So guys,
What's the alternative from a WINDOWS (or otherwise) point of view? And prices! Genuine question, as if a WINDOWS TABLET was of a similar price, it would be insane to buy the iPad and its "limited OS"....
So, is there anything else on the market which is an iPad and more?
Gary.
Well for starters you have the Archos range, more precisely the Archos 7 and 9
The
Archos 7 runs Linux on a 7" screen of 800x480 so essentially the same usability as the iPad, those are £250
The
Archos 9 has a 9" screen running 1024x600 runs W7, 1GB RAM and 60GB HDD. Yeah not quite a proper slate computer but closer than any other I have found. That's £500
Then you have a few others, obviously the HP one that has been batted around, but not much known about that and also the
Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid, not quite a slate but has the aility to run as both a standard 11.6" laptop (with W7) and snapdragon powered slate. The slate using their own OS apparently and weighing in at 750g (making the ~650g iPad relatielt heavy).
I'm still hoping in the near future someone will release the "slate" part of that lenova with a core 2 processor and 2-4Gb of RAM (When you consider the Dell Adamo and Apples Macbook Air and their size/power ratio it shouldn't be that difficult!).
As for the iPad, it looks nice as a randow coffee table impliment except it fails majorly in it's main tasks:
No wide or HD screen, making you either watch cropped films or tiny images in the middle of the screen.
No full web browser meaning the web viewing is crippled. Yeah the lach of flash (and other plugins) is a little annoying on a 4" phone screen however it's a major issue in a 10"device!
The use of a backlit LCD screen. Apparently this is meant to destroy the Kindle, well it won't... The whole reason e readers have taken off recently is due to their massive battery life, relative cheapness and e ink screens, the iPad has none of these...
If the OS was more open I could see it as an excellent media controller. You could turn lights on and off in your house (depending on having automated systems), adjust the music playing and view tv listings/ films on your HTPC and select a film to watch at the touch of a button. Not going to happen though...
EDIT: Anyone actually know anything about the HP slate, other than it has a 10" screen? From the width of it it does look more powerful than both the Archos and iPad so hopefully it will be running a full laptop system underneath and not 1GB RAM, small HDD and snapdragon processor.