Originally Posted by Steerpike (Post 9972253)

Are you referring to their labor practices (cheap manual labor in China), or their desire to maintain a 'closed' technology system? I would agree that the former is an ethical problem, but the latter is simply a business decision. I cannot deny that the Apple presents a more refined, smoother experience and I believe this is a direct result of their 'closed' approach. But they did that with their laptops (Macs) and have sat solidly in last place in terms of market share, so they are not benefiting much from that strategy there. Now, with the 'tablets', they are enjoying the benefits but - I suspect it won't last and they'll end up back at the bottom due to having a closed system.

Originally Posted by penguinbar (Post 9977281)

We have a Motorola Zoom tablet. It's really great!

Originally Posted by Bob (Post 9974094)

..... couldn't really see how light it really was, or how well using the front facing cam could be on Skype v the iPads front facing camera.

Originally Posted by Anian (Post 9977310)

I would never buy a tablet without an SD card slot. Memory is a big deal for something that plays videos, being able to upgrade so easily is very nice. My phone came with 2GB of memory which I used I quickly so I went to 4GB, which ran out, now I have 32GB and I am comfortable. .

Originally Posted by fatbrit (Post 9977322)

You'll never get enough memory in a tablet to take all your media -- 32GB is a tiny fraction of what I have on my media server. The secret is to make your media server accessible by the tablet, not to try and store your media on the tablet.

Originally Posted by BritishGuy36 (Post 9977314)

Haven't seen Skype on an iPad. I have used it on the Transformer a few times, the quality is as good as it gets with Skype on a wireless device, I have no complaints.

Originally Posted by fatbrit (Post 9977322)

You'll never get enough memory in a tablet to take all your media -- 32GB is a tiny fraction of what I have on my media server. The secret is to make your media server accessible by the tablet, not to try and store your media on the tablet.

Originally Posted by HarryTheSpider (Post 9977524)

I use Skype several times a week on my iPad when talking with home in UK - works very well - surprisingly so, no matter what orientation I put the iPad in.

Originally Posted by willmore (Post 9974012)

Over and above all the wonderful technical advice you've been given. Here's my experience with my ipad.

I bought it a few months ago intending for the ipad NOT to replace my macbookpro, but to use the ipad only for travelling to keep in touch with family etc.

I dont know if you have used a tablet before, but I found the keyboard on the screen and having to change from the alphabet keyboard to the numeric one a bloody pain. The keyboard takes up at least 1/4 of the screen at the bottom. I finally found a keyboard that also works as a cover for somewhat protection of the ipad but it was difficult to use. I finally bought an wireless keyboard which had issues with the ipad. As well, I had to buy a stand for it to keep it secure. I must have gone through three or four different stand and couldnt find one that I was satisified with. I took the ipad in the car, ferry and train to see if it would be stable without a firm support and found it annoying and unsuccessful.

Bottom line - Im giving my ipad to my sister and bought a macbookair. Granted it is a little heavier than the ipad, but is much easier to use and I love having a proper keyboard.

This is just my experience with the ipad. I hope you will be very happy with whatever your choose.

Cheers.

Originally Posted by fatbrit (Post 9977322)

You'll never get enough memory in a tablet to take all your media -- 32GB is a tiny fraction of what I have on my media server. The secret is to make your media server accessible by the tablet, not to try and store your media on the tablet.

Originally Posted by Steerpike (Post 9979789)

I believe this is a very important point; the tablet is only good as a VIEWING device. Any page requiring 'input' becomes a big frustration. I still have an old 'netbook' that I use over the tablet for anything that needs text input. The tablet and its 'soft' keyboard is great for google searches, url entries, etc, but anything more substantial in terms of input requires a real keyboard. Further - the need to 'stand' the tablet at an angle for viewing / etc is not a trivial issue, something a netbook takes care of naturally.

Tablets do have one BIG plus (iPad and Android) - the ability to 'scale' any screen (the 'pinch' feature) - I really love this ability.

And today, for the first time, I used the 'Navigation' feature on the Galaxy (Android) while on a business trip in a strange location. The quality of the GPS / guidance feature was truly awesome, and infinitely superior to what you get on the iPad (google maps) - in a different league. Ironic, really, since the navigation feature of android tablets is from google, as is 'google maps' on the mac.