Everybody buys the tape player, because everyone can play tapes. Musicians (and musician wannabes) buy the instrument.

Now, how about those turn-tables?

Only one device does everything inside and outside during the day. Everything else is unusable at some point.

I am not after Ben’s position though — I don’t think I can match Ben’s experience; also, due to schedule constraints, at present I may not be immediately able to commit full-time to writing ;)

Secondly yes his criteria is a start however leaving off operating system is a biggie. You could pack the latest and greatest screen, processor, standards etc and put Windows 7 on the tablet and it will pale in comparison. Similarly you could have the best hardware specs of any shipping device and tweak a great OS like Android to the absolute demise of the product experience.

Secondly I thought the end of my article agrees with you. This is why I pointed out that I don’t see many people succeeding in general purpose tablets. Consumers will figure out the use cases they find most valuable to them and they will buy the tablets that cater to that use case.

Sorry you didn’t get that from my conlusion.

I’d say that anything “general purpose” is bound to give you an inferior user experience than a specialized product. For example, reading text on the Kindle is unmatched — easy to hold, easy to change pages with as much as a squeeze of the thumb, great readability, fantastic battery life — however, web browsing or playing games is quite limited, and watching video impossible. Compare that to a Galaxy Tab which gives you a lot more options, but isn’t as good as a reader…

This is why the experience with 7 inch tablets is quite different from the experience with 10′ tablets.

However the article isn’t really a good one because all tablets are multi-use in the end. Only e-readers are single use. Even windows 7 slates with supposedly niche active digitizers can play movies better than many other slates, or can manipulate photos better for example.

What it comes down to is the particular uses …
The ipad’s advantage is its screen size so will excel over the tab with web browsing, spreadsheet manipulation, pdf editing etc.
Whereas the Tab will be taken places when the Ipad is left at home. The Tab can be put in a big pocket and carried around much more easily. I can see myself on a business trip taking a laptop and a Tab but the bulk of an ipad and a laptop may be too much.

We have to remember that to the uncle joe mass market consumer it will all come down the device that provides the better experience for the few or broad set of uses cases they are interested in.

We techies think in terms of capabilities but consumers make decisions based on experiences with the product.

The NookColor seemed to aim for books at first, but B&N realized no one wanted to read full books on a screen that is LCD (eye strain) while having an under-performing android OS. Now they all upgraded to FROYO and it's a cheap tablet, not an ebook reader-specific-device.

Basically, these should be the two categories for tablets: "Content Viewing" vs "Content Creating"

Content Viewing would be like the Galaxy tab, nook color, kindle, viewsonic, archos. Where it has a simple UI, and you use it for very specific-generic tasks such as Internet browsing, email, reading, music, videos, pictures. (pretty much the same as a smartphone)

Content Creation would be more for iPad*, Xoom*, adam, Asus Slate, Samsung Slider series 7, HP tablet pcs. These tablets seem to be built for uploading content to the internet and manipulating content. These tablet will greatly reduce demand for a general purpose-home-laptop.

*Debatable but this is all IMO

What we are going to see is the decrease in Netbooks and increase in tablets like Samsung Slider and Asus eee slate because they pack the newer ATOM processors or i-series and have a full OS on them.

In my opinion, better criteria to define a general purpose device are:

1. Raw power. In the general case, a user may occasionally need more power from the CPU. There is no way to provide that little extra unless your device has the hardware for it. Examples include Atom-based tablets, the upcoming Xoom, Notion Ink’s Adam, etc.

2. Connectivity. A device designed for general use requires standard connectivity options (such as built-in USB or display ports).

3. Wide support for software standards. A good example is support for ubiquitous web technologies, such as Flash.

4. Selection of hardware peripherals. Things like gyroscopes, GPRS, and webcams spring to ming.

5. Ability to side-load software. Within a general use-case, one should be able to run custom-designed software without any restrictions.

6. Portability. The general-use tablet should be more portable than the “use only on the couch” tablet. Smart compromises need to be made in regard to the next point.

7. Coming finally to screen features, I would consider aspect ratio to be more important than size. 3:4 (iPad) seems a good choice, allowing for convenient use in portrait or landscape orientation. 16:10 (Xoom) is perhaps even better, as it is also closer to widescreen video without being too narrow in portrait orientation.

It seem from looking at my list that the Eee Slate, Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Adam are so far the most universal tablets, with anything else trailing at a considerable distance behind.

As weird as it sounds, I find my iPad actually slightly too heavy to use as “mindlessly” as I would like too. Meaning, the act of carrying it and using it is still a hindrance in an appliance-like adoption. I find the portability of the Galaxy Tab very tempting, but I can’t justify having 2 tablets right now, and waiting for Honeycomb as well.

I’m leaning towards the 7-8″ camp, just through my personal experience. Sometimes heavy browsing on the iPad becomes a chore, so I just bust out my laptop instead. With too large of a screen, I feel like the tablet will begin to lose it’s value vs a laptop or desktop.

For a device to be considered general purpose in my opinion the device needs to do the majority of tasks as well or better than other devices.