I searched but there wasn’t anything recent or relevant. And I know that there are a lot of new tablet-type devices new on the market this summer.
I played with a friend’s first generation iPad yesterday and really, really want one. However, I’m not sure I want to purchase something that spendy. I am not a very sophisticated computer/device user, generally.
I want to be able to take, store, share and display photos.
Access web sites, email, etc.
Have Word.
YouTube, music or movies would be nice but probably not anything I would utilize away from my house.
I can already do these things on my BlackBerry, but I would really like having something like my BB, but with a bigger screen and faster speed. I would also like to be able to add a keyboard (like with the iPad) because I don’t like the swipey-tappy touch screens a whole lot.
Is there anything on the market that would work for me that doesn’t cost almost a grand? My eyes are crossing from wading through online tablet reviews.
Well, the iPad is only $500, and is far and away the best pad on the market. Why would you buy an inferior device to save $100? One of the problems that the other pad makers have is touching Apple’s price point - so they end up cheaping out on the screen or the touch digitizer.
I realize that if you have your heart set on tablet-y goodness and the sensation of attacking pigs with birds launched via finger swipes/taps that nothing else will fill that void*, but you can get some pretty nice 10" netbooks for the $250-$299 range these days. They’ve become decidedly uncool since the tablet craze took off (which accounts for their ever decreasing price) but my wife loves her’s for portable browsing, typing stuff, reading books, watching movies and all the other standard stuff. I only mention it since you said you wanted a keyboard and Word (she uses OpenOffice just 'cause we didn’t spring for MS Office).
*I mean this sincerely; if you really want a tablet then that’s what you want.
The one thing about the iPad that might not work for you is that the camera is shit. My iPhone has an awesome camera but the iPad 2 takes grainy, oddly-pixellated pictures.
My parents’ best friends, who are a couple of early-60s gadgetophiles (they didn’t have a microwave until maybe 10 years ago) just showed my parents their new Samsung Galaxy from Verizon.
They just went in to Verizon to update their phones and ended up with a Galaxy and a data plan, so either they met with the world’s best salesperson or the Galaxy is really something people like them would be in to.
I may be buying an iPad for work purposes. Can someone please summarize how files are uploaded to one? I’m told that it is not synched to your desktop like an iPad is - true?
You can either store them in the “cloud” using something like Mobile Me’s iDisk, or use a program like “Files Pro” from Olive Toast that runs a WebDAV server on the iPad, so you can use a standard Internet browser to upload files to the iPad - I actually use both.
With the Files program, you launch it on the iPad, and it gives you an IP address. You type that into the address bar of the browser (Safari, etc.) and it takes you to a page that shows you the files on the iPad, and give you a button to upload files from your computer. Similar to the way Flikr or other file-sharing sites work.
With the iDisk, any files you have synced from your computer are available to the iPad - as long as you have an internet. connection. Supposedly, iDisk is going away, but I’, pretty sure Apple will replace it with something.
You didn’t misunderstand, you have to hack around that problem. That’s an Apple thing.
Android based tablets, like the Galaxy 10.1 which we just got, let you use it essentially like a giant USB stick, as well as a tablet. It’s one of the reasons we didn’t go with the iPad.
Sort of… You transfer files via iTunes. On the iPad, files are ‘owned’ by an App, so there is no file ‘Finder’ or ‘Explorer’. Instead, you use iTunes on a PC/Mac to sync a file to an App. As noted above, Apps like Dropbox are also handy. If you do a ‘long tap’ on a file in Dropbox, it let’s you open a file in other Apps.
It sounds clumsy to work with file this way, but it works well. It is one of the great simplifications from a computer OS and is actually quite elegant. (I spent 30 years in software and am very impressed.)
If you want to add a keyboard, you may want to look at the Asus Transformer. It’s got a keyboard dock that turns it into what amounts to an Android netbook. Micro SD slot on the tablet, which makes file transfer easy, and a full size SD slot and two full-fledged USB host ports on the dock. And a working trackpad. Topnotch screen, too.
I wouldn’t trade mine for an iPad 2 if someone offered to swap me, but that’s partly because I don’t like the Apple walled garden model.
And what if iTunes doesn’t like my files? I can’t seem to put movies or any video files onto my iPod unless they’re in Quick Time format. I hate this, but I put up with it because I only use my iPod for music.
So what happens when I try to put avi movie files on the iPad? Or pdf files I want to read? Or even simple little txt files?
There could be a couple ways to slice this one - while the iPad is a great device (I use one for work and love it in that capacity) it is lacking in some areas. Let’s look at your requirements:
As mentioned, the iPad2 has a mediocre camera. In addition, sharing is pretty limited from iOS devices. From the default Photos app, you can email, or MMS, but you don’t have a “batphone” to share to other services - sharing is sporadically available from app to app. So you take a picture, then open Facebook, then upload a picture (unless they’ve changed this in iOS5).
Android devices tend to have better cameras (although no tablets so far have cameras the quality of the iPhone 4, for instance, or the Droid Incredible), and they can share to many different services right from their Gallery app, so you can take a picture, then share it out to Facebook, Picasa, Dropbox, etc. within seconds. In addition, Android devices will sync with your Picasa web service, and your online images will be readily available from the tablet.
This is a big one - the obvious deficiency is that iOS doesn’t have Flash. While many media sites are augmenting or replacing Flash with HTML5 ond other iOS-friendly solutions, I’m still surprised when websites don’t render correctly. My kids’ school district page, for instance - half the functions, including most of their calendar, are not fully available in iOS, but are on my Android phone, just because of Flash.
Do you want capital-W Word? If so, you’re out of luck, since MSFT hasn’t yet put out an official tablet friendly version of Office - they’re probably waiting for Windows Tablet before releasing anything. Or do you just need a decent word processing software? iPads and Android devices both have some decent productivity apps (iWork is pretty sweet), but Google Docs can be a decent substitute depending on what you need to do:
Do you want to read content created on a PC/Mac?
Do you want to make light edits to content created elsewhere
Do you want full document authoring ability?
Do you need broad compatibility with other pc-based office applications?
I’d say for full functionality, the iPad slightly edges out Android in my experience, but for read-only or light editing, Android has better Google Docs integration. I use Google Docs quite a bit, and it suffices for almost all my personal needs. The only issue I’ve had is that sometimes formatting choices are difficult to use, but that’s on my phone - the GDocs experience may be (probably is) more robust on a Honeycomb tablet.
Just about everything does Youtube these days, in addition, Netflix, Vimeo. For music and movies, Android has a pretty good edge in multiple format compatibility (paging Mach Truck - Android has a couple apps that will support just about every video file, including RockPlayer and a Plex media client), while the iPad is tightly integrated with iTunes (you may feel this is good or bad - I hate iTunes). Android devices can sync from just about any major media player, either through an interface (using Spotify or DoubleTwist is seamless), or just drag/drop from Windows Explorer/Mac whatever-you-call-it. I prefer my Android phone for music, plus it offers apps for Amazon and Google music, which allow me to sync my music to the cloud and access it from any wifi connection. iPad is pretty much locked down to the built in music and movie player.
Based on your desire for a keyboard, I’d suggest an ASUS EEE Pad Transformer, which retails for about $400 for a 16GB model (unlike iPads, most Android devices offer MicroSD card slots, so no need to pay a lot for extra storage) and also offers a very sweet keyboard dock for around $150 that essentially turns it into a netbook, including a trackpad, provides a full-sized USB port, and also nearly doubles the battery life from around 9 hours to around 16. On review I see Gorsnak has suggested the same, so um… ditto.
I’m a huge gadget hound, and when (if) I get my year end bonus, I’ll be getting this tablet with the keyboard dock, despite much more expensive models on the market (iPad, Galaxy Tab, Xoom, etc.). I tried it out extensively at a Best Buy a few weeks ago, and really like it - I heard that the early models had a firmware glitch that drained the battery when using the dock, but this has since been fixed.
If you go into it expecting them to be so, you will be disappointed. They’re more limited.
But that being said, a tablet would fulfill 100% of my mother’s computer needs. It would fulfill 98% of most people’s computer needs in that you can get your email, surf the web, play a few games, do a few minor tasks.
Sure they are. They are small, and a bit lightweight, and the UI is not what we’re used to, but they’re certainly full blown computers. “Not full blown computers” is just Steve’s excuse for all the unnecessary limitations in iOS.
Absolutely - you can get Android apps that give you a full blown file-system, you can use a keyboard and mouse if you choose, and you can create and edit just about any type of content. Just as a low-end laptop cannot handle heavy-duty tasks, neither can a tablet - but it can do just about anything a low-end PC can, just differently, and it’s form factor and touchscreen offer even more functionality than most PCs.
Can you pick up a box of productivity software at Office Depot for $60 and run it on a tablet? No, but a small collection of free-to-$10 apps will accomplish much the same thing.
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