Will you buy a tablet/iPad or a laptop?

I was reading this Wired article about tablet computers and the future of computing and it got me thinking. It's an interesting article in which 13 technology experts give their thoughts about the tablet computer. It's not specifically about the Apple iPad, but it includes the iPad because that's a tablet computer and it'll probably be one of the market leaders.

The article tries to predict what we'll all be doing in a few years time and it talks about how tablets will replace laptops, gaming consoles and other devices and will become the main way in which we consume media and interact with computers. You should take everything with a hefty dose of salt because the future often unfolds in unpredictable ways. Go back 10, 20 or 30 years and look at people's predictions of the future and invariably they have turned out to be wrong.

Maybe we'll all be using tablet computers, but maybe we won't. Will the iPad dominate the market? Perhaps, but it's not a certainty and there are going to be lots of competitors. The HP Slate looks good and the YouTube video demo is impressive, mainly because of Flash, which the iPad doesn't support. That's just one competitor and there are many more.

Companies like Apple with its iPad and perhaps the other tablet makers too, want us all to buy tablet computers in addition to the devices we already have. However, instead of creating a new market, the tablet will probably split existing markets. You won't buy a tablet computer like an iPad or HP Slate as well as everything else you have, but instead of something you already own. For example, some people will decide that they don't need a laptop and instead a tablet does everything they need in a smaller, lighter, more portable package. Some people might decide that they don't need a smartphone and instead they can buy a cheap mobile that does calls and text and use a tablet for email, web, games, video and so on. Some people will decide that they don't need a top of the range music player and they'll get a tablet for web, video, games, and mail, and carry a small, simple and cheap MP3 player when they need to travel light.

In the future then, I don't think we'll have any more devices than we have now, but we might have a different mixture of devices. A tablet instead of a laptop, a simple phone and tablet instead of a smartphone, a basic MP3 player plus tablet, and so on.