Can the enterprise popularize tablet-laptop hybrids?

Closing Statements

Hybrids represent a real solution

Christopher Dawson

Clearly, tablets are the consumer devices to beat. Whether we need them or not, we want them, especially as we sacrifice defined times and places for work in favor of work-life balance. Even in the office, it's easier take notes in a meeting or share ideas with colleagues from the crook of our arms on a tablet.

However, those tablets come at a price, monetary and otherwise. Management software is in its infancy, most carry $500+ stickers, and the BYOD model that might let many businesses allow workers to adopt tablets of their own volition simply isn't acceptable to many enterprises.

Hybrids, however, represent a real solution. Letting both enterprises and workers have their cake and eat it too, hybrids enable standardized deployments, lower costs than deploying both tablets and desktops to employees, and access for workers to the tablets they want and the enterprise-grade PCs required for countless use cases in a single device.
 

Hybrid doesn't offer anything new

James Kendrick

The hybrid, or tablet with a permanently attached keyboard, is Intel's futile attempt  to offset the wild popularity of the iPad. They look good on paper but do not really fill any role in the enterprise that cheaper alternatives don't fill.

I do think tablets will appear more frequently in the enterprise, largely through BYOD programs. Many workers will discover they don't really need a whole computer with a keyboard; the tablet will work just fine.

Hybrids won't fly in the enterprise for the same reason convertible notebooks didn't in years past. They are too expensive to build, costly to support, and weigh too darn much to be comfortable to use. The deck is stacked against the hybrid.
 

Yes for some

Andrew Nusca

Both debaters made sound points, but I think the devil here is in the details: for some enterprises, particularly small ones with limited budgets, the hybrid device may be sufficient. For others, particularly those with deep pockets or higher performance requirements, hybrids won't cut it. The original question asks whether the enterprise can popularize the hybrid; given that, I think Mr. Dawson made a sound argument that the answer ought to be yes for some -- even though as a power user, I'll probably never use a hybrid in my lifetime. He wins!