What should I do with a tablet?
January 1, 2018 10:25 AM   Subscribe

And no, it's not a tablet of chocolate, because that would be easy!

My mom was overly generous and gave me a Samsung Galaxy Tab E for Christmas! Wow, lucky me! I'm not sure what to do with it though.

I already have a cellphone from 2014, a really old ACER laptop that still works good, and a TV that is not connected to anything. For music, I have a boom box that I got in the year 2000 that I use to play CDs and listen to CBC Radio (now there's a quality piece of technology! Planned obsolescence be damned!) Note: I'm 29. I don't play video games but I do enjoy word games like Scrabble, Boggle, the NYT crossword and other logic games like Ken Ken and Sudoku.

So given that I'm not a gadget lover, what can I do with this Tablet that I can't already do with the technology I have?
If I'm a bit skeptical it's because I just tried to type out this question on the tablet and before I had the chance to press "Post", it inexplicably deleted everything I had written :|

Things I might like to do:

--Use it for singing from sheet music during choir practices (is there an app for that?)
but I would need to annotate the music at the same time so maybe paper is better?

-- READING!!!!! I am super excited that I might be able to read interesting long articles on the internet or start reading books on there. I'm sure there are a multiplicity of options out there but any recommendations for where I can get free E-books or subscribe to long form articles?

--Cooking?? Can I get an app where I can search for recipes??

--Radio/Music?? I normally listen to live CBC radio or use their CBC Music app to listen to music streams as I don't have much of a digital music library anymore as my Ipod died a terrible death several years ago.

Those are the only things I can think of at the moment, but are there other earth shattering options that I haven't even thought of? or is this just a flat slippery laptop like I suspected?
posted by winterportage to Technology (16 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
If you knit, a tablet is great for displaying patterns; similarly, they are handy for viewing instructions for any craft you might want more table space than a laptop will give you. Some games made for mobile devices are more fun and easier to see on a tablet.
posted by glitter at 10:37 AM on January 1, 2018


Does your TV have an HDMI connection? Is your wifi good enough for streaming? If so, you can connect a Chromecast to your TV and stream stuff to it, like music and You Tube videos, using your tablet. I bought one so we could watch Game of Thrones on TV and it's been weirdly useful. You can also stream other services like Spotify, Comedy Central, and so on, to your TV with it.

I don't have any recipe apps installed but I do use my tablet a lot for cooking, mostly just websites.
posted by fiercekitten at 10:58 AM on January 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


--Use it for singing from sheet music during choir practices (is there an app for that?)

I know people who do this though I don't know what software they use (online searches bring up several options).

Longform may be of interest to you.
posted by bunderful at 11:07 AM on January 1, 2018


Once you figure out how to download apps (Google Play store?), download Overdrive for libraries (that link will take you to a page to search for a library near you). So long as you have a library card, you'll be able to borrow and download books, both text and audio, for reading on the tablet. When I signed up, I had to visit a physical library location, but I haven't had to go to the library since then. It's awfully nice to be able to browse the library and borrow a book while snug in my bed at 2am.
posted by LOLAttorney2009 at 11:08 AM on January 1, 2018 [12 favorites]


For recipes (and wasting a lot of time in general) you need the Pinterest app.
posted by sarajane at 11:08 AM on January 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


From the app space, think of it as your Android phone that has a bigger screen.

In the laptopy/computery space, think of it as a far more portable, faster on machine that is way easier to travel with than a traditional laptop. Also, if you are going to read in bed, putting a table screen down on your nightstand feels totally normal whereas I probably wouldn't put a laptop on my nightstand as I slept.
posted by mmascolino at 11:11 AM on January 1, 2018


Paprika is a great app for managing recipes. You can save the ones you find online, upload your own, convert measurements, change quantities of measurements based on the number of servings you want to make, all kinds of stuff.
posted by Autumnheart at 11:12 AM on January 1, 2018 [4 favorites]


I like propping my tablet open with a recipe. I find there are so many good recipe sites that I just type in what I want to cook and scroll to the first thing that takes my fancy. BBC have a lot of good recipes but there are plenty of others.
posted by biffa at 11:16 AM on January 1, 2018


The main things I use my wifi only tablet for are:

1. Reading. I have books on there, and I have Pocket on all my browsers, and I save longform articles on that, which downloads them to the app on my tablet, so they're available even when I'm offline.

2. Puzzle games. I strongly recommend Simon Tatham's Puzzle Games, which is an old school been around forever suite of logic games and things. It's small, it doesn't require internet access or other special permissions, and on the larger tablet screen, you can play the more complex versions of games than you can really manage on a phone screen. (I just checked, and apparently there are 38 games included.)

3. Podcasts. I sometimes like to listen to podcasts in bed when I can't sleep, but I don't want my phone on my nightstand, so I use the tablet for that.

Recipes are good, too, as long as you fiddle with the timeout (otherwise, it'll turn off while you're reading it and you have to wake it with your gross messy hands). I also have a personal wiki that I keep all my basic reference material on, including full contact information I don't keep on my phone, user manuals for stuff I check user manuals for, personal recipes and formulas, and things like that.
posted by ernielundquist at 11:17 AM on January 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


In my experience, it's mostly a flat slippery laptop in function but the portability aspect is significant. Even in today's day and age of impossibly thin and light laptops, tablets are much less awkward to use on public transportation, to read a book in a park, to catch up on that longform article in a doctor's waiting room, etc. Apps are a thing and it's worth downloading those you might use, but for me they mostly don't do anything you can't accomplish with a computer web browser/microsoft office.

Do you have amazon prime? There is a collection of ebooks available free to amazon members that cycle every month. Netflix? You can download shows and movies for future offline viewing (for a limited time), which to my knowledge you can't do on a computer. I'm not sure about subscribing to longform articles (though I echo longform.org as a great source to monitor!) but the included Samsung browser has an option to save pages to read later. There are also plenty of music/radio options available to you (that you could also access via the computer or phone) - I still like pandora for music, and again if you have amazon prime you have access to quite a bit of streaming music. Can't speak to spotify myself, but that's probably the most popular music service at the moment. I love listening to podcasts using apps (Overcast is a good free option), but that's probably more convenient on a smartphone.

In conclusion, it's less about what you can do with the tablet that you can't do with the technology you already have, but the things that were too inconvenient/inaccessible/unknown that are now easy and useful enough to be part of your life.
posted by exutima at 11:23 AM on January 1, 2018


Here's what I do with my tablet:

1. Set it up at the kitchen sink or on the dining room table so I can watch something while washing dishes or folding laundry, respectively. Also occasionally Youtube videos.

2. Play Scrabble (the real one that you have to pay a few dollars for); mostly against the computer but sometimes against a friend.

3. Display recipes in Evernote while cooking.

4. Read blogs that get collected by my RSS reader, Newsblur. Read the app versions of the newspapers to which we subscribe. (I do these more on my phone while commuting, though.)

5. Once in a blue moon, video chat with someone over Facetime, Skype, or Google Hangouts. Seems a little easier with a bigger screen than a phone's.

6. When I didn't have a laptop but wanted to work at a coffee shop now and then, I used a Bluetooth keyboard to draft text in the body of an email to myself, which I later pasted into Word. There are tablet apps for the Microsoft Office suite but for what I needed, it wasn't worth downloading them.

I received a subscription to Texture just recently and expect I'll read that on my tablet, but haven't really tested it out yet.

Did you know you can subscribe to lots of CBC shows via a podcast app? This could be on your phone or tablet.

Overdrive may not be the only e-book library to which your local library gives you access. Try looking up e-books in the actual library's catalog and see which providers show up.
posted by lakeroon at 11:48 AM on January 1, 2018


Seconding Overdrive Library App, and adding Hoopla, another library-affiliated platform.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:49 AM on January 1, 2018


Forgot there also may be a magazine-borrowing platform associated with your local library, a la Flipster.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:54 AM on January 1, 2018


For the music reading thing: I sometimes conduct using scanned scores in ForScore on my iPad. It’s great to not have all kinds of papers to deal with. Friends not in the Apple ecosystem tell me that Mobilesheets is the app they use and they seem to like it fine. I much prefer using a stylus for markups.
posted by charmedimsure at 1:31 PM on January 1, 2018


Check with your library; my library has multiple ebook lending systems, with different selections on each, including comic books and audiobooks.
posted by Pronoiac at 2:20 PM on January 1, 2018


Not mentioned so far - one of the main things I do with my tablet is select the best photos that I took on my phone that day and crop / apply filters to them as necessary. The large tablet screen makes every step of that far easier than with a phone screen.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 2:34 PM on January 1, 2018


« Older What is the best pet fountain?   |   What to put into an employment contract? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.