Tablet computer

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The Apple iPad
A tablet computer, or simply tablet, is a complete mobile computer, larger than a mobile phone or personal digital assistant, integrated into a flat touch screen and primarily operated by touching the screen. It often uses an onscreen virtual keyboard, a passive stylus pen, or a digital pen[citation needed], rather than a physical keyboard.[1][2]
Electrical devices with data input and output on a flat information display have existed as early as 1888.[3] Throughout the 20th century many devices with these characteristics have been ideated and created whether as blueprints, prototypes or commercial products, with the Dynabook concept in 1968 being an spiritual precursor of tablets and laptops. During the 2000s Microsoft attempted to define the tablet personal computer (tablet PC) product concept[4] as a mobile computer for field work in business,[5] though their devices failed to achieve widespread usage due mainly to price and usability problems that made them unsuitable outside of their limited intended purpose.[6] In April 2010 Apple Inc. released the iPad, a tablet computer with an emphasis on media consumption. The shift in purpose, together with increased usability, battery life, simplicity, lower weight and cost, and overall quality with respect to previous tablets, was perceived as defining a new class of consumer device[7] and shaped the commercial market for tablets in the following year



Traditional tablets based on IBM-PC architecture
Main article: Tablet personal computer
A tablet personal computer (tablet PC) is a portable personal computer equipped with a touchscreen as a primary input device, and running a (modified) classic desktop OS.[9] designed to be operated and owned by an individual.[10] The term was made popular as a concept presented by Microsoft in 2000[11] and 2001[12] but tablet PCs now refer to any tablet-sized personal computer regardless of the (desktop) operating system[13]
Tablet personal computers are mainly x86 based[14] and are fully functional personal computers employing a slightly modified personal computer OS (such as Windows or Ubuntu Linux) supporting their touch-screen, instead of a traditional display, mouse and keyboard. A typical tablet personal computer needs to be stylus driven, because operating the typical desktop based OS requires a high precision to select GUI widgets, such as a the close window button.



Post-PC tablets not based on the traditional PC architecture
See also: Mobile operating system
Since mid-2010, new tablet computers have been introduced with mobile operating systems that forgo the Wintel paradigm,[15] have a different interface instead of the traditional desktop OS, and represent a new type of computing device.[16] These "post-PC" mobile OS tablet computer devices are normally finger driven and most frequently use capacitive touch screens with multi-touch capabilities instead of the simple resistive touchscreens of typical stylus driven systems.