I went to my local MediaMarkt yesterday and had a look round. Something I used to do regularly, but which I haven't done for nearly a year...

I had a look at the tablets all lined up, the new iPad mini, full fat iPads, Android tablets and a few Windows 8 tablets.

I'd gone off iOS about 18 months ago, it was starting to feel old and just didn't seem to deliver the user experience that Android and Windows Phone 7 were bringing to the market.

Playing with the iPad mini and the iPad 2 and 3, I didn't change my mind. The mini feels very out of place, compared to the modern feeling Android devices. It feel 2 year too late to the party.

Apart from increased brightness, I couldn't see any real difference between the iPad 2 and 3 - the vaunted Retina display didn't spring out at me, just looking at the two tablets.

The Android tablets haven't really changed over the months, they certainly feel better than the iPad to use, but I still don't know why I would want one...

Then I tried an Acer and a Samsung Ativ tablet. VERY nice. The user interface is slick and fast, and the IFKAM certainly feels a lot better on a tablet than it does on my Sony notebook or a desktop.

Going to the desktop was also better than I expected. The buttons were easy to press, even with my fat fingers.

But tablets are still a grey area for me. I like playing with them, but I still don't see me using them on a regular basis. Most of my web browsing involves me going to sites where I do a lot of typing, so a touch keyboard is useless. 99% of my surfing is done at my desk in the cellar at home or at my desk at work. I have little or no need to surf on the go - generally I'm in the car - and I wouldn't use it for "couch surfing", because I am generally not alone in the lounge when watching TV.

Sounds like you could do with having a try of the MS Surface as it can be bought with a real keyboard attachment - one with longer key travel than the other.

I don't use my tablet much at all. I prefer to sofa-surf on my rather large 4.5" phone, which is a lot more comfortable to hold and use.

It's main use so far has been for my mum to watch iPlayer in bed when she visits, so she can catch up on all the medical dramas before she goes to sleep! She also uses it to check out recipes and the news, like an on-line women's magazine. I've had the tablet over a year, and in 1 week my mum used it 10x as much as I have

I'm still thinking about getting myself a 7" device as a better compromise. I don't care what the OS is provided it does all the web stuff like 4oD etc. and has video support. I'm disappointed in the video support on the devices I've tried so far (Android and WebOS) since I want to stream files in the ubiquitous MKV format from my 4TB media server without spending 10 years re-encoding...

I've no idea how easy Acer have made it on my tablet, but I can stream MKVs to my PS3 via VLC IIRC... YMMV. MFI. CIA and other acronyms