Do you have a tablet? Would I like it? Should I wait to buy one? Please Post.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by Gadget_girl

ddtavian, I noticed you bought and iPad for your son. That's also what my son wants. Based on the useability, which would you consider to be more intuitive / easy to use for young teens?

Probably best to take him to an Apple store one weekend and let him spend time with one so you can see for yourself.

[Adoby]

No, no! Blasfemy!!! This is NOT a fruit forum!!!

Avoid fruity devices at all costs. I had a friend who bought an iPad, and it destroyed him completely. Now he also has an iPhone and is a passive uncritical fruit consumer and a rabid fruit evangelist, even worse than some here. Gadget_girl: Please try to keep your child from the dark side!

[denisek]

Originally Posted by Adoby

No, no! Blasfemy!!! This is NOT a fruit forum!!!

Avoid fruity devices at all costs. I had a friend who bought an iPad, and it destroyed him completely. Now he also has an iPhone and is a passive uncritical fruit consumer and a rabid fruit evangelist, even worse than some here. Gadget_girl: Please try to keep your child from the dark side!

I have a son that went to the "dark side" for his laptop. Kept on busting my chops when my windows laptop had problems.

Well guess who loves their android incredible and xoom?

Their is still hope for those on the dark side.

The Xoom has just come down in price to $499 (I actually got mine at Staples for $449 using the [newspaper ad] coupon for $50 off. That's for 32 Gbyte with a working SD Card slot and USB. It makes for a nice ebook reader (I use Cool+ Reader for Android) with its 10" screen.

IMHO, it's the best build quality of any tablet (and I've had the Acer and an IPad) although slightly heavier than either. Also, It was just updated to Android 3.2 by Google and that now makes it capable to run a mouse.

You might want to look into the XOOM - I went to it from a Samsung Galaxy 7" Tab (that I also thought was very well built).

[FatDog]

I just got my Viewsonic GTab - 10 inches with USB, microUSB and SD card. $260 from various sites.

A friend rooted it and installed Gingerbread version of Android and Vegan 7.0.0 ROM.

I used the Android Marketplace to add Flash, MoboPlayer for videos, Kindle app and a 8 gig SD card from an old phone.

It is in the other room at the moment with a black carbon-fiber skin drying on it. It looks like a military device now-slightly evil which I kind of like. (I may buy a skin for my Macbook).

Similar to this:





EBOOK TEST

I picked up where I left off with a Kindle book last night. Unlike the Kindle - the main screen shows thumbnails of the covers - fairly cool. In Portraiture mode and shrunk down fonts I see almost twice as much text as I see on the kindle. The Kindle app does NOT support pinch to shrink or enlarge but the menu has good presets as well as White-on-Black, Black-on-White and Sepa settings. I can actually read in the dark.

The screen works OK as long as you look straight at it. I discovered the screen is really reflective to my light above my headboard but since it is back-lit, I turned off that light and I was fine.

I have not tried PDF but am told it works well.

I am planning to DL Alkido for epubs.

My company pays for us to have access to the Oreilly technical bookshelf. My co-workers have iPads but cannot access it because it uses Flash. But I can


VIDEO TEST

After installing Flash I was able to go to ESPN3 and start watching a replay of a Women's World Cup game.

I downloaded some various video files in several resolutions. Some extensions like FLV and MKV are containers for different file formats so I noted what codex they contained.

Note: If MoboPlayer cannot play a file - it prompts you to long-press a file and choose "Soft Decoding" which I assume means a software instead of hardware video playback. When I say "SoftDecoding" below - this was the case.

So far:

AVI 560x432
AVI 720x400
FLV (AVI) 1092x1080 - soft-decoding - played at half speed
MKV (AVI) 1028x720 - soft-decoding - played at half speed
MOV 640x360
MP4 1028x720 - soft-decoding but played fine
MP4 192x1080 - soft-decoding - half speed
MKV 1028x720 - soft-decoding but played slightly jerky
WMV 640x480
WMV 720x480
WMV 1025x720

GAMES

Angry Birds and Stupid Zombies work great. I am told I can buy Gameloft games but have not figured out how to do this yet. (Gameloft makes some great first-person shooters, RPG's for cell phones.)

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by denisek

I have a son that went to the "dark side" for his laptop. Kept on busting my chops when my windows laptop had problems.

Well guess who loves their android incredible and xoom?

Their is still hope for those on the dark side.

[ddavtian]

Originally Posted by Gadget_girl

ddtavian, I noticed you bought and iPad for your son. That's also what my son wants. Based on the useability, which would you consider to be more intuitive / easy to use for young teens? It's nice to see that most of the apps aren't very expensive. I've gotten tired over the years of $10 - $20+ computer games for my son, and his latest unfulfilled wishlist included several subscription games at more than $6 / month. So chances are pretty good that he'd be able to talk me into a game with a one time fee of under $5.
.

Teenagers will find all tablets intuitive enough, I'm sure. My son is 14, his phone is Android. I bought him iPad last summer when there were no Android tablets (I bought the first one in November, Galaxy tab). All his friends had iPhones or iPods, we went to Apple store, he picked the tab. Whatever he does on iPad (watching ESPN, playing few games, playing music) he can easily do on Android.

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by emt

IMHO, it's the best build quality of any tablet (and I've had the Acer and an IPad)

Originally Posted by fatdog

The screen works OK as long as you look straight at it.

My company pays for us to have access to the Oreilly technical bookshelf. My co-workers have iPads but cannot access it because it uses Flash.

Does anyone truly believe that they ignore such a significant part of the mobile market? at anyone who does. From their website:

Search and access books directly from your iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Nokia, Windows Mobile smartphone or mobile device.

Even access books on Safari Books Online from any internet connection on your Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook or Apple iPad.

Mobile Site link: m.safaribooksonline.com

http://my.safaribooksonline.com/home?subpage=hometab2