Greetings,

I am planning on buying a new tablet when I get my tax return, and putting the rest into savings. Was wondering what everyone uses, and what they prefer. Right now I'm using an ASUS 7 inch MeMo, which has worked great, but the power button is starting to stick.

I am looking at getting something that does not require a phone carrier, and is under $300. Those are my two hard rules.

What suggestions do you guys have? I also prefer android to iOS, but if I can get a current gen ipad for cheap, I'll consider it.

I suggest you fix the button for a fraction of the cost of buying a new device.

Can you buy/order Xiaomi?

I know this is heresy among many folks here, but our family has iPads and find they work great.

Stupid question, and this may sound like a derail, but it has to do with tablets and I'm genuinely curious here.

There is a new commercial that shows a young girl going about her life doing all sorts of cool stuff on her tablet. At the end, one of her parents says, "What are you doing on your computer?"

She replies, "What is a computer?"

Is this just an ad gimmick or is this where we are headed?

Casual media consumption? Small tablet. New iPad, ASUS ZenPad. Under $300 new.

Do real work on a tablet? Microsoft Surface Pro 4 or the Google Pixel C. Either one's $500-$600 new, though.

Gaming tablet and mixed media consumption? Maybe actually the NVidia Shield. ~$200 new.

EDIT: Cold hands == typos :/ Yes. Ask old people on a gaming forum what the kids are doing these days. Surely we're the bellwether of emerging technologies. "Tech is moving towards something that will let me play games from 1987 in DOSBox without too much trouble!" XD

Yes, I see a lot how many do not buy 'normal' pcs but just use tablets or mobiles and older people not replacing their old pcs as they are just used as typewriters anyway since that is awkward on the touch screen. Spending €500+ for a pc is unthinkable as it is used for so little but buying a new mobile for €1000 every second year and a new tablet every third year is no problem as those are constantly in use.

Well, seeing how traditional desktop applications are being replaced by web based services and how this trend seems to get bigger and bigger, it seems like a very plausible future to me.

I mean, yeah, it seems a huge no no for power users, gamers and corporative usage. But for your average Joe who only wants access to the interwebz, play Candy Crush and googling the likes of bigbooty.free.com, they are pretty cool. And boi, have I seen lots of your average Joe lately...

Going to do some more troubleshooting. It's going to sound really stupid, but taking the tablet out of its case made the power button work correctly again.

Might be looking at saving myself some money.

"Must refrain from facepalming." =P

You where supposed to take it to a specialized store which offers you to repair it for twice the price of the newest next generation of it :P

I regularly meet people whose only computing device is their phone and thus have trouble figuring out how shift and caps lock works (because they're used to the fact that caps/shift lock unset after the first character unless you press it twice). Makes for interesting sessions when they're trying to figure out -and subsequently correctly enter- passwords that require capitals, minuscules and digits.

I use a NVidia Shield Tablet, but those are discontinued. I'll actually probably be in your boat sooner than later, looking for an affordable 7-9 inch tablet with some decent specs. That market seems to be dry at the moment.

Really? My older Samsung J5 2016 phone had a "stuck button", as if someone was pushing the back-button repeatedly.

Since it was only 6 months old, I took it to warranty repair, but they said there is moisture on the circuit board which is causing the "stuck back-button", and it is not covered by warranty.

Fixing the phone would have cost 170 euros. Buying a new phone, exact same model, cost 100 euros (might be I paid 120€, but it had been on sale 100€ just before). i decided to buy a new phone even though I still had to pay 35 euros for the mere check-up (because it wasn't a warranty repair).

So when it comes to tablets and phones, to me it seems it doesn't necessarily make sense try to repair them, unless you can repair it yourself. Well ok, maybe if it is some very expensive model... Sometimes I feel kids of today use almost solely tablets and phones for gaming, but still I see kids on their own (cheapo) laptops as well. The entry-level laptop prices have come down so much as well that kids still get them too, maybe even on top of their tablets and phones.