Year of the Tablet

[Contract Killer 24]

Many of you have seen the vast amount of tablets that are flooding the market this year. At first, I was strictly against them, mainly because of the ipad, which is essentially a glorified, oversized iphone that can't make calls. Now with tablets such as the Galaxy, Xoom, and Playbook, I've become interested.

One that really catches my eye is the Asus eee Pad Transformer. It runs Honeycomb, and has the dual core processor. It starts at $400 for the 16gb version, which really appeals to me. Also, for $150 you can get the chiklet keyboard that turns it into a netbook and extends battery life by 8 hours. I feel this device would be perfect for college.

Anyone else have some insight on the ever growing tablet market?

[Jiyeon 369]

Tablets are over hyped right now. The transformer actually looks decent, but I'm not sure about asus' ability to provide a good software experience for the user like Motorola or HTC or Apple. The Galaxy Tab is the perfect size imo, it's not too big, not too small. However, that being said, I think it's useless because it runs on 2.2 and samsung has been horrible with their software updates to android devices recently. The new Galaxy Tab 10.1 looks promising however as it is running honeycomb and is really REALLY thin. LG just put out their own tablet which I believe got good reviews so you could check that out.

The HTC Flyer looks good, but is overpriced for the specs. I like it because of its scribe technology. Thinking about what I would do with a tablet is exactly this: productivity with taking notes while still having the ability to utilize media and entertainment.

In all honesty, I think the tablet market is still too young and they are ALL just giant-sized android or ios media devices. I would still give it another year or two, but that's me.

Quick edit here, but if you're looking for a cheap and functional android device, look at the nook color by B&N. You can hack it to dual boot custom ROMs and Kernels of android. My friend has one running Android 2.3 and that thing is snappy. It costs $250, doesn't have cameras and is about the size of a Galaxy Tab. Check it out, this is honestly the best and most affordable option right now.

Honestly, I wish the Microsoft Courier had come to fruition, because that was EVERYTHING i was looking for in a device like this. My 2 cents.

[Guitar Guy 25]

16gb of Storage? HAH.

Most people have more than 16gb of music; You're talking about running an OS on it then having room leftover for your stuff? Nope.

A dual core processor is a step in the right direction, but still doesn't provide the performance for serious multitasking. Which is why I will wait for some cheap quad core tablets and cheap SSDs before I buy a tablet.

The casual joe will love tablets though.

[Jiyeon 369]

16gb of Storage? HAH.

Most people have more than 16gb of music; You're talking about running an OS on it then having room leftover for your stuff? Nope.

A dual core processor is a step in the right direction, but still doesn't provide the performance for serious multitasking. Which is why I will wait for some cheap quad core tablets and cheap SSDs before I buy a tablet.

The casual joe will love tablets though.

Realistically would you carry that much music with you on a tablet? I don't even fill my ipod up with 8g of music simply because I don't need to have my entire library on it at all times.

[Frosted Butts 53]

The casual joe will love tablets though.

Sums up the whole tablet thing pretty well

[alson 1]

razer switchblade FTW

[Dojima 7619]

The iPad is the best tablet, sadly. I'll wait for someone else to make one better than it before I bother. I'd also like to wait for cellular data rates to go down a bit more.

16gb of Storage? HAH.

Most people have more than 16gb of music; You're talking about running an OS on it then having room leftover for your stuff? Nope.

What could you possibly put on it that would take up so much room? It's too cumbersome to bother putting your entire music library on, and it's not really the sort of device where you back up your entire TV/movie collection.

[Masa 3]

i think the tablets are growing only because young ppl blow up the iphone and older ppl want soemthing different. plus its hard to read on the iphone and stuff. Also old ppl like to read, and dont wanna carry books. so ipads are used by means of convinience to satisfy both those needs.

[Guitar Guy 25]

The iPad is the best tablet, sadly. I'll wait for someone else to make one better than it before I bother. I'd also like to wait for cellular data rates to go down a bit more.

What could you possibly put on it that would take up so much room? It's too cumbersome to bother putting your entire music library on, and it's not really the sort of device where you back up your entire TV/movie collection.

Let's say the OS takes up 2gb of space.

Formatted as NTFS, you'd have ~15gb of useable space.

2gb for the OS, that leaves 13gb of space.

A single TV Show is around 400mb, and a full movie is ~700mb (Standard Definition)

Say you have around a thousand songs that are low quality....Around 4gb total.

That leaves 9gb for applications, movies, and other things. Idunno, just doesn't seem like something that I would carry with me. Not enough storage.

Sure you wouldn't bring your entire music collection, but many people have far more than 16gb of music that they enjoy listening to.

Same with movies. Who doesn't have more than 16gb of movies that they would like to watch without swapping them from the SSD?

[Yiyas 66]

Just me but I think tablets are better for businessmen/women over mr average joe. You can store a boatload of powerpoints, spreadsheets, high def images, 3d models, notes and whatevertheshits on just 1gb. Other people have used them in their stores as item scanners and for credit card transactions as well as in store online ordering.

Oh and I have 103gb of movies and music, no way I'd use a tablet for music but for taking several movies I like wouldn't be too bad. I used to have a little 30gb Archos for movies though, was eeeepic.

[Jiyeon 369]

Just me but I think tablets are better for businessmen/women over mr average joe. You can store a boatload of powerpoints, spreadsheets, high def images, 3d models, notes and whatevertheshits on just 1gb. Other people have used them in their stores as item scanners and for credit card transactions as well as in store online ordering.

Oh and I have 103gb of movies and music, no way I'd use a tablet for music but for taking several movies I like wouldn't be too bad. I used to have a little 30gb Archos for movies though, was eeeepic.

My buddy (Sam Fisher as some of you guys might know) just got an iPad 2 and uses it to show clients his photography portfolio as well as an organizer and to help network with people. The average joe loves gimmicky stuff like tablets and this can be easily utilized by artists to attract people to them and their work.

Tablets can be useful to anyone if they make use of them (seems redundant) but a lot of people just get tablets for games and videos. I, for one, still think they are too expensive for what they are.

Although, netflix and hulu+ on the ipad are pretty cool - waiting for these services on android .

[Beefwipe 11]

@ Guitar Gay

If you're using more than 16GB on a tablet, then tablets aren't what you should be using?

[Clay 24]

razer switchblade FTW

No.

The Motorola Atrix is retarded awesome. Not a tablet, but very similar.

[Jiyeon 369]

No.

The Motorola Atrix is retarded awesome. Not a tablet, but very similar.

I heard it is kind of wonky, but that's because I listen to everything engadget tells me.

[Clay 24]

I heard it is kind of wonky, but that's because I listen to everything engadget tells me.

I haven't listened to Gawker since they started sucking Apple's cock right after the iPad got announced (they did before, but it wasn't as bad as it was with iPad fever) and Kotaku became a haven for xbox-tards.