Righty, so I just got my quarterly bonus and it is slowly burning a hole in my bank account and I am thinking of blowing it on a tablet.

The 'obvious' choice would be to get an iPad too but I'm not sure I can live within the restaints of the iTunes ecosystem and think it might be a bit limited.

I'd say I'm a bit of a fanboy when it comes to Android so I'm quite tempted by the Asus eee pad transformer with the keyboard dock.

Just wondering if there's other options I could look at. Looking to spend about £400.

Jaimz

you can get an all singing & dancing one for £400

do some research on slate / droid forums & then look at aliexpress  buy almost direct from
the manufacturer - you may even find some custom firmwares on the forums.

I got one a few months back & installed a custom firmware - dont worry about them only
saying 4gb or what not, as you can take the lid off & swap the miniSD card for a bigger one.
Plenty of guides & what not.


Personally... if you got £400 though, Id get an Ipad.

Only one right now worth anything is the ipad2.
The playbook is getting bad reviews.

If you can wait till during the summer soon there will be the HP Tablets using the WebOS which should be very good and the Samsung Galaxy 2 tablets with Android Honeycomb should be out as well and these look very good tablets too.
Ipad 2 will have the sheer number of apps on both platforms though but then how many apps are really worth a dam out of all those that you use constantly - not that many really.

Completely disagree with Nexus on the iPad2 being the only thing around at the moment...

Tons of Honeycomb tabs coming out over the next couple of months and hardware is pretty similar on all of them (most are based off the nVidia Tegra 2 chipset) - only differences seem to be what screens they use and general look.

The Xoom came out unfinished last month at a wooping £600 which is no-where near worth it but NotionInk, Asus, Samsung, LG, and few others that aren't coming to mind are all releasing their own Honeycomb Tegra 2 tablets now or next month.

I've been following it for a while now and the Asus Transformer is winning at the moment for my 2 buy list - £430 with the dock to give you a 16hr Netbook! HDMI out, USB, all the other bells and whistles (and hey it plays flash out of the box too! )

The only thing you have to be careful with on the Android tablet is the same issue on the phones... companies putting their own crappy software on instead of the stock Android OS but as I root and flash a custom rom on my stuff thats not too much of an issue.

Quote from: Dooms on April 25, 2011, 22:40:17 PM
Completely disagree with Nexus on the iPad2 being the only thing around at the moment...

Tons of Honeycomb tabs coming out over the next couple of months and hardware is pretty similar on all of them (most are based off the nVidia Tegra 2 chipset) - only differences seem to be what screens they use and general look.

Think you missread my post mate. Ipad2 is the only one worth anything out now. I also noted things coming out in the next few months which will have good and bad points but they are not out yet.

QuoteThe Xoom came out unfinished last month at a wooping £600 which is no-where near worth it but NotionInk, Asus, Samsung, LG, and few others that aren't coming to mind are all releasing their own Honeycomb Tegra 2 tablets now or next month.

I've been following it for a while now and the Asus Transformer is winning at the moment for my 2 buy list - £430 with the dock to give you a 16hr Netbook! HDMI out, USB, all the other bells and whistles (and hey it plays flash out of the box too!

)
The Honeycomb ones will be a lot like phones, lots of them but not many that really stand out. NotionInk's looks average with nice concepts, Asus will be average, Samsung's looks great!, LG is a maybe.

Quote
The only thing you have to be careful with on the Android tablet is the same issue on the phones... companies putting their own crappy software on instead of the stock Android OS but as I root and flash a custom rom on my stuff thats not too much of an issue.

Less likely as Google are tightening up on this.
It will actually be the key bits of polish needed on the hardware and only a select few companies will do that. Most will just try and churn them out for a quick sale.
No doubt their are ipad2 rivals out there but you need to remember a lot of current ones in the works were looking to be ipad beaters and now have to compete with the ipad2 and ipad3 which could see a release before a full year has passed. Apple just did enough to make sure they have sales over a lot of the tablets launching this summer and every review will compare to the ipad2 and if it has to many negatives people will see that and not buy them.

I am hoping the HP Web OS 10 incher is as good as it looks as I want it BUT things like seeing the photoshop ipad2 app which puts what you have done onto your actual machines photoshop with just a click for me and my work is really appealing.

Have had 3 tablets for work eval now - none of them was worthy of wiping the iPads arse. (Dell Duo, Galaxy, some other android slate thingy)
In my experience all the extra bits they've tended to bolt on just to differentiate have generally been clunky, and have never made up for the performance difference. iPads are what sold me on Apple after many years of hating them, and theres a damn good reason for that.

Get a second hand Ipad off ebay for 230-260 quid, save the rest for when tablets starting getting really good in 18-24 months or spend it on beer!

After living with one for a month they are both brilliant and frustrating at the same time and not worth 400 quid+ of your hard earned IMO! 

http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/04/26/sony-aandroid-tablets/

iPads are fine for browsing/play but don't expect to do any (proficient) work on them.

Quote from: Eagle on April 27, 2011, 12:48:51 PM
iPads are fine for browsing/play but don't expect to do any (proficient) work on them.

I think it's pretty much going to be the same for any tablet TBH, unless it is running a proper OS...

But it really depends on your work and what you need it to-do, I know sales people who only use iPads now, they only need to bring up presentations, send emails and general browsing.. Also I'm quite impressed with the number of techy apps now available, VNC, network browsing, SSH, telnet only to mention a few.

I'm working from home today and have my email open on my iPad, and will pretty much do everything I need it todo, I can open attachments etc and send emails, but I don't think I'd use it for things like writing documents etc, mostly because the auto replace gets a bit annoying after a while (you can't leave spell check on, but turn auto replace off?!)

It'll never replace a laptop, but does mean I use mine a whole lot less, and mines a heavy laptop it's much easier using the ipad for what I use my laptop most of the time, mostly as I don't have to lug it around. I use mine mostly for a internet/email/films/tv/VPN/VNC/viewing docs/pics, so it's a good device to give access to information, just not always manipulating that information..

I don't think the iPad was ever going to be a laptop killer, and pretty much the same with any tablet that runs a limited OS, not to mention you need a laptop/computer to register and sync the iPad!.

I've pretty much narrowed my options to an iPad 2 16gb wifi or an Asus Eee Pad Transformer with keyboard dock, if in fact I splash out at all..

Jaimz

http://www.viewsonic.com/products/vpad10.htm

I would be tempted to wait for Honeycomb if you feel iPad is not for you, it's not for everyone.

Quote from: Eagle on April 27, 2011, 12:48:51 PM
iPads are fine for browsing/play but don't expect to do any (proficient) work on them.

Eagle, what things do you mean?

Tasking apps on it are great, Websites such as basecamp for work have versions for ipad that work great.... The photoshop apps that are coming look great! And there are already examples of great artwork done on ipads.
Good apps are there if you know about them.

Even with good apps, the apps are individual, they do not speak to one another and never will.  There are fantastic file management apps, fantastic office apps.  Unfortunately there are no apps provide particular solutions unless you have one developed.  if your company is some major pharmaceutical with inhouse development for an inhouse purchasing/stock management/CRM system, great, your in luck. 

We've trailed Ipads for a group of Surveyors that are trying to go paperless.  Instead of making a dictation, e-mailing the dictation to the office for typing up.  They want to be able create the report, onsite, on a template.  Then VPN in to the specific secure file share via 3G/Wifi and increase the number of surveys.

Unfortunately, I have not found one app that that can let me work on a Onenote/Excel/Word file and then take it from the storage of that and use a file explorer type app through use of a VPN Connection and AD authentication.

......I have found individual broken apps.

Quote from: Cypher on April 28, 2011, 13:04:39 PM
Even with good apps, the apps are individual, they do not speak to one another and never will.  There are fantastic file management apps, fantastic office apps.  Unfortunately there are no apps provide particular solutions unless you have one developed.  if your company is some major pharmaceutical with inhouse development for an inhouse purchasing/stock management/CRM system, great, your in luck. 

We've trailed Ipads for a group of Surveyors that are trying to go paperless.  Instead of making a dictation, e-mailing the dictation to the office for typing up.  They want to be able create the report, onsite, on a template.  Then VPN in to the specific secure file share via 3G/Wifi and increase the number of surveys.

Unfortunately, I have not found one app that that can let me work on a Onenote/Excel/Word file and then take it from the storage of that and use a file explorer type app through use of a VPN Connection and AD authentication.

......I have found individual broken apps.

Not really entirely true here though, they can speak to each other, I can click on an attachment in my email, and tell it to open in file browser and other apps, and from there I can copy to my local network? Is that not similar to what you want to do? I don't know about the iPad version of word as I haven't bought it yet, but expect similar functionality?