I have kids bracketing that age range. They all enjoy the family tablets.
However, as soon as they need to complete a school assignment, they have always used a desktop with a keyboard (we don't have floater laptops). This despite never having had any instruction on how to type. I have never heard them once consider using a tablet for this.
Ah, now we're getting away from PC (as defined by an OS) to PC as a synonym for having a keyboard :).
If your kids had a tablet with an excellent keyboard touch cover, would that be enough to never use a traditional PC? They aren't in a position to buy it themselves, of course, but if you had them side-by-side I wonder what they'd prefer.
If we're talking about differentiating features (at least at a hardware level), I think it would be:
- Larger display
- Keyboard
- Mouse
- Power
It depends on what your usage requirements are, of course, but once you start carrying around one or more peripherals to make your tablet work for your situation, you have to start asking "Is this really better than a laptop?"
We have a keyboard dock for our Galaxy Tab 10.1, but haven't used it much. When I've tried to use it, I've found that apps developed for the tablet tend to be clunky when used from the keyboard.
I have a Surface RT with touch cover, but haven't let the kids loose with it much. :-) It's not replacing any of my real PC gear, but mainly because it doesn't run any of my existing apps. However, the Surface Pro is going to be a very interesting mix of capabilities.
Once you add a keyboard to a tablet, it's just a laptop with a touch screen, but whatever you call it, I just hope the keyboard has tactile feedback, the screen is big enough to see what I want, I can add a mouse and most importantly: I can run a general-purpose operating system on it.
(My paranoid side is convinced that our NWO techno-slave-masters are simply using these new form-factors as an excuse to kill freedom.)
However, as soon as they need to complete a school assignment, they have always used a desktop with a keyboard (we don't have floater laptops). This despite never having had any instruction on how to type. I have never heard them once consider using a tablet for this.