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Old 09-24-2012, 05:25 AM   #1
Rizla
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Geeral information for tablets please

I must admit to having totally side-stepped the tablet revolution. As such, I would like some information about their specs and features in general.

1) CPU. What CPU's are slow, mid-range and fast?

2) Memory. How much is enough these days?

3) Storage. How much is enough? Is it important to get expansion card slot and is that standard these days?

4) OS. I guess it's Android vs Mac. Presumably Android is cheaper and offers more software options?

5) Internet. How do these devices connect to the internet. Do they all come with built-in wifi cards one cannot to a network with?

Thanks in advance.
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Old 09-24-2012, 05:51 AM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rizla View Post
I must admit to having totally side-stepped the tablet revolution. As such, I would like some information about their specs and features in general.

1) CPU. What CPU's are slow, mid-range and fast?
Really depends on your needs.
Quote:
2) Memory. How much is enough these days?
Really depends on your needs.
Quote:
3) Storage. How much is enough? Is it important to get expansion card slot and is that standard these days?
Really depends on your needs.
Quote:
4) OS. I guess it's Android vs Mac.
Really depends on your needs. And no, Mac has as such nothing to do with iOS. And Windows Mobile is also a major player, and others.
Quote:
Presumably Android is cheaper and offers more software options?
Android is an OS, and free. iOS only comes with Apple devices. And iOS has muuuuch more software available than Android, but the question is how many variations of fart apps you need.
Quote:
5) Internet. How do these devices connect to the internet. Do they all come with built-in wifi cards one cannot to a network with?
They use Wifi, Bluetooth, NFC or GSM/CDMA depending on the situation. I don't know what you mean with "built-in wifi cards one cannot to a network with?" ?.

I think you should rather tell us what your needs are, so we can help, because you don't seem to know much about these kinds of things..
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Old 09-24-2012, 06:12 AM   #3
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They use Wifi, Bluetooth, NFC or GSM/CDMA depending on the situation. I don't know what you mean with "built-in wifi cards one cannot to a network with?" ?.
*can connect to*. Excuse my typo. It's pretty obvious though

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I think you should rather tell us what your needs are, so we can help, because you don't seem to know much about these kinds of things..
I just want general info. What's a mid-range processor, what's top of the range, etc? If you look at RAM on a windows laptop (90%+ of the market), you'll get away with 2 gig, maybe, but these days you need at least 4 gigs and 6-8 gigs is best.

It's that kind of general information I'm looking for. If you absolutely need a *profile* then I'll say non-power user who wants a tablet with some future-proofing. Wants to play basic games (dancing crows or whatever), word-processing, browsing, nothing special, but I don't want it to crawl when I open two windows.
Regarding storage, again, a *general* profile. I don't need to store huge amounts of data, but I will want to install some apps like word-processing apps, music playing. I won't need to store movies, but I do want the ability to install a few programs and not have to worry about running out of memory. It will be used by more than one user, so space is importantish.

Basically, I'm looking for an everyman profile. Neither super-powerful nor bargain-basement. Mid-range. Thanks.
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Old 09-24-2012, 08:10 AM   #4
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*can connect to*. Excuse my typo. It's pretty obvious though
Ah, makes sense. But in that case yes - Even coffee machines comes standard with Wifi these days!

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I just want general info. What's a mid-range processor, what's top of the range, etc?
You can't really make that comparison, because of the different ways the processors are made. For instance, the iPhone 5 chips has two cores at 1,2 Ghz, while the Galaxy S III phone has a quad core 1,5 (1,6?) Ghz. You would assume that the Galaxy S III chip is faster, but the iPhone actually has the faster chip of the two. Also, you would almost never need a quad core chip anyway, so it is really just a waste.

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If you look at RAM on a windows laptop (90%+ of the market), you'll get away with 2 gig, maybe, but these days you need at least 4 gigs and 6-8 gigs is best.
My iPad2 is excellent with 512 MB RAM, but you can get up to 2 GB these days.

Quote:
It's that kind of general information I'm looking for. If you absolutely need a *profile* then I'll say non-power user who wants a tablet with some future-proofing. Wants to play basic games (dancing crows or whatever), word-processing, browsing, nothing special, but I don't want it to crawl when I open two windows.

Regarding storage, again, a *general* profile. I don't need to store huge amounts of data, but I will want to install some apps like word-processing apps, music playing. I won't need to store movies, but I do want the ability to install a few programs and not have to worry about running out of memory. It will be used by more than one user, so space is importantish.

Basically, I'm looking for an everyman profile. Neither super-powerful nor bargain-basement. Mid-range. Thanks.
In that case I would recommend the iPad3, since it has by far the largest selection of games, both casual and AAA quality. It is certainly future proof, and has one of the strongest GPU's on the market currently. iOS is also general perceived as being a very smooth, so you won't be waiting for windows to open, especially coupled with its efficient memory handling.

Most users would be fine with 16GB space, but if you think you are demanding, get 32GB. Get 64GB if you have movies.

It also has the best screen on the market, so you'll be future proof there too.

But you should really just play with an iPad, and Windows and Android pads, and see what you like the most. The differences really aren't that big when it comes to the hardware, if you just pick current generation models, so the major picking point should be on what you feel comfortable with (And software library of course).
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Old 09-24-2012, 08:17 PM   #5
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1) There isn't that much range in available CPUs. Currently the one that most Android tablets are using is Tegra 3. Most people if you ask about Android tablets, will recommend one that uses it. (However, not all tegra3s are the same).

2) Like they say, it really depends on your needs. I'd say at least 512MB, though probably a gig is better. I think it's better to just look at the popular models and look at their stats. Probably a good baseline is the Nexus 7, which most people say has good performance. The thing is, especially on Android, a lot of the performance depends on the OS. That is why Android enthusiasts are so obsessed about getting the latest build of Android. Probably you should worry more, re: future proofing, about which version of Android is on the system, and whether the manufacturer is going to update it.

3) It depends on your needs, really. I've only used up about 1/2 of my capacity on a 16GB tablet, some people get by with 8GB. You can use the cloud for data storage, but then that depends on your situation. If you are going to do a lot of gaming, the games with better graphics will eat up a lot of space. SD card slots are getting less common, also.

4) Tablet apps are actually weaker on android. There are a lot of iOS exclusives. However, this depends on which specific apps you need. I would recommend looking at both the Android and iOS app stores.

5) Yes, they will all have wifi.

I would say either get the Nexus 7 (Android) or get an iPad. Android tablets have a lot of future-proofing issues because of the OS update situation. To be honest, I think tablets are moving so fast you can't really speak of future proofing. It isn't a mature technology yet.
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Old 09-27-2012, 04:21 AM   #6
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Thanks charmian and David. That's what I wanted to know.
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Old 09-28-2012, 08:06 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rizla View Post
I must admit to having totally side-stepped the tablet revolution. As such, I would like some information about their specs and features in general.

1) CPU. What CPU's are slow, mid-range and fast?

2) Memory. How much is enough these days?

3) Storage. How much is enough? Is it important to get expansion card slot and is that standard these days?
1) Can't speak for brands, but you will want 1GHz single-core at a minimum these days. It's not great, but you can run most things with it. Spending a bit extra and grabbing something with a dual-core CPU is a very good idea. Despite the Google Nexus 7 having a quad-core CPU, a 1GHz dual-core is more than good enough, regardless of brand.

2) 512MB is still common, but you will find that Web browsing will be a bit on the slow side (a lot more loading while you scroll pages) and you might have some problems running more recently-released apps if your tablet comes with apps pre-installed that you can't remove. Fortunately, 1GB is starting to be the norm and should be what you go for as it makes a good difference.

3) You will want 8GB of storage at a minimum, preferably with a microSD card slot (fortunately, most tablets other than the Kindle Fires, the Google Nexus 7, and the upcoming Kobo Arc, have a slot), though if you can handle living without a slot (I can't - having to reinstall everything through the 'Net after a factory reset isn't fun when you have only a 5mbit connection or a data cap) and having to shuffle around your data, 8GB is fine.

Avoid 4GB at all costs! Even with a microSD slot, it will *NOT* be enough if you plan to use it as more than just an ereader you can browse the Web on (from what I've seen, the standard split on the internam storage for 4GB devices running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is 1.4GB for Android itself, 200-250MB for pre-loaded apps that you generally can't install, 250-300MB for your own apps, and 2.1GB for non-app data (movies, music, etc.).
EDIT: Been recently informed that the app/data split is a holdover from the Bad Old Days and that decent modern tablets don't do that anymore. Also, even on the ones that still split it, it turns out many apps will let themselves be moved out of the dedicated storage to the general storage via an option on their apps management page. Still would avoid 4GB at all costs, however, due to such tablets generally having many other problems.

Last edited by JD Gumby; 10-09-2012 at 05:51 AM.
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Old 10-09-2012, 03:14 AM   #8
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Thanks JD. That's a great post which really answers my question.
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