I am often asked my opinion on whether or not people with tablets need to bring their laptops when travelling. My standard response it to lay out of the pros and cons of mobile technology and leave it at that. I have been travelling a lot lately and in deference to my back (I chose size over weight when I bought my laptop) and TSA (you don’t have to take tablets out of your bag for security screenings), I decided to see if I could do it with just my Nook tablet. I have had some experience travelling with just my Nook, but not when I really intended to get serious work done. This time, however, I did have several projects that I needed to make real progress on while I was gone. I did purchase a Bluetooth keyboard so I wouldn’t be forced to do all of my typing on an on-screen keyboard. The keyboard is just slightly bigger than the Nook, so it is both light and easily portable.
After 2 weeks of airline, car and train travel, I would say that my experiment was a qualified success. I was able to get my work done, but I also faced some unexpected challenges. Some are Android specific and some are applicable to all tablets.
Bluetooth Issues -The most annoying of my problems was Bluetooth related. If I paused too long, the connection between my Nook and the keyboard seemed to time out. The only way I found to get the connection to work again was to reboot the Nook and reconnect it to the keyboard. I am running Gingerbread, and my understanding is that the Bluetooth works much better with Ice Cream Sandwich. So this is most likely a version-related issue.
Readability – I am very fortunately in that I can comfortably read fairly fine print. For those who need bigger fonts, the tablet screen can feel awfully small.
Functionality – I use Documents To Go as my word processor on my Nook (not because I think it is the best, but because I was able to get the full version for free when it was Amazon’s App of the Day). It worked just fine for both basic text and spreadsheet functions. Where it fell down on the job was when I wanted simple editing functions like bold or italics. Since I knew I would only be writing drafts on this trip and that I would be doing all final formatting on my laptop, this wasn’t a deal breaker for me. Just somewhat annoying.
Websites that are not mobile-friendly – There are a couple of sites out there that I use pretty heavily (although I will not name names here) that have websites that do not play well with mobile devices. Some of them have mobile websites with very limited information and don’t allow mobile devices to access their full site. Others that don’t have mobile sites and their full sites do not function well with tablets. I don’t think every website needs a mobile version, but I do think all websites do need the ability to adjust to different screen sizes.
Would I travel again with only my Nook and Bluetooth keyboard? Absolutely. Would I do so in all situations? No.