A guide to tablet computers as you plan holiday shopping

Tablet computers are a hot tech item for holiday gifts this season, and there are so many choices it's easy to get confused.With Cyber Monday fast approaching, here's a basic primer as you shop around for the best buys and the tablet computer that best suits your needs.First, think about what you want it for.Do you want to read books? Are magazines and newspapers important to you? How about watching movies or TV? Do you want to email, tweet, do Facebook? Do you need to write reports, do PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets?There's a right choice depending on what it'll be used for.If you just want to read and store books, get a cheaper model with a matte screen. You can grab one of these for about $80 to $150.If you want more, you'll need to spend a little more.For face-to-face communication like Skype or Facebook video chat, make sure the tablet has a front-facing camera.
A back-facing camera is a nice addition if you want to shoot and do basic editing of video and photos.For watching TV, movies and playing games, get a high-resolution, color screen, and you might want get one of the bigger-screen models if that's your main purpose.Get more memory if you want to store photos, movies or video on your device.If you want it to store and listen to music, it'd be a good idea to go to the store to actually listen to the sound quality rather than shop online.For "heavy lifting," like writing reports, get the more expensive models and spend extra for a keyboard. Remember, a tablet is more an entertainment device than a work computer, so your needs might lead you to consider a netbook, an ultrabook or a laptop.Here's a quick look at a handful of the more popular models:The new mini is $329 for the entry-level model, with 16G of on-board memory. It has the same resolution as the iPad2. If you want the retina display, you'll have to buy an iPad3, which starts at $499, but has the bigger screen and amazing resolution. An iPad2 has more stuff than the iPad mini and a bigger screen and costs $399 for the entry-level model.
You can read on it and download books. You can write emails, edit, sort and catalogue photos. If you want it for text-based chores – like writing a report in Google docs, say – get a keyboard, which will run about 100 bucks, and maybe a magic mouse, which is another $70 or so.It's not cheap, but it's well designed, well-made, good looking and it's an Apple. There are tons of apps that are reasonably priced. If you want to run a lot of different apps, get more memory.You can't get one yet with Windows 8. Right now, you get it with Windows RT. There are rumors of a 7-inch version of the Surface and a Windows 8 phone around the corner, so you might want to wait.

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