There’s an old saying that the happiest days of a boat owner’s life are the day they buy the boat, and the day they sell it. For me, the happiest days of an Android tablet owner’s life are the day they buy a new one, and the day they buy a newer one. For some reason, I always buy tablets with great expectations, get them set up, and then promptly lose them in a pile on my desk, not to be seen again. Then a shiny new tablet gets my attention in a year or so, and the cycle repeats.You might be thinking that I just buy cheap junk tablets. It is true that I have. But I have also bought new Galaxy and Asus tablets with the same result. Admittedly, I have owned several Surface Laptops and Pros, and I do use them. But I can’t remember the last time I have used one without the keyboard. They aren’t really tablets — they are just laptops that can also be heavy, awkward tablets.Why?I get the sense that iPad users get more use from their devices, but I’m not sure why. Maybe because Android tablets are really just blown-up phones. These days, my phone is big enough for most things. Sure, the tablet is bigger, but it isn’t that much bigger. In addition, my phone usually has a much better CPU, camera, and everything else. Not to mention it is constantly connected to the Internet, even if I’m not in range of a known WiFi router.Read webpages? Phone. Play games? Phone. Deal with e-mail? Phone. The only advantage is if I put the tablet’s cheap Bluetooth keyboard on and use it like a laptop. But wait, I can just as well do that with the phone. Plus, voice typing for things like e-mails and messages is much better than it used to be.Then there’s using it as a laptop replacement. When my laptop weighed a ton and got a few hours on a battery, that seemed like a good idea. But modern laptops don’t weigh that much, and they have pretty reasonable battery life, too. I always install some kind of Linux, like Termux and even Termux-X11, so I can use it as a lightweight Linux laptop. And I still don’t use it. (My setup is similar to the one in the video below, although you may have a few hiccups getting it all to work.)DesktopPhone, tablet, or laptop, I’m still more likely to be found at my desk behind a big screen with a serious computer. Maybe it’s a generation gap, like clinging to a landline phone (I don’t) or a DVD player (another thing I don’t do). Maybe it is that most of the things I do on the computer benefit from large split screens and fast computing times.Of course, there’s also the gadget factor. My desktop computer is huge and heavy, full of cards and water coolers, disk drives and fans. Some people trick out their cars. It is hard to expand most laptops, phones, and tablets, although I have had some success taking them apart for simple upgrades. They never seem to go back together quite right, though.So Then?So then what do I actually want a tablet for? I don’t know. Which leads me to ask you: what are you using a tablet for? Do you really use it regularly? Or is it another gadget collecting dust? It doesn’t count if you repurpose them for some dedicated use: a second screen, a touchpad, or a 3D printer controller. I mean using them as a replacement for your normal computing platform. Let us know in the comments.Maybe I’d be happier making my own tablet.