Making peace with tablets

Our upcoming vacation is meant to be a nice thing, not improved by a laptop. If I really feel motivated to write fiction, I can write on paper.
But, I would feel just better with a bigger screen and keyboard at my disposal. So I’ve been using my tablet (an iPad mini) for occasional work, as something of an experiment.
I have never taken seriously the idea of tablets as work devices. Wonderful for watching and reading, excellent for play, but they ask too many compromises for productivity.
But, this is another way of saying my productivity has become encrusted with too much stuff. The tablet’s whole-screen interface makes it difficult to switch easily between, say, a text editor and a browser. But is that a negative or a discipline?
I recently wrote about techniques to avoid multi-tasking broad categories of life in the same workspace — creative writing, bill-paying, and social networking — but maybe even in the world of one category, a versatile set of tools are helpful but not required.
Rethink the transition from laptop to tablet, not as laptop to lesser laptop, but as truck to bicycle. Or, home to suitcase.