Buying a -Pad for the wife

I have very little time on Android (mainly helping computer illiterates set some app up or os setting), bit it seems...primitive? I suppose most any Android slate could be hacked to run ubuntu or jolicloud though...but then you'd lose hardware comparability for things like webcams...

I have yet to see a full blown os tablet with good battery life.
 
OK, let's keep the mini or maxi questions to a minimum here.

We've been a single computer household for a few years now and she's after either a laptop or something like the iPad. Our daughter is turning 8 this summer and the device is likely to be somewhat shared between the two. Which means dad will be playing tech support, and this weighs heavily toward my final purchase decision. So I am leaning toward a Dell laptop for this reason alone, but I also think a iPad would be cool for my daughter to play around with (so long as she keeps it out of reach of her 3.5yo brother and his lightsaber he got for christmas).

i bought the barnes and noble nook color for $250 and rooted it and now its a 7 inch 800mhz 512 meg tablet. Its the cheapest option and you can most likely get 2 of them for the cost of an ipad.

Also the new ipads are already in production so it be silly to buy now


I'd also go to sprint and get one of their wireless hotspot devices and just bring it with , $60 a month for unlimited 4g acess and 3g acess isn't a bad deal. Though i just use my phone to tether with
 
i bought the barnes and noble nook color for $250 and rooted it and now its a 7 inch 800mhz 512 meg tablet. Its the cheapest option and you can most likely get 2 of them for the cost of an ipad.

But no webcam :(

It's a great little root-tab though.
 
But no webcam :(

It's a great little root-tab though.

I'd think no web cam is a great feature to be missing when you have young children who might not know better when online


I wanted to add , that the nook is really for my mother so she can play bejewled and some other games on it , its easier for her than a full on laptop and much smaller. For $250 you can't really go wrong.

Personaly i want a fusion tablet hopefully dual cores will hit at the end of summer and i can get a nice 30th birthday gift


Damn I'm old :(
 
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Apparently to Apple/AT&T bandwidth is the new crude that ships in barrels.

Pricing for mobile Internet connections seem to be going to hell everywhere. I quess the operators are in a tough spot, but some of these prices are a joke. It's happening here also. One of the biggest companies here in Finland changed their policy last fall and their pricing is similar to what's seen in this thread.

It was funny when their add said at first "use the internet freely as much as you want" and then after the policy change it literally said "use the internet almost freely as much as you want" :LOL: Meaning 15e for 1GB... That's like having an all you can eat buffee with litte* saying almost with small print and then letting you eat one hamburger.

I don't need super fast connection on my smart phone and the performance of the 3g connection imo makes the slower connections better value/$. I have now an unlimited 512kbs connection for only 4.99e and in everyday use it's not that much slower than my old 5Mb connection.

One thing is for sure I will never pay 15e for 1GB or something like that.

As for pads I'm also waiting to see what Ipad 2 is going to be like.
 
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Android pads should be much improved with the release of Honeycomb in a month or two. It would probably be worth waiting another couple of months to see which new devices become available. We'll probably have more info about the new iPad as well.

I must say that I've been impressed with the specifications of some of the cheaper Android tabs already available. Here in the UK, you can get the Advent Vega for under £250 - pretty much the same device as the Viewsonic G Tablet, I believe? Tegra2 chipset, 512MB memory which is pretty good for the price - you can't get a mobile phone with such specs for anywhere near this price!

The firmware is improving for these devices (the initial releases were unsurprisingly rubbish) and, with a reasonably large enthusiast community developing for the them, I don't doubt that we'll see Honeycomb ports to them before too long.

I'd probably buy one myself as a techy toy but the panels apparently aren't of a particularly high quality for these budget devices at present. Crappy viewing angles and the like.

However, I'm hopeful that by Christmas newer cheap devices will be available with better screens. For example, here's a report from MWC indicating that ZTE will be releasing a 7" tablet with a PixelQi screen before too long:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv22qYg3wbE
 
Last I looked, the Android phones and tablets were the only ones that do multitasking. Is that still true, and in how far is that noticeable? Because at least half the handy stuff I can think of needs to run in the background.

I only have a simple phone, because I think the screen of smart-phones is too small to be really useful, and for most of the stuff you might want to do with it, I want a keyboard or other useful way to enter text.

I think Asus got it again: I'm looking at the Eee Pad Slider and Transformer as being useful: The slider is small (carry-able) and has a built-in keyboard, while the Transformer is full-size but has a detachable keyboard.

Both also use the much more practical 1280x800 resolution as opposed to 1366x768: you can fit a standard-size page readable on the first, and not on the latter. Which is what I expect from a tablet; I'm more likely to use it as a book or other printed page replacement, than I'm to use it to watch video.
 
Last I looked, the Android phones and tablets were the only ones that do multitasking. Is that still true, and in how far is that noticeable? Because at least half the handy stuff I can think of needs to run in the background.

I only have a simple phone, because I think the screen of smart-phones is too small to be really useful, and for most of the stuff you might want to do with it, I want a keyboard or other useful way to enter text.

I think Asus got it again: I'm looking at the Eee Pad Slider and Transformer as being useful: The slider is small (carry-able) and has a built-in keyboard, while the Transformer is full-size but has a detachable keyboard.

Both also use the much more practical 1280x800 resolution as opposed to 1366x768: you can fit a standard-size page readable on the first, and not on the latter. Which is what I expect from a tablet; I'm more likely to use it as a book or other printed page replacement, than I'm to use it to watch video.

The playbook (blackberry) will be multitasking, but not out yet.
 
Btw, the difference between 768 and 800 pixels might seem too small to make a noticeable difference, but if you specify "fit height" on a 1280 pixels display, it will fit and you only lose part of the margins on the side. While you lose part of the content on a 1366 pixel display if you do the same, so you have to specify "fit width", which leaves large borders on top and below, and makes things hard to read, unless the pages are smallish.

Ok, that's a limit in the available software for the most part, but most applications that I know have that problem.
 
Both also use the much more practical 1280x800 resolution as opposed to 1366x768: you can fit a standard-size page readable on the first, and not on the latter. Which is what I expect from a tablet; I'm more likely to use it as a book or other printed page replacement, than I'm to use it to watch video.

Yeah, IMO, 16:9 is absolutely horrible for tablets unless the majority of everything you do is watch video as portrait mode becomes entirely too cramped in width. I absolutely HATE my current slate with a 16:9 display, absolutely horrible and almost useless in portrait view.

16:10 however is just barely better but at least it's a good compromise between video watching and being able to do other things.

Myself I personally wish someone would release a 4:3 display on a tablet. Not particularly good for watching widescreen video but much better for productivity or reading standard sized documents. 16:11 would be an even better compromise but I doubt anyone is going to make a non-standard ratio display.

Regards,
SB
 
I agree. 16:9 displays on laptops are just as horrible if you want to do something else than watching a movie as well, like doing Office work, browsing or programming. Ie: the things you expect most users to do with them. But there is little choice, nowadays.

That's the main thing that makes me fancy an Asus Eee Transformer: a laptop with portrait mode, that's also a usable tablet!
 
Btw, that's my main gripe against Office 2007 as well: why put that stupid ribbon on the top? Half the people I see working with any version of Office have a third of the top of their screen obstructed by toolbars or ribbons, and most of the screen real-estate at the sides is unused! Putting the start menu/task bar of Windows at the side helps, but it's still a silly way to "progress".
 
Btw, that's my main gripe against Office 2007 as well: why put that stupid ribbon on the top? Half the people I see working with any version of Office have a third of the top of their screen obstructed by toolbars or ribbons, and most of the screen real-estate at the sides is unused! Putting the start menu/task bar of Windows at the side helps, but it's still a silly way to "progress".

Heh, all my Office application work is done on my 24" monitor in portrait mode while Excell utilises the 30" in landscape. So I don't really run into that issue. As well my taskbar is located on the 24" monitor at the top 5 "rows" deep. All that excess vertical space from a 16:10 monitor comes in useful as a buffer for those menu systems and taskbar while still allowing adequate space to display full page documents.

I do something similar with a slate, but it's more of a PITA there as I have to relocate the taskbar everytime I switch from portrait (on top) to landscape (on the right). Well, I don't "have" to, I could just have the taskbar auto-hide, but that drives me nuts. :D Absolutely hate the fact that 16:9 is just entirely too restrictive for computing, requiring me to have to do this to gain useable screen space.

Regards,
SB
 
I agree. I use my 32" television as monitor at home, and a laptop at work, outside and in bed. Portrait mode on a laptop (which I do use often) works, as long as you don't use the keyboard. Samsung made it really convenient to switch. But the 16:9 aspect ratio is terrible.

And it's a great hassle putting my tv in portrait mode and back! Which doesn't even work all that well, as it's 16:9 as well, of course. But I still do it regularly anyway.
 
John, if you do wind up buying an iPad, make sure you grab the application "Infinity Blade." While I won't argue the advantages of an iPad, personally I think it's kind of silly for me to buy one, at this point in time. I have an iPhone and it's satisfies my hand held technological "needs."
 
Heh, wife's birthday is March 9th and she already ordered herself a Longaberger basket. Plus I just calculated at current gas prices the cost of driving the Honda Odyssey down to Orlando and then Naples and back here in a month (cries bitter tears of bankruptcy). Otherwise I'd be tempted to surprise her with a iPad 2 for her birthday.
 
Heh, wife's birthday is March 9th and she already ordered herself a Longaberger basket. Plus I just calculated at current gas prices the cost of driving the Honda Odyssey down to Orlando and then Naples and back here in a month (cries bitter tears of bankruptcy). Otherwise I'd be tempted to surprise her with a iPad 2 for her birthday.

Well her birthday is before the release date, so you're safe, tell her maybe next year. ;)
 
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