Although 7 inch tablet computers can provide a similar if slightly less precise experience-Priceangels.com

In less than 5 years e-readers like the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes & Noble Nook, the Sony Reader and others have gone from "must-have" status to "I don't need one, I have a tablet."Although tablet computers can provide a similar if slightly less precise experience, their initially higher prices made a dedicated e-reader with a 6-inch screen -- just about the size and heft of a paperback book -- a desirable purchase.

That all changed with the arrival of inexpensive 7 inch tablet.A Kindle Fire for $159 or a Nexus 7 for $269, while perhaps not delivering the same level of reading experience, became an attractive alternative because they could do other things as well.Therein lies the chief obstacle to e-readers' market health; an e-book user can read a book. Period. A tablet user can read a book, browse the Internet, send an email, watch a movie, play a computer game and eagerly await the release of the next "must-have" tablet app. Oh, and all that in color, too.

Sellers of e-readers have tried price cuts to compete; Barnes and Noble has dropped the price of its Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight to just $99, and Amazon is offering its front-lit Kindle Paperwhite for $139.

But they only have to look over their shoulders to see tablet computers following them down the price scale. One Chinese manufacturer, Ematic, is offering a 7-inch Android-powered tablet for just $79.99. It may cut some corners on speed and features, but it can still do all the things a tablet can do at a price below that of many dedicated e-readers.The figures include desktop, netbook, and other laptops including ultrabooks and "convertibles" which can act as a tablet and PC, but don't include purely handheld devices or tablets such as the iPad.fdd7EDf8f 

Also slated for the show next week is the Archos ChildPad range. As the name implies, these tablets include a kid-friendly user interface, a Google Play storefront filtered for kids, full parental controls and Android 4.2. This range will include the Archos 80 and the 101 ChildPad tablets, the latter of which is "designed to bridge the gap from the digital world of the tablet to content in the re al world using magnetic figurines".

Even as tablets have become increasingly commonplace, many IT leaders still struggle with how to implement the devices at their organizations. Off-the-shelf software for the devices is no longer a rarity, but it does little to address existing enterprise applications. In most cases, issuing the device itself is the easy part of a tablet deployment. Determining how to upgrade or modify your back office applications to leverage tablet technology is far more challenging and costly.

One shortcut to getting existing applications on Q88 Tablet is desktop and application virtualization. Like the virtualization technologies that most of us are familiar with in the data center, desktop virtualization moves an end-user desktop, complete with OS and applications, into the data center. Desktop virtualization largely predates widespread tablet adoption, having made headway in niche markets where thin clients or generic workstations accessed centralized applications using technologies like Citrix and Windows Terminal Services.

Extending this concept to tablets seems relatively obvious, especially if you already have a virtual desktop infrastructure in place. Virtualization certainly provides a rapid way to get enterprise applications onto tablets, with one major caveat: you're stuck with the traditional desktop user experience. Most enterprise applications assume screens significantly larger than the typical 5-10" tablet screen and are keyboard- and mouse-centric. Contrast your typical SAP or Oracle screen to the average tablet application, and this problem quickly becomes obvious.