Tablets – helping you be closer to your loved ones...

ablets – iPads and Android tablets – can be great once you know how to use them. It’s amazing all the things they can do.

And possibly the best thing tablets can do for you is help you keep in touch with family and friends. I don’t just mean letting you send emails instead of writing paper letters, though that can be handy.

In just a few taps of the screen you could be talking to them as if they were sat right there beside you.

But when you buy a tablet, there’s something missing. It’s not the charger (hopefully!). It’s not a case, though it’s usually a good idea to buy one to protect your new tablet.

It’s a manual – something to show you how to use the thing. The manufacturers seem to assume that you’ll just know how to use it, as if by magic. It’s “intuitive,” they say.

Well, it can be. In parts. But there are other things you simply need to know how to do. It’s not obvious that you have to swipe from the top of the screen, pull up from the bottom or tap with two fingers instead of one.

Who would know you had to use two fingers and pull them apart on the screen or rotate them... or that they’d bury the option you want behind three little dots?

Things like that you just can’t know – someone has to explain it to you.

But if you do ever find a book about it or get someone to tell you, they always seem to assume you already know how to do it. Daft, really – you wouldn’t be asking if you did. But they whizz through it so fast you can’t possibly take it in. Not to mention the steps they leave out because “everyone knows that”!

That’s where a set of books from a small, employee-owned company based in Cumbria comes in. They’re called The Helpful Book Company and lots of their customers say they certainly live up to their name! They’ve published a Time and Time – and these books have proved hugely popular with all sorts of people who have a tablet – but who aren’t experts at using it.

Whether you’re frustrated with the very basics, want to know what else it can do for you or wish you knew how to do some of the slightly fancier things, this book might be just what you need.

It explains everything nice and simply, in plain English, without all the confusing jargon and gobbledegook. And it has lots of pictures showing exactly what to do – where to tap the screen and so on.