Okay, Are there really any iPad alternatives?

[scottjl]

Originally Posted by leebase

I love my iPad. However, why wouldn't I want an sd card slots? Sd cards are cheap -- I'd load up a set of cards with movies and tv shows before going on vacation. If I had that option. But I don't.

see my post a few above yours. as i explained, you can put movies and shows onto SD cards and import them using the camera kit.

for more information see this article over on TidBITS.

@richman, me personally. no. i would not like a larger screen as a larger screen means a larger device. the iPad (for me) is the perfect size to carry or throw in a backpack to lug along. it's fine for reading a page of text or a web site on. pinch and stretch works fine for zooming in if i need to see detail or an overall view. the full size of the ipad is slightly smaller than a sheet of paper. if you add a case it gets a little bit larger. but it's still small enough to nestle in between a stack of reports and papers in my backpack (which add extra protection). if it were a full page size, then with case it would be larger. it might not fit as well in my backpack and it would stick out in between those reports. if the screen were full page sized, even more awkward.

engadget did a report of the JooJoo, which has a huge screen, one of their complaints, awkward to handle, too large.

with the device in hand, and scrolling, panning, pinching and stretching so close at and and easy to do, i don't see a need for a larger screen.

hell, it's larger than my original mac had at 512x384! certainly better than the CRT's i used in the 70's. and you'd be surprised the difference of an extra 168 pixels makes over my 1024x600 netbook's screen, and 1024x768 is still one of the dominant screen resolutions

[leebase]

Thanks for the heads up about using the camera connection device. Perhaps I'll pick one up for father's day

Still, I'd rather not have to copy 5gig sized files.

Lee

[Bob Russell]

There have been a few posts suggesting that I might have rigged the baseline specs to favor the iPad. I probably would have thought that if I had read this post as well. So I should say that I don't have any specific interest in making the iPad look good. Quite the opposite - I'm looking to get something myself and these specs are what I need to be happy with a device.

And I am focused on US-available devices because I'm in the U.S. But I'm sure there are many international readers that are interested in other device options available world-wide.

I played with an iPad the first week they came out and it's very slick. I like the long battery life (it's important to me to have 10+ hours because I don't want to have to worry about battery and don't want to have to carry an adapter with me). I didn't like that you have to swipe the screen to turn pages - I prefer to lazily click a button, but it's not a big deal.

I want an sd card slot because I want to carry a very large library of documents. Having an sd card slot gives me the option of having as much storage as I want and moving between devices as well.

The convertible tablet is actually my preferred solution. The only problem is that in terms of battery life and speed and size, I think they have a way to go. I have a bigger bulky Lenovo x61t right now, but the size and weight and fan all make it not so good for e-book reading and not so portable. I really hate the way the extended battery pokes out the back (and yet I only get 5+ hrs of battery life). Still, if there was a good $500 netbook convertible with 10+hr battery life and typical 10" netbook size and weight, it would probably be at the top of my list.

Thanks to everyone for the great thoughts and suggestions. Keep 'em coming if you have more ideas and input!!!!

[Bob Russell]

Oh, and with respect to the adapter/camera kit thingy... I get the impression it's only for photos/movies. I'm not sure you can access e-books and other documents. If that's true, it's just another example of how the closed nature of the device "robs" us of functionality in ways that don't really show up on the spec sheet. Maybe they will relent in the next generation iPad, but by then we should have many alternatives to choose from.

[ficbot]

One of the features that interests me about the ipad is the instant on. I hate having my students sitting there waiting while Windows boots up. I travel from class to class (I am a specialty teacher) so I can't set it up before the class starts. They have to wait while I do it. And my netbook has to always be plugged in so that is more to carry around and the wall outlets are not always in the best spots. Runs all day without being plugged in plus instant on are the two features which make me think this will be an ideal netbook replacement for me at school.

[athlonkmf]

Originally Posted by ChrisC333

Would it be impolite to ask why you still bought one then?

No, i'll be glad to clarify my opinion.

When I bought my T91, the ipad was still not announced. And I went for the specs only.
Touchscreen, 1024x600, rotatable, 2xSD-cardslots, videochip with H264-decode built in, SSD, 8 hours of usage. Sounds great doesn't it?

I thought so too. So I just bought it on impulse. But the negative points showed up real quickly. Sluggishness, drivers which aren't fully supported, and clunky touch interface.

The standard 1GB ram was not enough for windows 7, so I had to upgrade to 2GB. No biggie, because ram is cheap nowadays.
But even with 2GB ram, the machine just feels sluggish. Every two or three tabs in firefox or chrome, and the machine hangs for a minute or longer.
This is due to the slow SSD. An upgrade would cost me another 100 dollar.

OK, so I can watch high-res MKV-movies with it, thanks to the internal decoder. But to LOAD up such a file takes quite awhile thanks to the slow SSD. And the decoder don't do anything with flashvideo. Youtube in highres would stutter. If you close everything, then it's bearable. But that's it.

The screen is just too small to do anything in landscape mode. But rotating is really slow...

Anyway... morale is, the specs can be great, but it's the overall experience that really counts.

To conclude: the T91 was an impulse buy. The ipad certainly is not. I've waited 3 months for it. And literally EVERY DAY, I've thought up more usecases for it.

[AdamGott]

From what I have seen, nothing in the upcoming 'announced iPad killer' category is going to be able to compete with the iPad's battery life. I get 10+ hours with mine between charges (quite a bit more with wifi turned off) and I haven't seen much to make me think that anyone will be able to compete with this spec for a while.

Of course the iPad batteries are not easily user replacable which is a major downside to the whole thing!

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by AdamGott

From what I have seen, nothing in the upcoming 'announced iPad killer' category is going to be able to compete with the iPad's battery life. I get 10+ hours with mine between charges (quite a bit more with wifi turned off) and I haven't seen much to make me think that anyone will be able to compete with this spec for a while.

Of course the iPad batteries are not easily user replacable which is a major downside to the whole thing!

Why don't you think anyone can compete with this?

It's a battery, and an OS and a chip, all optimized for power savings. There is no reason why others cannot achieve this, the same way Android phones have similar battery life to the iPhone.

[Magnesus]

Originally Posted by AdamGott

From what I have seen, nothing in the upcoming 'announced iPad killer' category is going to be able to compete with the iPad's battery life.

Notion Ink Adam.
But it has 1024x600 resolution, unusable in portrait and quite short in height in landscape.

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by Magnesus

Notion Ink Adam.
But it has 1024x600 resolution, unusable in portrait and quite short in height in landscape.

Congratulations you are the winner of the unfounded and needless hyperbole of the day award.

Portrait use on such a device will be perfectly fine for most things and landscape will be superior for most video use.

[athlonkmf]

Originally Posted by Crowl

Congratulations you are the winner of the unfounded and needless hyperbole of the day award.

Portrait use on such a device will be perfectly fine for most things and landscape will be superior for most video use.

No it won't.
It's the same problem I have with my netbook(s).

In portrait, i'd need to scroll left-right a lot, because the sites I visit are designed for at least 800px width. On the ipad, the 768px is just enough to see the whole site on portrait, albleit a "zoomed out". But ipad's zooming is very fast, so no problem there.
Not only for websites, it's awkward for magazines and comics too. They're usually in 4:3-ratio. On my netbook the pages are squashed too much to be readable (depends on the fontsize).

On landscape, a lot of screen estate is gone when you're using desktop browsers like chrome, firefox, IE, etc. This is due to the bookmarksbar, the tabsbar, the urlbar. (google reader is even more annoying, as it's a framed page. Meaning you only see like 100px of the content you want to see)
On the ipad, there is standard minimalist design for the browser, but still, rotating is no problem at all. It's speedy.

[Magnesus]

@Crowl - I tested this resolution by creating a rectangle of this size on my screen (GIMP and making windows semi-transparent with Compiz Fusion helped a lot!) many times before making above claim (because I want to buy a tablet and most have 1024x600 screen). So it's not an unfounded one. Thanks for the (unfounded) award though.

[dmaul111478]

Originally Posted by ChrisC333

Sure, but it's fairly arbitrary to decide that those particular iPad stats constitute some kind of "baseline". Unless you feel that there's something extra special about those exact specs (and you don't mind the iPad's limitations), then there are a number of other choices.

Mots of those specs do set a baseline for me.

Form factor--needs to be thin and light to be comfortable to hold and read, as well as being easy to put in a briefcase etc.

Battery life--needs to be 8-10 hours so I can use it for a full day and not have to worry about having to carry the ac adapter around

The touch screen needs to be that responsive, as anything else will feel clunky after using the iPad.

Instant on and the general speediness of the device is also a baseline, as I don't want to wait for programs to open etc.

So I'm waiting for a tablet that matches all that type of stuff (or improves on it) while also having a real file management system, drag and drop in windows, multitasking, Flash support etc. etc.

But I won't buy something that's bulky, gets less battery life, has an unresponsive screen etc. just because it runs android or Windows 7 and fixes my other gripes.

I'd bite the bullet and get a 2nd generation iPad in that case, as the form factor, battery life, responsivity, speed etc. are crucial. Most of my gripes with the iPad can be worked around, or will be fixed in the OS update (multitasking) etc.

Originally Posted by athlonkmf

No it won't.
It's the same problem I have with my netbook(s).

In portrait, i'd need to scroll left-right a lot, because the sites I visit are designed for at least 800px width. On the ipad, the 768px is just enough to see the whole site on portrait, albleit a "zoomed out". But ipad's zooming is very fast, so no problem there.
Not only for websites, it's awkward for magazines and comics too. They're usually in 4:3-ratio. On my netbook the pages are squashed too much to be readable (depends on the fontsize).

On landscape, a lot of screen estate is gone when you're using desktop browsers like chrome, firefox, IE, etc. This is due to the bookmarksbar, the tabsbar, the urlbar. (google reader is even more annoying, as it's a framed page. Meaning you only see like 100px of the content you want to see)
On the ipad, there is standard minimalist design for the browser, but still, rotating is no problem at all. It's speedy.

Agreed. I'm very frustrated so many of these tablets are going with 16x9 or similar screens.

Portrait mode is too narrow--especially for reading A4 PDFs which is a big need of mine. It also makes it hard for apps to be optimized to work well in portrait or landscape--which is easy with a 4:3 screen like on the iPad.

They'll be great if one just wants to surf the net and watch video as their main use, and thus just uses it in land scape.

But for me I want a 4:3 screen or something pretty close to that so both portrait and landscape modes are equally useful.

Again, nothing wrong with having widescreen tablets, as those will be great for those who just want to surf the net and watch movies etc. Just not so great for working with documents which is my main need for a tablet.

[ChrisC333]

Originally Posted by dmaul111478

Battery life--needs to be 8-10 hours so I can use it for a full day and not have to worry about having to carry the ac adapter around

Battery life is always a consideration, and the more the better. However, over the many years I've been using portable devices I've found a few solutions:

1. Unless the battery is built in and non removable it's not a big deal to carry a spare battery for longer haul trips.

2. Most devices aren't 'pocket portable' but still need to be carried in some kind of case or briefcase. These typically have side pockets, so carrying the charging cable isn't necessarily much of a problem.

3. For repeating situations (i.e. going to an office) it may not be a big deal to have two charging cables - one at each end as it were.

4. Unless you do really long days with a machine then you can often do fine with a lot less than 10 hours battery life.

Instant on and the general speediness of the device is also a baseline, as I don't want to wait for programs to open etc.

That's a big plus if you turn on and off a lot (which I'm guilty of). I really like the sound of the iPad in that regard. I'm still getting used to leaving my e-ink reader on more. It's partly a management issue too - my tablet computer has all manner of power saving settings for when I might leave it for a while. I'm still working through the best settings, because my usage pattern is very erratic. I guess it's a trade off - as I don't have any problems with battery life I've been a bit slack about optimising the off/on/sleep/ settings.

Portrait mode is too narrow--especially for reading A4 PDFs which is a big need of mine. It also makes it hard for apps to be optimized to work well in portrait or landscape--which is easy with a 4:3 screen like on the iPad.

They'll be great if one just wants to surf the net and watch video as their main use, and thus just uses it in land scape.

But for me I want a 4:3 screen or something pretty close to that so both portrait and landscape modes are equally useful.

That's one reason that I went for a 12" screen. It's flexible enough to do it all. For most of my usage the wider format is absolutely fine "as is". A longer page of text works fine. However, on those occasions that I do particularly want to use portrait in an A4 shape, as it were, I can just resize to suit. With the bigger screen, there really isn't a problem doing that, because you have plenty of real estate to work with. You end up with the same usable/viewable size as you would have got with a smaller screen in 4:3 format.


None of the devices I've looked at are perfect in every respect, but most have work-arounds that make then usable. We all have somewhat different needs and preferences though, so it boils down to working out which fall into the "absolutely must have" category, and which can be put into "would like, but will accept some variation" box. Sometimes it's not that easy to completely nail down which is which until you've had some hands on time.

Cheers,

Chris

[dmaul1114]

Very true, nothing is perfect.

For me a Tablet isn't a "gotta have one soon!" type device so I can wait for something that I don't have to do a lot of workarounds on.

Ideal would be a 11" or so 4:3 screen (or just an A4 screen), standard windows like file system, drag and drop file loading, good stylus support for mark up, 8-10 hours battery life, touch screen responsivity on par with iPad, instant on, etc. etc.

And I'm not too willing to budge on many of those factors so I may be waiting a while!