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Turning to Tablets 投向平板电脑的怀抱

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The tablet offers an alternative in portable technology  平板电脑为行动科技提供了另一项选择

So your laptop is getting old: Should you buy a new one or change horses and try out one of these tablet computers? That all depends on what you want to do with it.

你的笔记本电脑已经旧了：那么你究竟该买一部新的笔电，还是该改弦易辙，尝试一下平板电脑呢？这个问题的答案完全取决于你对这部电脑的用途。

It’s still the case that laptops and smaller netbook computers are tuned for production – word processing, e-mailing, number-crunching, more complicated tasks that often require a lot of text and switching among several windows running different applications.

笔电与小笔电仍然适合用于生产活动──包括字处理、收发电子邮件、数值计算、这些工作都比较复杂，通常需要大量文字，也必须在各个执行不同应用程序的窗口之间来回切换。

Tablets, lacking a mouse or a keyboard, are better for tasks that have simpler tactile and visual elements – like paging through a photo gallery, checking online news or blogs, or reading a digital magazine. In other words, they work better for consumption, and thus can stay on for quite a few hours on one charge.

平板电脑没有鼠标或键盘，因此比较适合用于从事包含更简单的触控与视觉元素的活动──例如翻页观赏相簿、浏览网络新闻或部落格，或者阅读数字杂志。换句话说，平板电脑比较适合消费活动，因此只要充电一次就可以使用上好几个小时。

For social media addicts, tablets will be excellent for browsing through Facebook for the latest photos or links that friends have posted, or checking out Twitter to see what the digital hive mind is buzzing about at that moment.

对于沉迷于社群媒体的人士而言，平板电脑非常适合浏览Facebook，看看朋友最近张贴的照片或连结，或是上推特看看这个数字集体意识产物目前的热门话是什么。

Some tablets lagging behind  有些平板电脑的效能较为落后

The iPad in particular has become a hit for casual gaming. When it comes to more serious applications, though, tablets are likely to lag behind netbooks and laptops for the foreseeable future: The devices are not sophisticated enough to seamlessly run multiple programs at once or to allow users to find and install the endless variety of software now available for PCs.

iPad尤其成了休闲游戏的热门产品。不过，一旦要执行比较正经的应用程序，平板电脑在可预见的未来仍可能跟不上小笔电或笔记本电脑：因为平板电脑不够精密，无法同时顺畅执行多项程序，也无法让用户找到及安装可供个人电脑使用的无数软件。

There is a thriving community of iPad “app” developers – the device has close to 40,000 small programs created for it, by some counts. But no such group yet exists for tablets running on Google’s Android operation system, which will constitute most of the new offerings in coming months.

目前有一个蓬勃发展的iPad应用程序开发者社群──有些计算显示，这项产品已有将近四万个专门为其开发的小型程序。不过，接下来几个月推出的平板电脑虽然大都会采用谷歌的Android操作系统，这种系统却还没有像iPad那样的程序开发社群。

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number-crunching（指计算机）迅速进行大量复杂运算的 the act or process of performing mathematical operations to find a value

page [pedʒ] v. 翻阅 to turn pages (usu. fol. by through)

consumption [kənˋsʌmpʃən] n. 消费 the act or process of consuming

hive mind 集体心智；集体智能 a kind of collective knowledge

buzz [bʌz] about  闹哄哄地跑来跑去 to move quickly and busily; bustle

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Tablets vs. e-readers  平板电脑对决电子书阅读器

With electronic reading devices adding more bells and whistles, including wireless connectivity, the differences between e-readers and tablet computers seem to be blurring.

随着电子书阅读器的功能愈来愈多，包括无线网络联机功能在内，电子书阅读器与平板电脑之间的区隔似乎愈来愈模糊。

But there’s one difference that might never go away.

不过，有一项差别却可能永远不会消失。

Tablets are designed to let users interact with a range of features, from telephony and video chat to e-mail and text messaging, and from watching movies and looking at photos to browsing web pages and news sites. But e-readers are just for reading.

平板电脑的设计目的在于让用户与多种功能互动，包括打电话与视讯聊天乃至电子邮件简讯，还有看电影、看照片以及浏览网页与新闻网站。但电子书阅读器则只是单纯为了阅读使用。

The simpler, the better  愈简单愈好

Most e-reader converts will tell you that the Amazon Kindle, for instance, works because it has reduced the number of built-in bells nearly to zero.

大部分改而爱上电子书阅读器的用户都会告诉你，像亚马逊kindle阅读器这样的产品之所以好用，就是因为其中把各种额外的内建功能减少到近乎于零。

When you’re reading a book, you’re not bombarded with “You’ve got mail” sounds, “Friend” notifications or even a digital clock. All you get is the text in front of you, ready for your complete attention.

你在看书的时候，不会受到「新邮件送达」的音效、「朋友」的呼叫或甚至数字时钟的干扰。唯一呈现在眼前的就是屏幕上的文本，准备供你专心阅读。

Tablet devices like the iPad or Samsung’s new Galaxy tablet afford no such digital austerity: E-mail, web browsing and Facebook are only a click away, and many readers find the temptation of the media matrix too difficult to resist.

像iPad或三星推出的银河平板电脑则没有这种数字朴实性：只要轻轻一点，就可使用电子邮件以及浏览网络和Facebook，而且许多读者也发现，众多的媒体网络实在令人难以抗拒。

And though tablet screens will soon offer higher resolution and brighter colors than the electronic ink still favored by most e-readers, you may find that staring at a digital display for hours can tire out your eyes (especially if you’ve already been doing it at work all day). The e-ink displays, while slower and monochrome, are all but identical to printed page.

虽然大部分的电子书阅读器仍然偏好采用电子墨水，而平板电脑则在不久之后即可提供分辨率更高、颜色也更明亮的屏幕，但盯着数字显示器长达几个小时可能会使眼睛疲劳不已（尤其是如果你已经在上班时间盯了整天的屏幕）。电子墨水的显示方式虽然速度较慢，而且只有单色，但看起来却和印刷页面几无两样。

The success of Amazon’s Kindle reader, which has become the online retailer’s bestselling product, may show that the best way you can improve on the printed book is to make it lighter and simpler.

亚马逊的kindle阅读器已经成为这家网络零售商的最畅销产品，而这项产品的成功很可能证明了一点，亦即改良纸本书的最佳方式，就是把书本变得更轻盈也更简单。

－by David Sarno

单词发音

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convert [ˋkɑnvɝt] n. 皈依宗教者; 改变信仰者 one who has been converted, especially from one religion or belief to another

matrix [ˋmetrɪks] n. 线路网 a situation or surrounding substance within which something else originates, develops, or is contained

resolution [͵rɛzəˋluʃən] n.【计算机】分辨率

tire out 使精疲力竭, 使过分劳累 to become exhausted

monochrome [ˋmɑnə͵krom] n. 单色 being or made in the shades of a single color

all but  差不多, 几乎 almost; nearly

单词发音

Vocabulary Focus

change horses (idiom) 作大变动 to make a significant change to something that has already begun

tactile [ˋtæktaɪl] adj. 触觉的, 有触觉的 relating to a surface which is pleasant or attractive to touch

for the foreseeable future 在可预见的未来 as far into the future as one can imagine or plan for

seamlessly [ˋsimlɪslɪ] adv. 无空隙地；无停顿地; 顺畅地 in a smooth and continuous manner

thriving [`ɵraɪvɪŋ] adj. 欣欣向荣的; 兴旺发达的 growing, developing and successful

constitute [ˋkɑnstə͵tjut] v. 设立；制定 to form or make something

bells and whistles (idiom) 产品附加的特色; 特殊部分或性能 extra feature which make something more attractive and useful

austerity [ɔˋstɛrətɪ] n. 朴素，朴实 the quality of being plain and without decoration, comforts or anything extra

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