The Must Have Tablet PC’s
Tablets PCs are fast becoming the must have accessories; becoming the hot property in the IT market. If you are looking to buy, the choice available can become quite mind boggling. So what are the choices available? 5 Tablet PCs are worth a closer look. These are the HTC Flyer, Apple iPad, Motorola Xoom Android Tablet, RIM® BlackBerry PlayBook and the Dell Streak 7 Tablet.
The HTC Flyer is compact at 7″, with a 1.5 GHz processor. It uses the older Android 2.4 Gingerbread OS. This was designed for smart phones and has now been superseded by Google’s Honeycomb. But they have adeptly customised this to optimise its effectiveness. Top screen resolution comes in at 1200 x 600 pixels, with storage of 32GB and 1GB operating memory. For connectivity the HTC Flyer has a microSD memory card slot, a 12-pin micro-USB 2.0 and headphone jack socket, but no HDMI connection. Front and rear cameras come as standard on this little tablet. The front camera can be used for video calls and the rear camera can be used to take photos at up to 5 megapixels. The HTC Flyer can support most of the commonly used standards for multimedia; MP3, .wav, .wma and Windows Media Audio 9 for playback, along with .amr, .aac all being supported when recording. Video support includes 3gp (playback and recording,) .3g2, .mp4, .wmv, .avi and .xvid. Wireless support is via Internet Wi-Fi with Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP for wireless stereo headsets. The HTC Flyer does have 3G capability, but unfortunately no voice-calling function. At 420g the Flyer is a lightweight tablet PC that browses quickly and smooth, whilst including a Flash Player to deal with online videos as well.
The Apple iPad is a sleek design weighing in at 613g for the Wi-Fi + 3G model. A larger tablet with a height of 9.5 inches, it comes with a large and bright 9.7″ visible screen with maximum resolution of 1024 x 768. Storage comes in various sizes, up to 64GB currently. In terms of processing power the Apple iPad is fitted with the 1GHz dual-core Apple A5 custom chipset, designed specifically for maximum performance at lowest power drain. The lithium polymer battery is said to have 10 hour duration for surfing or general activities such as listening to music and down to 9 hours when using the 3G for internet activity. Apple’s platform is a version of OS X for mobile devices making its use very familiar as it is almost identical to the iPhone. Of course the Apple iPad has a massive amount of support in the thousands of Apps currently available to users for free or to buy. A front and rear camera, including HD video recording and 5 times zoom, along with support for almost every audio and video format makes it quite a complete performer. Connections include Apple’s 30-pin dock connector port, a 3.5-mm stereo headphone socket, a speaker, micro-SIM card tray and a microphone
The Motorola Xoom Android Tablet is a larger size at 9.8 inches tall and just under 7 inches wide and comes in a little heavier than the Apple iPad at 730g. It is fitted with the powerful dual-core ARM-based Tetra 2 chipset whizzing through task at 1 GHz. Its screen has a viewing size of 10 inches and a high resolution of 1280×800, although it will need to be tested against the vivid colours of the iPad. The memory of 1 GB of RAM makes the Motorola Xoom Android Tablet a powerful operator. The key feature of the new Motorola Xoom, however, is the Honeycomb, Android OS 3.0 operating platform. This is the very latest Google version, specifically designed for tablets, allowing easy multi-tasking and smooth task handling. Connectivity is well covered with USB, micro USB, 3.5mm headphone socket, HDMI and DNLA. The Motorola Xoom Android Tablet has front and rear cameras, with the front camera functioning as a HD camcorder at 5 megapixels and full HD playback. Remote working is also provided for with Bluetooth 2.1 and Wi-Fi fully fitted and ready to go.
The RIM® BlackBerry PlayBook tablet has one of the smaller screen sizes. It measures 7 inches with a maximum resolution of 1,024 x 600 pixels. What marks out the RIM® BlackBerry PlayBook is its unique operating system. Ignoring Apple and Google Android, it is fitted with RIM’s own custom system. Multi-tasking, switching applications and screen manipulation are handled without hesitation and it looks impressive. This is supported by the 1 GHz dual core processor and the unique feature of the ability to connect to other Blackberry smart phone by Bluetooth. The tablet itself is quite sleek at just 10mm and light at only 400g.
The Dell Streak 7 Tablet was released in 2011 with a screen size of 7 inches. Like the Motorola Xoom it is fitted with the Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset running at 1000 MHz. The screen display is a maximum resolution of 400 x 800 pixels and the device also sports front and rear cameras up to 5 megapixels. For some reason the Dell Streak 7 Tablet uses the older Android 2.2 Froyo operating platform, although this has distinct advantages for web browsing and Flash applications, web sites and menus. Connectivity is covered by Dells own pin connector slot, USB, headphone, microSD and microSDHC slots. Fully equipped with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi it also allows video calling and playback seamlessly.
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This entry was posted on Monday, March 7th, 2011 at 5:27 pm and is filed under .misc, guest post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
