Surface 2 and iPad Air: Prepare to meet YOUR DOOM under a 'Landfill Android' AVALANCHE Within just 24 hours, both Microsoft and Apple have refreshed their tablet lineups for Christmas. Microsoft tried to steal a march on Apple by launching Surface Pro 2 and the rebranded Surface RT, now called Surface 2. Dropping the RT from the outside, not the inside Apple dutifully followed suit on Tuesday night with two …
last Christmas we give one "cheap" tablet to each one of our children (we have 4) ... they were as happy as a child can be! the "cheap" Samsung piece has lasted almost year of fun, movies, music, games and books!
the thing is not showing up any signs of aging! And all for the price of 1 iFruity thing...
you should be mad to buy the overpriced iShit!
Plus one - in same boat. Although my 2011 MBA got quickly nabbed by my wife who has claimed it as her own. Quite interested in the latest 13" MBPro with Retina as an upgrade to my 2010 MBPro though .. especially as they are already available online with EPP or Student discounts.
If iphone 6 has a curved back then the 3GS might get retired over to the wife or as a dedicated satnav.
quote: "I know plenty of people still using the original iPad / iPad 2 and iPhones like the 3GS - all still very functional which is a lot more than can be said for most older Android kit."
Nope, people who like their old Android kit are just as likely to keep using it as people who like their old Apple kit. I still use my Archos 5 media player regularly, and that came with Android 1.2 (yes, it is that old). I know a few people who still use their old Galaxy S or S2, because they see no compelling reason to buy a new device.
Keeping old kit that you like until it finally dies is not a function of brand, in my experience :)
Cyanogen (even unofficial) is not available for most low cost tablets. I have been tempted to build it myself for some of them only to find out that most of the common low end socs (various Exynos, WonderMedia, etc) and their matching GPUs (WonderMedia and Mali) have support ranging from zero to zero.
If you have a phone (even an ancient one like Xperia Mini Pro) or a mid-range tablet you are in luck. Once its factory OS is EOL-ed you can cyanogen it (EOL meaning anything from 15 minutes for Google Nexus 7 Gen 1/2 to a couple of years for Sony Xperia). If you have a real landfill sample like the ones sold by Gotab, Tesco, etc - you are out of luck.
If you have an western rebadge of a Chinese tablet then you need to find the original. If it's a Momo or a Pipo then you may very well find a version Android, even if it's not Cyanogen.
I realise they're talking about hardware, but if you buy a non-MS or Apple tablets, you may find they use standard components and are fixable. If you upgrade a tablet from Android 2.x to 4.x or an e-reader to Android then you very well find it's good enough to keep you going for years more without needing to buy another device.
I forgot to mention it depends on the owner too. Someone who's good with a soldering iron and knows to open something up to repair it is also probably more willing to sit down and work out how to reflash a tablet or know someone who can. Someone who knows how to reflash probably won't mind opening something up either or know someone who can. Both of those types of people will see the value in going for more fixable devices. But someone who's just buys bling will end up landfilling anything they buy.
Cheap good quality crap sells better than expensive low quality crap. Wow.
Apple still does well too with expensive high quality crap.
What was that word- fragmentation? Looks like MS has that to worry about, more than Android.
And landfill- another word that fits their disposable unloved slabs better than the competition.
So Microsoft manage to make a heavy tablet that has a battery life similar to Apple's market leading tablet - can't see many people going for it over the iPad Air. Getting a full size tablet down to weigh so little is a big deal for many people who find the older ones just a little heavy for reading etc. so buy a Kindle paperwhite etc.
And now there is no reason not to buy an iPad Mini with it's retina screen - all the same apps, amazing screen and the smaller size some people prefer (and cheaper).
Apple's office suite is pretty ghastly compared with MS Office though, closer to MS Works, and free is the right price point for it in the first place. Surface runs MS Office without the VBA (not sure what the other limitations are?) but it's still the de facto standard.
I'd personally look seriously at it for a device you could do real work on as opposed to largely consume content. Bundling office is a good idea.
Sorry, but it is too difficult adding a single mp3 file to the tablet if you have to use iTunes!
iTunes is awful because they keep updating it, which means that, by the time you want to add something to your tablet, you load iTunes, and it has to struggle through an auto-update before you can even start using it. Annoying is an understatement!
Android wins every time, because the tablets are cheaper (£129 for a new Lenovo one with dual SIM ...) and they can have files copied to them using micro-SD cards. Easy-peasy and very versatile! Android will win. Apple and Microsoft will lose. Google will run the world! Look at their Chrome browser - you can drag an image to the search bar and it will search for that picture and similar ones using pixel matching! Definitely cool.
>>>"they can have files copied to them using micro-SD cards"...unless you have a Google branded device,, in that case you're stuffed!!<<<
If it helps, syncing over the air is dead easy. I don't even use an SD card on my Samsung android device, but make good use of Google drive, skydrive and/or drop box. The music player (pretty much whichever one you like to use) picks mp3 files up from wherever anyway. Phones and tablets are most useful when online anyway I find so it turned out to be less of a big deal than I thought it was going to be. You might find likewise, worth a try!
My wife loves her transformer, too, as she is a touch typist. probably only detaches the keyboard about 50% of the time: when not typing, it is a good "stand". Also, it was great having a touch pad when she cracked the screen and touch screen no longer worked: she could continue to use the machine until the parts arrived. Plus the extra battery in the keyboard is useful when using the machine as GPS in the car or on long flights.
Until someone makes a tablet with the same easy to read screen and week long battery life, going to have my ereader and tablet when I go on holiday. And as for the tablet, don't see anything in these to make me want to get rid of my playbook and buy one of them. The Pro is interesting but never at that price.
I don't think that's the case. The vast majority of consumers use tablets for casual browsing and gaming and are happy to cut down on their demands to fit a form factor and user experience that is more convenient and instantly to hand.
Gamers and pro-sumers are more likely to get their speed-fix by getting a new Playstation or XBox this Christmas, and there are some bargain retina-display laptops around in the wake of Intel's Ultrabook push.
The bottom line is there are very few apps demanding enough to warrant a high-end processor and display. I've never heard anyone complaining "My tablet isn't powerful enough" - expectations have been managed, and so price becomes a factor. Bargain Android tablets should do well, and the big boost to the ecosystem will help the high end devices sell as the platform is seen as increasingly ubiquitous.
"Apple’s iPad Air is 7.5mm thick, weighs 478g, and packs the ARM-based dual-core Cortex-based A7 chip from the iPhone 5S. Microsoft’s Surface Pro 2 runs Intel’s multi-core i5 Haswell chip is 1.3cm thick and weighs 2lb."
Lets choose metric and tidy that up a bit:
"Apple’s iPad Air is 7.5mm thick, weighs 478g, and packs the ARM-based dual-core Cortex-based A7 chip from the iPhone 5S. Microsoft’s Surface Pro 2 runs Intel’s multi-core i5 Haswell chip is 13mm thick and weighs 907g."
Surface 2 Pro mass courtesy of http://www.techstumps.com/2013/09/microsoft-launched-surface-2-tablets-with-10.6-hd-display.html.
As far as I know the Tesco Hudl, awful name, goes for £119 not £199. You can also use Club Card vouchers to the value of £60 as part of the purcahse price so, if you chose to you can have a Hudl for £59.
I'm looking at getting one so that I can root it and fiddle around and try out Cyanogenmod or one of the alternative such as Replicant.
"Yeah I imagine the average Joe will be doing that as well - not."
What anyone else does with a Hudl is their affair, what I was saying was that in my case I'm going to use it as a test piece and fiddle around with various alternatives to Android.
I know what I'm doing and if I brick it ,at that price, no great loss.
Actually you can buy a hudl OUTRIGHT using £60 of Tesco clubcard vouchers - no cash required ... http://www.tesco.com/direct/clubcard-boost/
I bought one for £69 cash + £25 in vouchers. Plus got 238 more clubcard points (double points voucher) and a whole 35p cashback via credit card 8-)
The only downside is the battery life which, although is ~9 hours, like most 7" Androids gets nowhere near the life an ipad mini gives (real world experience).
Just to clarify the price of the HUDL, I got mine for ZERO cash, as they do indeed accept Clubcard points up to £60, but are giving double value for them!
I also use a larger, older, Android tablet, Motorola Xoom. The HUDL does not equal the battery life of the Xoom, which is hardly surprising, as the latter has a HUGE battery and much slower processor.
I don't yet know about Cyanogenmod for the HUDL, but I had it rooted within a week of it becoming available, and it does look as if the usual level of support from third parties such as the Cyanogenmod developers will be there. It is certainly not the "best" tablet around in the UK, but at the price, it is likely to be the "best value", which matters to many people.
I don't see why anyone would want something that is locked down tight for ever such as the ARM-based with secure boot M$, or indeed any Apple product. If the manufacturer loses interest, you are well and truly stuck as far as updates are concerned. In any case, if I pay good money (or in this case, Clubcard points) for something, I feel that it is only reasonable to be able to install anything that I want, at my own risk of course, not just things that some abusive corporation decide that I can install. It is not just the cost differential, which in some cases is negligible, that is causing Android to outsell the total output of Apple, M$ and their new subsidiary Nokia. It is the freedom to own your own equipment, and not be dictated to by someone else.
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