Size Does Matter

If you’re thinking that I’ve ventured to a rather taboo topic … stop … take your mind out of the gutter, catch your breath and scroll down to the bottom of this post; you will see it is labelled “Technology”.

I was recently reading about the soon to be released Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, which replaces the fairly popular 7” Galaxy Tab, considered to be one of the best tablets available.  It was revealed quite early that the Galaxy Tab 2 would be a 10.1” tablet, but that other sizes would be released as well.  There have been lots of rumours of a 7” version of the Galaxy Tab 2, and I have been quite interested to see how Samsung improve the Galaxy Tab in the 7” Galaxy Tab 2.  Then a while ago, a Samsung representative told Pocket-Lint that the Galaxy Tab 2 will not be 7” version, saying “Tablets should be bigger than 7-inch”. I believe that the representative and Samsung are missing the point. The thing that made the original Galaxy Tab a great tablet was the fact that it was a 7” tablet.  Mobility is a good selling point, and by going for a larger tablet means one loses the mobility.

Why can’t we just live in harmony?

While it might sound like I’m going to rant about world peace, there is another kind of harmony that I am writing about … harmony in technology.  I suppose I need to elaborate a bit more, so you too can understand the dilemma. We all have embraced the information technology age to a lesser or greater extent … in fact, it now even has invaded our social lives.  While this is all a good thing, the problem is that our social lives have become fragmented.

In order to explain the issue, I can illustrate with the following … I have 3 friends on Windows Live Messenger (MSN), 2 friends on Google Talk, 1 friend on AIM, a couple of friends on Skype … and then quite a few friends on Facebook. I also had 2 friends on ICQ, but they switched to other systems. The issue is this … in order to chat with all my friends, I need to have Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, AIM, and Skype installed and running on my computer, and I need to have Facebook open in a browser … well, at least if I want to chat with my friends.