Hmm. I recently wrote a blog post about Microsoft's new tablet coming out later this year - Microsoft Surface, a new tablet. Of course, these are only 2 of many tablets coming out for Windows 8 soon.

The Surface is very similar to an iPad. Friends of mine that have tried the release preview of Windows 8 actually say that they prefer it over the iPad due to it being just as responsive, but looks a lot better.

On the other hand, the Surface Pro is like an iPad + a full computer as well. So you can run Firefox and all of your favourite add-ons and applications on it just like with your regular computer, but it's also a tablet … so it's easy to carry around.

Summary: Windows 8 tablets are going to be big competition for the iPad from September this year, when Windows 8 is officially released. Might be worth considering that too :)

A question - what do you want a tablet for? i.e. What will you use it for? The answer to that question will help to decide what device is best for you.

Okay, then pretty much any type of tablet would be fine for you.

However, I will honestly never buy an iPad myself, because Apple always puts in old technology that other devices have had for a while, and use their extremely good marketing skills to make it sound new and amazing, which people fall for.

An iPad 2 would be a lot more affordable than the most recent iPad.

Keep in mind:

Video:

• If you want to play flash-based videos, then the iPad can't do this as it doesn't support Adobe Flash. You'd need an Android or Windows 8 device for that. However, many websites are slowly starting to move to HTML5 video instead, so Flash isn't as widely used as it was in the past.

PC applications:

• It's only if you wanted to run any of your regular PC applications that you use on Windows (e.g. Firefox, iTunes, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, etc.) … the iPad isn't powerful enough (and never will be, as Apple believes that's how tablets should be).

Windows 8:

• Windows 8 tablets aren't released until September. If you decide to use one of these, you'd have to wait a couple of months, as they are being released later this year. They'll be about the same price as an iPad. This is the biggest disadvantage - waiting - Microsoft is still developing Windows 8, so the tablets aren't available in stores yet.

It is true that Windows would be better, in order to be compatible a 100% with my laptop.

When Windows 8 is released in September there will be two types of tablets. One type are the "WinRT" type and are limited in many of the same ways that the iPad is limited. In the blog post I linked above the Surface is one of these, and is expected to cost around $500.

The other type are the "Win32" or "Win8" type… they have everything that the $500 tablets have, but they also include the full Windows operating system on them, just like your computer, and can run all of the applications you already run on your laptop. In the blog post I linked to, the Surface Pro is like this, and is expected to be around $1000. The higher price pays for the extra features and better hardware.

As far as reading is concerned, I have a lot of books in PDF and as I understood, no e-reader accepts PDF files, and even if it accepts, it is uncomfortable to read them, so this is why I wanted a tablet…

If you are talking about the Kindle and the Nook, and similar devices… I'm not sure how they deal with PDFs. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they can't read them.

On a tablet (whether that be iPad, Android or both types of Windows 8 tablets) … you should have no problem reading simple PDF files. Pretty much every device can read PDF files now, including smartphones.

Thanks for the tip about flash videos, I really have to have this in mind. I am not sure, but I think that videos (the DVD is sold together with a book) are flash type, but I am not sure.

Flash is software that was first created by Macromedia, but Adobe bought the company out many years ago and it's now known as Adobe Flash. For a long time, it was used as the primary way of displaying videos online as part of websites. YouTube uses it, for example.

You might remember having to install or update the "Flash Player" plug-in for your browser from time to time. This is the same kind of thing.