The age of tablet computing has finally arrived. Capacitive touch screens have allowed manufacturers to ditch the concept of replacing a mouse. All the trappings of a solid computer can now be contained in a shell you can hold effortlessly with one hand. iOS and Android provide native touch-based operation for these devices. Life is good.

But wait a second here...this is all too easy. Wouldn't it be fun if we had some kind of difficult choice to make? Well, our wishes have come true: It seems some of the more laptop-friendly manufacturers have decided to drop the prices of their offerings (in some cases fairly substantially). And some of these laptops offer you things a tablet just can't: Gorgeous screens, a desktop operating system, and (perhaps most importantly) a keyboard. Now you have a choice to make. Let's break it down:

Tablets

It's hard to resist the allure of some of these tablets. There's no denying that watching movies on a screen in the palm of your hand is much better than staring at the wood paneling in your local DMV office. Here's where tablets really shine:

• A tablet's form factor just can't be beat. They're flat slabs of glass/plastic that you can slide into a bag or a pocket with minimal effort.
• You won't be waiting 45 seconds for it to start or resume from a cold boot/suspend. Just like your phone, tablets are usually ready to roll on a moment's notice.
• Most content you'll use on your tablet was designed for your tablet. Games (and other apps) fit your screen perfectly and can utilize things like cameras and accelerometers to change the way you interact with them entirely. After all, did Luke Skywalker man the cannons on the Millennium Falcon with a trackpad? (Well, maybe in the Director's Cut.)
• In most (but not all) cases, a tablet lasts longer on a charge than a laptop would. Tablets have a lot fewer things to juice up (typically including a smaller and/or lower-resolution screen).

Laptops

Tablets are great little devices and (at least right now) also sport that "cool" factor. But maybe you're not buying into the hype surrounding these little guys. Here's where laptops really push the envelope:

• First up, the most obvious: Laptops have a keyboard. If you need to work with any considerable amount of text, you need a keyboard. Even with all the neat ideas and advances in keyboard replacements, there really is just no substitute for the feel of keys under your fingers. (You *could* carry a keyboard around with your tablet, but that kind of defeats the point, doesn't it?)
• In most cases, a laptop's screen has much better resolution than a tablet's. Let's face it: The bigger the screen, the better your lightsaber battles are going to look.
• If you carry around any type of peripherals, chances are you won't find a place to plug them in on your tablet. You'll find SD card readers on some tablets and dongles available to fit the bill on some others, but to get full-blown peripheral support, you'll want a full-blown computer.
• If you're doing any kind of professional work, you'll probably need software that only runs on a desktop operating system. iOS and Android can both run some very impressive software, but sometimes you need the kind of applications that only Windows, Linux, and the Mac OS provide.
• Want to watch a DVD? One word: Laptop.

Conclusion

Okay, so now that we've been through the high points of each, which one do you choose? Well, there's no catch-all answer here. If you're a casual user that plans to carry around a device to play games, watch the occasional video, and do some general web surfing, a tablet is a great choice. Tablets also make great "Internet appliances" that sit on the coffee table ready to entertain you during a commercial break or facilitate your nightly Sudoku puzzle in bed. If you're someone that needs to type (say a journalist or a blogger) or someone that needs the facilities of a desktop operating system, you'll probably want to stick with laptops (at least until a better input method comes into play and more peripherals gain native support in iOS and Android). Of course maybe, just maybe, you need laptop power but love the idea of touch-based control. In that case, you may want to look into a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air (in fact, we did some legwork for you on the Air). Whatever your preference, we are fortunate to live in a world that offers us such amazing mobile computing options. Good luck out there!

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