[Jim]

been looking for a cheapish tablet, just missed out on a refurbed archos 101 internet tablet for £100.
Have been researching around and nearly everywhere I keep reading that the market is about to be flooded by quality cheap tablets, but there doesn't seem to be much out there still. Obviously I wouldn't be seen dead with an ipad and the asus eee pad transformer prime is the best you can get at the moment but my budget is more like £200.
Any recomendation or thoughts on tablets and should I wait a while longer before getting one.

[pete b]

I got a Kindle Fire for Christmas. It came from the US and won't be available in the UK for another month or 2 I think. It's smaller than most tablets but still a good size and quite thin. It's based on Android so there are plenty of apps to run on it. Apparently it's so cheap that Amazon are making a loss on it, but they hope that owners will buy more from their site. I'd recommend it.

[slackline]

I'd wait myself (Asus Transformer Prime gets great reviews, but too expensive, when that drops I might consider one).

[Bubba]

  I'd wait.

[dave]

Buy some cheap reading glasses and just hold your phone much closer to your face.

[Oldmanmatt]

I love my iSad...
Laptop lives under my desk these days.
Only comes out long enough to email a missing file to the cloud.
Had to buy office again (to start working) after death of hard drive coincided with running out of "seats" on the office 2007.... £248.00!!!
Pages for iSad ,£6.00.. Enough for nearly everything I need.
Numbers, £5.00, runs all my Excels (inc equations).
Keynote, £5.00 runs all my PowerPoint stuff.
AutoCad (lite £1000.00+ for PC), FREE! Enough for viewing and limited editing/creation.
+books
+music
Etc
Etc
Costs the same as a decent laptop.
Not really found anything to moan about yet.
So, why wouldn't you be seen dead with one?
Just asking...

[Jim]

I don't like the hard wear, I don't like the software and I don't like the image

[Somebody's Fool]

You've already got a tablet computer that makes phone calls. Why do you need another one?

[chicane]

I got a HP Touchpad for £89 - now dual boots webOS & ICS it's great. Only really available now via eBay but a great buy if you can get it cheap enough < £150 maybe.

[tomtom]

I don't like the hard wear, I don't like the software and I don't like the image

I wish my iPad had worse hardware, worse software and a bad image... then I might be able to prise it back out of MrsTT's clutches

[OffshoreAndy]

I picked up a 32gb Playbook for £190, 16gb is about £150, Am well impressed with it and it's definitely worth considering. There's a big software update this month and the fact there are so many on the market now might get the missing apps ported to it -which as far as I can see is the only thing letting it down. Duel core, supports flash, drag and drop files, decent portable size.

[Jim]

I don't like the hard wear, I don't like the software and I don't like the image

I wish my iPad had worse hardware, worse software and a bad image... then I might be able to prise it back out of MrsTT's clutches

also forgot to mention I dont like the price either.
all of which is just my opinion of course, but it is me thats after buying one 

[slackline]

Pages for iSad ,£6.00.. Enough for nearly everything I need.
Numbers, £5.00, runs all my Excels (inc equations).
Keynote, £5.00 runs all my PowerPoint stuff.

LibreOffice £0.00 although I doubt its available for iOS or Android, but under the later....

Google Docs £0.00

(although theres others in the market place, although just discovered that Polaris Office which comes on Samsung & Asus devices isn't in the market place)

[slackline]

I picked up a 32gb Playbook for £190, 16gb is about £150, Am well impressed with it and it's definitely worth considering. There's a big software update this month and the fact there are so many on the market now might get the missing apps ported to it -which as far as I can see is the only thing letting it down. Duel core, supports flash, drag and drop files, decent portable size.

The nice thing about the Asus Transformer Prime is that its Quad Core, although actually it has a fifth core that is dedicated for running the OS, leaving the other four main cores to do all the crunching when running apps/games and such like.  Personally I also like the fact they've though about a keyboard, doing lots of typing on a touch-screen just doesn't appeal, I like the tactile feedback.

Glowing  review (note performance benchmarking score on page 3!!!)

The "big software update" is likely to be to Android 4.0

[Oldmanmatt]

Yeah, tried open office a couple years back...
On a PC.
Got fed up and went out and bought MS Office.

Strangely, had a Mac supplied with my last job. Very expensive, latest doodad, track pad etc, etc.
Tried it for 3 months (first time on a Mac), then put it under the desk and took out my old Vista laptop...

The iSad, on the other hand is a joy.
Pretty much does everything I wished a computer to do.
"let me look that up for you, Madam".
"Hold still while I sketch you, dear."
"Send me the PDF and I'll sketch my thoughts all over it, in different coloured pens and mail it back, while I sit on the karsi on the 14:32 to London."
And then Skype me Baby!
Or, more importantly (for me), "You remember that do-hicky, that looked odd and sounded funny and should be going spinny spinny and keeps going whizzy whizzy? Well, look and listen and by the way, ain't handheld Skype just swell!"

O'course, the missus is ready to shove it where the sun don't shine and it is now banned after 19:00 (I had to sneak off to write this).
Although...

I notice it was alright for her and her Mum to spend an hour and half reviewing Asparagus recipes and chatting to people on Farcebook this evening....

[slackline]

Personally I can't stand word-processors (very clunky to integrate with output from statistical software) and much prefer mark-up such as LaTeX, but then I'm a  and still have to work with people who do use word processors.

[Oldmanmatt]

Oh, yeah. You posted while I was typing Slackers.
The little Bluetooth keyboard, with the "origami" case, turns it into a pretty good laptop (great to turn the screen when doing Docs).
I don't play games much, so not speed conscious, I suppose.
I don't work for Apple by the way.
Yeah, last thing. It automatically mirrors everything on my iMoan (4s), so if it's just to big to carry, I have a mini-me in my pocket.

I might even send the damn thing a valentine....

[slackline]

But does it have a USB port? (iPads didn't which was fucking shocking, no idea if v2 rectified this, suspect not you've got a v2 if you've a keyboard with it).

[Oldmanmatt]

No.
But I know a cable that can..
There are card readers and camera connectors too now.

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

But does it have a USB port? (iPads didn't which was fucking shocking, no idea if v2 rectified this, suspect not you've got a v2 if you've a keyboard with it).

Don't think so, you've got to buy an adaptor to stick a SD card anywhere near one. Mmm shiny shiny. 
My 60+ year old geeky neighbour got a Archos 80 G9 for about £150 from Currys or somewhere. Could have been in a sale before Xmas.

Comet have the larger one for £175 currently
http://www.comet.co.uk/p/Tablets/buy-ARCHOS-ARCHOS-101-8GB-Tablet/711292

Mixed reviews but I've had a play with it and seems ok. Did a major update on it which fixed a few glitches. Standard Android faire,

[EDIT] Hmm, that Comet one could be an older model, they list it as Droid 2.2, think G9 models are the current ones, check the model and spec carefully.

[Oldmanmatt]

Personally I can't stand word-processors (very clunky to integrate with output from statistical software) and much prefer mark-up such as LaTeX, but then I'm a  and still have to work with people who do use word processors.

I don't use the stats stuff. But most of our modelling stuff is done on Matlab and the finite element analysis is done on a variety of stuff (depending on who generates it). Equally hard(maybe) to integrate with processors. With the iSad, I found Notability, which lets me type over, draw over, highlight etc, just about any doc/pic/PDF and then let's me choose a format to export it. Actually, all the apps seem to offer this multi choice on export format, no separate PDF writer required (or reader, come to that).
Nah, for me the whole app/tablet thing is the way ahead, as a user interface it beats a PC hands down.
I now get really wound up, waiting for the damn laptop to start up and when the battery is dead after an hour and the size of the power supply.....

[Paul B]

thats been the case in open office for ages (before the PDF995 was my goto)? You can also get CAD viewers for free under Win too.

I can see justification for buying an iPad, just not in your arguments, everything you mention can be done on other OS's for cheaper or at worst the same price (so cheaper if you include the hardware). Currently, they don't have much tangible competition in my eyes and thats a good enough reason to buy.

Personally, I'd wait Jim, a lot of the cheaper tablets are running Android designed for phones, that can't be a good thing.

[Jim]

Comet have the larger one for £175 currently
http://www.comet.co.uk/p/Tablets/buy-ARCHOS-ARCHOS-101-8GB-Tablet/711292

think thats just the internet tablet which is available at ebuyer for £150, not the g9

[Oldmanmatt]

thats been the case in open office for ages (before the PDF995 was my goto)? You can also get CAD viewers for free under Win too.

I can see justification for buying an iPad, just not in your arguments, everything you mention can be done on other OS's for cheaper or at worst the same price (so cheaper if you include the hardware). Currently, they don't have much tangible competition in my eyes and thats a good enough reason to buy.

Personally, I'd wait Jim, a lot of the cheaper tablets are running Android designed for phones, that can't be a good thing.

I know we're straying off topic here and it's no help for Jim...
But,
I'm no dummie (no Einstein either), I use a "computer" of some description every day.
I spent a fair amount of time working on logic and control systems (designing and repairing).
But, half the time, when I read some of the related threads on here; I don't have the first clue what people are talking about...
The reason I've come to enjoy using this iStuff is.
Unless I'm making a very serious indepth survey, I don't need to carry a shite load of equipment anymore. The phone was great enough, with apps for Decibel meters, unit conversion, engineering formulas etc. It was like getting a library in my pocket and half my tool box. Most of the apps were free or very cheap (I mean in the 2cups of coffee in Costas range). It's easy to find apps.
Mainly, it's easier to use and you don't have to be a geek or spend hours doing research to use it. I don't know about Android because I've never tried it, I suppose it should be very similar?
Having just gone through the pain of resurrecting my windows laptop from scratch, at the same time as starting to use this thing, it is clearly an entirely different experience and far easier.
Hence my comment about tablets and apps being the way ahead for most users. It wasn't meant to be iStuff specific.

[slackline]

Mainly, it's easier to use and you don't have to be a geek or spend hours doing research to use it. I don't know about Android because I've never tried it, I suppose it should be very similar?

It is very, very similar, although hardware (unless opting for bleeding edge) is cheaper and the impression I have is that there are more free/cheaper apps (and you're not limited to those that Apple deem to be acceptable to be included in the market place).

[Jaspersharpe]

From what I've read I'd agree with what other people have said and wait for a bit Jim. The Android based tablets appear to have caught up with the ipad so now we just have to wait for them to surpass it and become cheaper just like the phones have already done.

It's bound to happen in exactly the same way as market share shifts:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-android-tablet-20120127,0,96563.story

I'm waiting for my netbook to die before I consider a tablet and I'm pretty sure the above will have happened by then.

[Paul B]

Mainly, it's easier to use and you don't have to be a geek or spend hours doing research to use it. I don't know about Android because I've never tried it, I suppose it should be very similar?

I think that's the crux of the matter; Apple protect their user experience religously and the outcome is a very intuitive polished offering that you can't argue with.

Android is the same but like most things open source its not quite as polished (and never will be due to its nature). Its whether you see the flaws and quirks it has as something you can live with in order to enjoy the positives, one of which is user control. For me it comes down to cost, the hardware is just far too expensive.

I don't think it'll be too long before Honeycomb tablets catch up.

[Jim]

plus you can stick a USB device or SD card in a non-iPad tablet which for a lot of users is a basic requirement (well it definately is for me)

[Bubba]

iPad2 has USB and you can plug a card reader into that.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab is meant to be nice but it's not cheap.

[account_inactive]

Having been a religious windoze user for years we switched over to a mac and an ipad. Both of these have been so much easier to use than any PC I've had. I just ended up getting bored with the time sponge that is 'tweaking'.
The ipad 2 is only worth having if you go for the crack which opens up a world of paid for (stolen) and free apps. I joked about a friends samsung tablet, saying it was a poor mans ipad. After turning in on the whole thing froze hahahahaha

Sent from my Ipad

[fatdoc]

leavin a senior management post this week... need some I.T of worth to live.... want to ride to work with it ... I WANT / need my own solution.. and use it for me...

I'm hoping ipad3 means ipad2 still exists, but cheaper..

I'll have the 2  next month, thanks.

[slackline]

Despite being a fully paid up member to geekness* I'm yet to be convinced that anyone really needs any of these things. 

Technology always will be a trade off between what you're willing to pay for and how much time you're willing to invest in learning how to use something/get it working.  But really most stuff isn't that hard or awkward to learn/understand (at least thats what I keep on telling myself when I'm  ), and having spent the time learning something you then have an additional set of skills (problem solving and the actual solution/knowledge you've acquired).  Should state up front though that I've no kids to take up my time.

Now, where is the "Posting whilst pissed thread" 




* Although that is perhaps the crux as I'm geeky enough to be arsed spending time tinkering, working out similar solutions for less than paying through the nose (mainly because I've no desire to spend my whole life working to pay for them and would rather the free time to go and do other stuff, only some of which is consumed by said tinkering).

[underground]

fatdoc: I'd just buy the Ipad 2, if you want a solution next month, or week - I doubt ipad 3 will be so different, personally (it'll no doubt be faster etc a la iphone 4s) and it'll not mean cheaper if you aren't prepared to shop around and fuck about. Get a 32Gb wifi only model and you'll be fine, and nicely Apple supported. It's a great bit of kit, I don't use mine in any way that justifies its existence in a monetary sense but I wouldn't give it up... having iplayer and sky go sat in front of me on top of the breadbin while I slice onions is more than enough.

slackers and dylan: slackers, you're right -no one really needs any of it - for computing needs, we could all do with a 486 running linux and get access to office and the internet. I used to love geeking about with stuff, and then, like dylan, it became a total time sponge - whether that was making something happen that I never needed to happen until I knew it could happen, or actualy maintaining the thing just to work. The big one was a relentless cycle of turning network cards and routers on and off before i could even think about using the internet.

I also had a HTC Hero phone and again, I could have spent ages making it do stuff, but fuck me would it make a phonecall?

So I got an iphone 4, then a macbook pro, then a ipad 2..., and it was from a cynic's background - came from buying the bits from micro mart to build a pc for £1500 with 16mb of ram etc if you were lucky, but that's not what I want nowadays - and it was all I ever got with windows in terms of still having to fuck about.

Cost wise - outlay expensive, yes, but in the last 8 years I've had at least 3 desktop PCs and a netbook that have bitten the dust in ridiculously short timescales and been uneconomical to repair, not to mention the need to flatten and rebuild others due to windows nonsense...

[slackline]

Yeah, I do get that some people don't want to have to spend time getting things working, and completely understand why people want something that 'just works', its the 'cult of apple' that I don't get.

Personally I've found the two Android phones I've owned to be extremely intuitive and 'just work^TM' out of the box, everythings been intuitive.  The only thing I've had to read up on how to do is rooting the second phone and tutorials on using Tasker (of which I don't think there is equivalent functionality under iOS).

[Oldmanmatt]

I wonder though, what counts as intuitive; to someone who has vast experience in IT matters and mere Luddites like me...
I absolutely hated the MAC, great for looking at photos and watching movies, shite for working.
I love the iPad.
I love me iPhone.
Mrs OMM has the NokiaN8, it's got a great camera but otherwise it's crap.

[Jaspersharpe]

I'm a luddite but I love Android. Fact is that all independent reviews say that the best phone on the market is now once running Android which costs way less than an iphone. The same will happen soon with tablets.

Everything else is just personal preference, brand loyalty or whatever you want to call it.

[slackline]

I wonder though, what counts as intuitive; to someone who has vast experience in IT matters and mere Luddites like me...

The curve may have been less steep, but you've still learnt how to use iOS just as you'd previously learnt how to use M$-Win.  None of us are born with an innate understanding or knowledge of how computers and their UI's work.

This is perhaps the crux to what I find irksome when people say "its so easy" about X, Y or Z.  Relative it may require less learning but it does still requires some, so perhaps I'd find 'easier' less annoying (although most of the time it just comes down to having enough patience to read documentation/manuals which is ultimately pretty easy).

I totally accept and understand that some want to lessen the angle and length of this learning curve, but in doing so you'll almost invariably have to pay a premium, which (in an attempt to drag things back on topic) is kind of what this thread was asking about in the first instance.

Aaaaanyway 

Whilst waiting for the price to drop on Android tablets Jim could always get one of the original tablets to play with for a few fuck-alls.....

[cofe]

I'm quite interested to check out the Kindle Fire when it finally arrives over here. For booky people, Waterstone's are expected to announce something soon too, possibly their own version of the US Barnes & Noble Nook.

[slackline]

Or for games get all retro with....



(I actually still have my old Gameboy somewhere along with the magnifier, Tetris, Othello, Super Mario Bros and some other games)

[underground]

What distro are you running on it?

[slackline]

Can't remember, not booted it up in years.  Might see if I can get it to run UNIX though.

[saltbeef]

http://www.youtube.com/user/AdamBuxton?feature=watch#p/u/23/jbHF63b7g50

[Bubba]

Some reviews here: http://www.androidauthority.com/best-android-tablets-2012-49160/

[slackline]

New offering from Huawei with huge battery (yet retaining small format)

[Jaspersharpe]

Groupon doing a deal on Nexus 7 today if anyone's interested.....

http://www.groupon.co.uk/deals/national-deal/gg-photodirect-52/34990121

[Jaspersharpe]

And again today. I don't need one at all but I'm tempted to buy one just cos it's really cheap! Resisting as I'll spend the money on a new phone instead.........

[slackline]

In case anyone is wondering these are the 2012 model (based on the specified processor, the 2013 has a different processor).


They are a good deal, but I feel the stated £95 saving is slightly over-stated as you can pick up the 32Gb WiFi for < £200 in many places so its more like saving £60-70 (so yes still a good saving).


The older model shouldn't put anyone off though, my brother has one and there's no discernible difference in performance between it and my 2013 model.

[Bubba]

I bought one from the previous groupon offer. I saw 4g in the ad and assumed that it was the 2013 version (and I'd had a few). 

Returned it the day after I got it which was a lot of hassle and bought the 2013 from Amazon instead for only £40 more.

[T_B]

In my experience of Groupon, you'll receive it and it will be a Nexus tablet, only it will be a tablet of chocolate. Or something similar.

[Bubba]

To be fair to them there was nothing wrong with the tablet.

I've not yet got my refund but Groupon have authorised it so hopefully a few days.

The new Nexus 7 does have a much better screen and is thinner so worth the extra imo.

[Jaspersharpe]

Must admit, most times I've seen anything I actually want on a Groupon offer I've been able to find it cheaper on ebay. In this case I couldn't (only spent five mins googling mind).

[tomtom]

In case you hadnt heard Microsoft have just released iPad versions of Word, PPt and Excel... the app is free but you have to subscribe to Office365

Working in HE I managed to get 4 years for £59.. and I have to say its superb...

I've been unable to use an iPad (with keyboard) for anything other than emailing and the odd photo edit - work wise - as most of my writing involves collaborative track changes style editing in word (sorry google docs doesnt cut it for this). But this adaptation of Word is brilliant. Save on iPad or skydrive. I was thinking of getting some sort of W8.1 tablet combo ultrabook thing but no need now.

Very pleased.

[slackline]

In case you hadnt heard Microsoft have just released iPad versions of Word, PPt and Excel... the app is free but you have to subscribe to Office365

And Phandroid