Year of the Tablet...

This time last year I had never owned a tablet.  Then it started with HP's firesale and I bought a Touchpad.  Around November the Christmas deals started to roll out and within 2 weeks I ended up buying an HTC Flyer, Nook Color, and a Samsung Tab 7, a week after that I bought an HTC View, and then finally another Touchpad.  So I started out 2012 with 6 tablets.

I originally bought them to practice downloading e-books from the library's OverDrive site.  I wanted to gain enough experience to give a detailed review and comparison but I was hooked on the HTC Flyer because of HTC Sense it felt just like a bigger version of my old phone: the HTC Inspire 4G, great phone with a horrible battery, don't buy it! --- I know have a Samsung Galaxy S2 and it really does live up to the hype.  In the end I kept the HTC View (a 32gb, black version of the Flyer) for my personal use.  I gave the Flyer to my sister and a Touchpad to my dad for Christmas, and sold the rest.

I personally LOVE the HTC Flyer/View.  The 7" form factor is perfect to carry around and has enough screen space to read/browse/email comfortably.  Personally, I couldn't spend that much money on a Kindle Fire or Nook Color when I could have a fully loaded tablet.  It's the same size and weight, why not get one that can take notes via a stylus or has front and rear facing cameras?  Then again not many people shop as diligently as I do for the good deals.

Every report from last week's CES says that 2012 is the "Year of the Ultralight" but I tend to disagree.  2012 is the year of the tablet.  With the amount of Kindle questions I am getting at the desk since Christmas, I am in no way shocked to hear that it is estimated that Amazon sold a million Kindles a week during December (one source).  On a side note, Hey ALA, is it now time to pay attention to Amazon or are we just going to chalk it up again as, "Amazon can't beat the library"?  I've never believed that tablets could/would ever replace laptops or desktops now or anytime in the near future; they are just another "must-have" electronic addiction we add to our ever expanding collection.

Today during our monthly meeting, we were told that e-books and a working knowledge of e-readers are now our top priority.  Circ and Info are now supposed to be able to explain to patrons the basics of downloading from OverDrive.  Just a couple months ago, we were supposed to redirect any e-book related questions to OverDrive.  So the library is not the quickest when it comes to adapting to current trends, hopefully they'll act much quicker to unite and defeat the evil empire that is OverDrive.