good input methods for that so tablets are a cheaper and easier to maintain alternative to a laptop.
I think it’s more to do with phones - people are just more likely to do most tasks on a phone rather than a laptop.
I bought a tablet and I feel like the money has been wasted. I use it maybe once a month.
Tablets are kind of in the middle of nowhere in terms of functionality at the moment, bigger and less practical than a phone, while being less capable than laptops. Its a shame, because on paper they look pretty great and they are insanely powerful nowadays
I just barely used my first one for the longest time, since I mostly played games or programmed on computers. Then I started to use it to read books and watch Netflix. I am on my 3rd one now and probably spend 60% of my computer time on it.