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Question

Need to know all these and their difference

Aug 2, 2013 2:33AM PDT

Am old guy, I am not that much the tech but understand.

I know how lap top work, but confused on Ice Cream Sandwich tablet. Surface, or iPod / iPad. All I know these are not like computer.

Can you explain to me ?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
They all have a computer inside.
Aug 2, 2013 2:53AM PDT

So with that out of the way I've found folk that are defining "computer" as a bit more narrow. Such as "It runs Windows." Now this may start a verbal war of words, definitions and more but you are correct that these are not all the same and differ from Windows by miles if not continents.

Remember your Commodore 64? That's a computer too. Just different.
Bob

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Answer
They're all computers on the inside.
Aug 9, 2013 12:17PM PDT

This may not help a lot, but here goes:

Smartphones are hand-sized (about 4.5" diagonal) computers that connect to a cellular network to make calls and to access the internet. Smartphones usually have a touch screen and don't have a hardware keyboard.

<div>Tablets are usually book-sized (about 7" to 10" diagonal) computers that connect to a cellular network and/or a wifi network to access the internet. Most tablets can't make calls, even though they tend to run the same Operating Systems as smartphones. Tablets usually have a touch screen and don't have a hardware keyboard.
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Apple's iPad tablet and Apple's iPhone smartphone both run Apple's iOS and use the same apps from Apples iTunes store. Apple's iMac and MacBook family of computers run a different OS, called OS X.

Ice Cream Sandwich is a version of Google's smartphone OS called Android. A lot of manufacturers, in fact just about everyone except Apple, Microsoft and RIM, make smartphones and tablets that run Android. There aren't any "PCs" running Android.

Microsoft has a smartphone OS called Windows Phone, that runs only on smartphones. Microsoft has a separate version of the Windows OS, called Windows RT, that was developed as a tablet OS to run on Microsoft's Surface RT tablet. It's not catching on so much because it doesn't share apps with Windows Phone or Windows 8. Other manufacturers have pretty much abandoned their plans for Windows RT based tablets. Windows (currently Windows Cool runs on "regular" PCs and laptops. However, Windows 8 is a touch-centric OS. Microsoft has a Windows Pro tablet running Windows 8. Other manufacturers also have tablets, hybrids, convertibles and touch screen laptops running Windows 8.

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Nice, simple response
Aug 10, 2013 9:09AM PDT

Nice and simple response, Bob Meyer. Explains it very well, IMHO.

R. Proffitt, I chuckled over the C-64 comment. I wonder how many people remember those. It was my first computer. And, believe it or not, I still play an old c-64 card game that I love. Via an emulator on an old Win98. But I digress from the subject.

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Commodore 64
Aug 10, 2013 2:28PM PDT

Loved it. Learned to program on that thing. Never would have purchased one ourselves, but Santa brought it one Christmas and we found it under the tree. What could we do, but have fun?
As far as the original question, all I know is that back in the C-64 days there were far less decisions to make, thank goodness!

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Oh, I don't know about that,
Aug 10, 2013 11:22PM PDT

Back in my C-64 days there were still plenty of choices to be made:

Spectrum (Sinclair), ZX81 (Sinclair), Acorn, Apricot, Atari, Amstrad and Tandy, to name just a few.

Gave them all up for an Apple IIE


Happy

P