I Don’t Want a Tablet

I don’t want a tablet!

I don’t want another device to cart around to meetings, parties, family gatherings, church, school, grocery shopping and especially not the bathroom.  I don’t want the ability to quickly access photos, music or videos that I most likely have already on sites such as Facebook, YouTube or Flickr. I don’t want to spend more time (and money) on apps that will engage, entertain and inform. Okay, well let’s make an exception for Angry Birds, which I can’t seem to get enough of. But, I digress.

I don’t want to buy an external hard drive for storage (even though I do have a FreeAgent GoFlex for “training”, so I guess that’s covered.)  I don’t want a device that I can use on road trips to entertain my family so they can play games, read books or magazines, watch endless episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine or just doodle.

I can accept that tablet computing is all the rage and has been blowing up since the launch of the iPad last year.  I can accept that with more tablets on the market, they are becoming more affordable including the Sony Tablet S, Blackberry’s Playbook, the Kindle Fire by Amazon, or the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

I can accept that the advances being made in tablet technology will make it easier for people to access data, manage business, find the closest Starbucks and simplify life in ways we have yet to fully comprehend.

But I don’t want a tablet.

See, I’m a bit of a contradiction. While I love the shiny, I can also be quite pragmatic which keeps from going overboard buying things I arguably don’t need. (Although I have been pricing 3D televisions a lot lately, but that’s a blog post for another day.) I already have two smartphones, two laptops, three game consoles, 2 portable gaming systems and a partridge in a pear tree. Do I really need a tablet too?

My co-workers have tablets. My sister has a tablet. My mother has a tablet. All my friends have tablets. I’m quickly becoming the last non-tablet owner on Earth standing alone like a cactus in a desert of out-datedness with my smartphones, consoles, laptops and partridge.

How much longer can I resist the call of instant information anywhere from a device with as much power as a mini Death Star?  How can I resist the siren’s song of high-resolution video, streaming music, photography, sports updates and, of course, Angry Birds? How strong will I be with Christmas right around the corner and sales at every turn?

Even as I write this, I feel myself waning.  I even found this article telling me Why You’ll Use a Tablet and didn’t have much of an argument against it.  I even find myself casually scanning online sites such as eBay and Quibids to see if I can snag one on the cheap. So as month two of my tenure at Seagate begins, let’s see how long I continue to hold out.

In the meantime, tell me why you do (or don’t) have a tablet in the comments below or on Twitter to @Seagate_Con.