Which Tablet PC

[CL290005]

I have 10.1 Samsung tab2, bought it because of the discount, generally I am impressed with what it does, we have an iPad 2 and iphone 5 so understand Apple standard and I think it is equal based on a cost point of view, so would recommend this.

[ian clear]

I bought a Samsung Galaxy 7inch, for £149 from Carphone Warehouse. You can download apps

To turn it into a speedometer, also do 0to60mph timing, but I have found the later is no good as it uses GPS which is built in the tablet but this has too slow refresh rate for sub 4 secs. The speedo might be of some good if you want to test the car speedo at a steady speed.

[Scottish Bloke]

Another vote for the Galaxy tablet. We've recently got a Galaxy Note 10.1, excellent bit of kit. I'm seriously impressed by Samsung products of late, I seem to be building a collection.

 

Oh and I'm anti apple

[Mark (smokey mow)]

Another vote for the Galaxy tablet. We've recently got a Galaxy Note 10.1, excellent bit of kit. I'm seriously impressed by Samsung products of late, I seem to be building a collection.

Oh and I'm anti apple

I have the Galaxy Tab 10.1 5100 from work, only really use it for picking up emails and internet access out of the office but I hate the thing, the user interface just feels clumsy to use. I also have an IPad 2 which i bought for myself a couple of months before I was given the Samsung GT and in comparison the Apple user interface is a lot more intuitive and simpler to use.

[Blatman]

I am not anti Apple but I'm unconvinced by the claims that "it just works" as I have painful experience that when it does go wrong (and they do more often than many people, especially Apple fanboys would admit), they can be a sod to fault find and rectify. I am also unconvinced by the normal claim that Microsoft lag behind in the area of "shared media" so I have been using my Christmas break to have a bit of a play with my devices at home.

I have been having a go with Windows Media Player 11 and the Samsung Allshare app on my old Tab. We all hear how good iTunes at synching everything to Apple devices, so I wanted to see if Windows has been keeping pace.

I started by downloading an MP3 from Amazon. It came with Amazons own app and the actual file was buried in a couple of subfolders, so Amazon lose points for that. Once I'd found the file I put it in to the Music folder on my Win7 64 bit Home Premium laptop that I bought to replace my aging HP's, so that is brand new, out of the box.

I also run a ~10 year old Dell GX620 desktop with Win7 Pro 32 bit, a PS3 and couple of HTC Desires.

Like many things, even Apple, a little bit of setting up is required, but it is quite simple and reasonably intuitive.

All my Win 7 devices are part of my Home network, a feature that I quite like in Windows 7. I disabled the password requirement to make life easy.

Then it's in to Windows Media Player, got to Stream, tick Allow Remote Control of my Player and Automatically Allow Devices to Play My Media.

Job done.

Ripping CD's to Windows Media Player is a breeze and we should all be able to download and store MP3's.

Ripping DVD's is a bit more difficult as you need to find 3rd party software to do this. There are plenty and in my experience the paid ones are infinitely better than the free ones. I usually burn my DVD's to ISO files.

The Network:

1 x Cisco unmanaged switch for wired devices.

1 bog standard Sky router for the wireless and internet.

1 x Dell Desktop with Win7 Pro 32 bit and a Gigabit NIC connected to the switch

1 x Toshiba Tecra R850 with Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit on the wireless (Wireless N)

1 x PS3, hard wired to the switch.

1 x Samsung Galaxy 1000 tab.

The test:

1. Switch the TV, PS3 and Desktop on. The PS3 sees Windows Media player under each of the Music, Video and Picture menus on the PS3 menu. Clicking the Windows Media icon reveals options that allow you to browse and play any files present. ISO files play just fine as do many other files types but not all, but I forget which now as I will stick to ISO's. So I can watch Star Wars in HD played out to my TV and surround sound from the desktop via the PS3 with no issues.

1a. Same test on the wireless laptop. Same result, everythng works as expected, using the sample media that is always sitting there in the Windows Libraries.

2. Galaxy Tab... Go to Apps > Allshare. The tab sees Windows and lists the files that are being shared via Windows media. I can play movies to the tab as well.

3. Haven't worked out how to stream to and from the HTC's yet, but there is definitely communication as I can hear the video playing but cannot see a picture. I haven't tried to stream from the PC's to the phone yet, but I can't see why I would want to. Answers on a postcard...

Caveats:

As stated I am not an Apple fan but I have no particular axe to grind.

My question has always been to try to work out what Apple brings to the table that Windows and Android can't. Not much as far as I can see but as always, well constructed discussion is always welcomed.

From this limited test it seems to me that Windows Media Player is pretty good with as many options for storing, playing and buying media as iTunes. If you stick to using Windows built in libraries (which many folk, me included, used to resist as too big brother-ish but is in fact what Apple give you but they package and sell in a much better way) then access to your media is simplicity itself. Samsungs Allshare app recognises Windows just fine and I was actually really impressed with just how easy it was. If my reasonably old tab can handle this I can only hope that current versions of Allshare are equally trouble free and intuitive to use.

I have no doubt that the usual clarion calls of Windows crashing often will be cited, but apart from updates that have required me to re-boot Windows, I haven't had to re-boot Windows (on my work Toshiba Tecra which is app heavy) for a system crash for nearly a year. I use my desktop less, but it doesn't crash. I use my home laptop more than my desktop at home but as its only 3 days old, I don't expect it to have any problems!

[User0083]

iPad

Yes they're expensive, yes you can't take them apart and fix them... Then all the other stories about them. But got my mum iPad for her 50th, now she's 53 and never an issue and loves it still. Wants a iPad 2 for the camera, but about it.

Mrs C has iPad 3 and she'll cry if not charged and forgets the charger! Loves it. Now mum's PC, Mrs C's laptop and everything else are redundant.

Plus everyone compares their tablet to the iPad "it's better because..." "iPads don't..." And there's many anti apple people out there. I was one of them, but now everything is apple in my house... And my mums!

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Actually you can pull iPads and iPhones apart and do a certain amount of fixing, you just (ideally) need a couple of specialist, but easily available, tools in order to split the case. It may not be officially sanctioned by the manufacturer, but then these days what gadget/it gear is!

 

The biggest mistake people who work in more IT related fields, (programming/networking/support etc) with Apple gear is over thinking how to use it.

 

I must admit, I just couldn't get to grip with looking after the Apple laptop/desktop IT support side of our business when my business partner needed a hand, for that very reason. Oh it was fine operating at the command line from a terminal window, but try to show a client how to do an everyday task and it was hopeless.

 

So as by work laptop needed renewing last summer, I was "made" to have a Mac Book. OK so most of my day to day programming work is done in a Windows 7 environment via Parallels, (weird how the Mac Book hardware seems to also be the best Windows laptop I've had, doh.) But anything I can do, I've been forcing myself to do in the OSX environment.

 

I'm just about getting there now, but only since I changed my approach from one of thinking about how the hardware/software works to one of thinking what task do I want to do. In fact basically, when in doubt, pretend you know nothing about computers and all of a sudden it seems to do what you want!

 

I still loath the whole Apple corporate ethos and would rather dangle my gentleman's vegetables in the mouth of a starving lion than venture into that shear hell on Earth known as an Apple Store. Nor do I understand the need to queue up for hour on hour for the release of some new product.

[Doug Dastardly]

I bought the GF an Asus transformer pad for chrimbo and so far are very impressed....although we've nothing to compare it to as we've no experience of ipad etc.

 

Chose it because of usb port, sd card slot and proper but removable keyboard.

 

Angry birds is ace  

[Blatman]

I guess my attempt at a avoiding a brand preference discussion failed. I want to avoid defence of one manufacturer over another "just because..". Lets have a discussuion about the actual functionality of these devices. So let me re-ask the question that's buried in my long post above.

 

What does an Apple i-Whatever do that cannot be done equally easily in Windows / Android? On the assumption that all Apple devices have the latest O/S lets focus on Windows 7 as the main competition to iOS 'cos I'm sure XP would not be as easy (even though I still like it for lots of reasons) and Vista was... well... not well liked.

 

The point here is that when Apple came up with it's i-gadget concept, they were ahead of the game. Lots of people swapped to Apple and I have no problem with that. As I say I am not especially anti Apple. However those same people may now be unaware that these days when it comes to sharing media across multiple platforms it seems to me the competition has caught up.

[ACW]

There just different, there is no 'best', its like saying whats best your mum or your car, Westfileds or Caterhams. I was an Apple nay sayer and like most it was based on fear and different and little on actual technical merit.

I now use apple devices throughout, despite knowing the limitations and that it has a cost. The main benefit for me is that it 'just works'. As Gadgetman says my biggest issues are when I try to do something by applying too much techie to it.

Its not without its issues. My home iMac developed a faulty hard drive, but it was no harder to replace physically than a PC and time machine had me back running completely as i was 15 minutes before it died in less than 3 hours.

I replaced a v powerful Dell machine costing >6K with my first iMac. Comparing Win7 on the dell with the iMac running in fusion was faster for most stuff I was doing. Consistent performance IMHO is better on a Mac than a windows machine. Its a bit like Caterhams and Westfields - IMHO standard Caterhams have much better handling than standard Westfields - in part probably due to the cost. However the best handling Westfields ive driven are better than the best handling caterhams Ive driven.

Apple Spaces is very good for me on both iMac and Air and I find better then dual / quote monitors.

[Martin Keene]

In my experience if you work within the parameters laid down by Apple it is a lot easier to integrate all the products together.

For example, out network consists of a desktop pc, a laptop, a netbook, an iPad 2, Blu Ray player, a smart TV and a NAS drive. All the media is on the NAS drive and can be accessed by all devices, the difference being the iPad was very easy to set up, some of the others were a lot more difficult, the NAS drive in particular was a challenge...

[ACW]

WRT the original topic:

Apple are the simplest and most complete end user experience especially for non techies. They are the undisputed market leader still

Samsung and the range of Android based devices are good - have more techie stuff on them and more access underneath the apps. Less of a complete package IMHO but at price points much better than apple. Android is more popular than iOS but on different devices.

BB Playbook has got to be worth consideration esp with the offers at PC world. BB is still a force to be reckoned with. If they get Fusion right will IMHO have the capability of leading MDM arena.

New Kindles - Amazon has spent a fortune trying to make these devices fly. I would reckon one of these is worthy of consideration, especially if books are your thing.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

I think playing hunt the killer feature or app between the different devices is to sort of miss the point a little. I don't honestly believe there's one single thing that can be done from any of the camps. (Talking in terms of day to day general user type stuff here, not specialist or commercial or process control etc).

 

The point I was trying to make, that Adrian summed up so nicely, is that with the Apple stuff, pretty much anyone can use one of the devices to accomplish some task they wish to do, with the bare minimum of assistance and often no outside help at all.

 

This is partly down to an intuitive way of doing things, (bizarrely, the same intuitiveness that actually hinders those of us more used to  working and fiddling deep inside Windows menus and functions to do what we want.) But also, and equally, if not more importantly in some ways, because there's just something about how the OSX and IOS stuff works that is somehow unthreatening and unintimidating to the uninitiated, in away that Windows just isn't. (Again, using your limits of Windows versions up to and including 7. I've had precious little time to really play with 8 so far, though the ten minutes I did have with a Surface device, running the Metro GUI  did quite impress me.)

[ACW]

Windows 8 deeply horrifies me, especially on desktops in a way I havent felt since I used to hate apple. On that basis alone its probably brilliant.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Not tried it on a desktop/laptop of any description, only a Surface device, where of course it makes perfect sense, (well the Metro bit anyway).

 

Funny thing is though, I've been using Windows since 3.11, moving rapidly to NT and sticking with all the NT variants till they reconverted and moved through to 7; I enjoyed tinkering and setting everything up "just so", optimising speed, both "working" speed and boot/shut down times. Since going Mac Book I seem to have forgotten about messing round with all that and just got on with using it. (Even when I'm in the Windows VM).

 

i hadn't really considered that till now. Strange thing is, I don't miss it either!