Accidentally smashed my Advent Vega - what to buy now?

More questions:
So I'm on holiday with my Sony HD flash Camcorder and I've got my Tablet. I then want to get back to the hotel and watch what I've recorded on the Tablet. Can I do this with an iPad?
Lets say I've taken pictures with my Samsung Galaxy S and I want to transfer them to my Tablet. I can press 'Select to Copy to PC' which basically turns it into an external hard drive. Can I plug this into an iPad and be recognised?
In fact can I plug any external storage into an iPad?
 
I believe you need to toss up the options between having a polished product that is solid and stable but is unlikely to evolve far beyond where it is now or getting one that is unpolished and if we're being entirely honest at a fairly intermediary point of development but is going to evolve into something more than it already is.

Do you have the patience to wait for the apps to become available and are you prepared to tinker a bit or do you want 'a' solution immediately? It depends on where you are prepared to compromise.
 
dmpoole said:
1) Web browsing (excellent on Vega)
2) RSS feeds (excellent on Vega)
3) Video playing without converting (excellent on Vega)
4) Streaming from my NAS (excellent on Vega)
5) Taking on stage and being used as a lyrics book (excellent on Vega)
6) Reading PDF's (excellent on Vega)

7) Being able to see the screen from more angles than the single angle of the Vega (rubbish on Vega)
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I understand the VEGA only had Android 2.x?

You will love honeycomb even more, generally much better for tablets than 2.x and some tablet optimised apps around too.

Speaking of the transformer specifically, the IPS screen is great, no viewing angle problems at all and it's bright and crisp. The screen resolution is also higher by a good bit which makes browsing even better :D

It's also a lighter and thinner tablet and even with that extra bit of bezel it still looks nice and sleek, especially from the back.

If you had fun with the VEGA then you'll like the Transformer even more.

Regarding external storage on the ipad i don't know, but with the Transformer and 3.1 you should be able to plug the camera straight in a many other things with the new USB host stuff.



Those guitar and multimedia things I have no idea! :)
 
dmpoole said:
More questions:
So I'm on holiday with my Sony HD flash Camcorder and I've got my Tablet. I then want to get back to the hotel and watch what I've recorded on the Tablet. Can I do this with an iPad?
Lets say I've taken pictures with my Samsung Galaxy S and I want to transfer them to my Tablet. I can press 'Select to Copy to PC' which basically turns it into an external hard drive. Can I plug this into an iPad and be recognised?
In fact can I plug any external storage into an iPad?
Click to expand...

No - at this stage I believe not with the iPad - I'd also supspect you won't be seeing it any time soon. With the Transformer you can but it is not polished. I have tried with my DSLR and it didn't detect the camera however when I put the SD card into a reader it immediately picked it up and allowed me to copy the photos over to the local storage.
 
You'll be able to with the camera connection dongle which will read your SD cards. But as the iPad doesn't have a USB port built in you won't be plugging any random piece of hardware into it.
 
sarge78 said:
Get the iPad 2 (or cheap iPad 1) it's peerless for musicians.
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+1

You only have to look on the app store to see a ton of music apps are now avaliable for the iPad.

I quite like nanostudio myself, but the Line6 stuff is good for those guitar players out there...

It would be nice to see some music apps for Android in the future, but right now the audio latency on Android is too high which is a bit of a shame as until then the iPad/iPod is going to have this sector to it's self.
 
MikeHunt79 said:
+1

You only have to look on the app store to see a ton of music apps are now avaliable for the iPad.

I quite like nanostudio myself, but the Line6 stuff is good for those guitar players out there...

It would be nice to see some music apps for Android in the future, but right now the audio latency on Android is too high which is a bit of a shame as until then the iPad/iPod is going to have this sector to it's self.
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Like I said earlier I have that many musical devices in the house that the chances of me putting my guitar or keyboards through a Tablet would be none now I think about it.
Guitar Partner is good enough for Guitar Pro files when I go off to rehearsals and need to show the rest of the band stuff.

The big reason for having a Tablet is when we go on holidays or weekends away and the iPad is lacking in some areas.
For instance I would put a few films on in their native format without converting and the iPad videoplayer mentioned above does not support AC3 and I know a lot of my files are AC3 encoded.
After taking pictures/films all day I would want to be able to play them back through the Tablet and obviously store them.
Looking at the Camera Connection Kit on the Apple site I would be taking a huge risk that it would work after reading all the reviews.
 
These devices are used heavily for the internet yet with the iPad you're going to miss out on a LOT of the net as it has no Flash.

For example:

Over 75% of the most visited internet sites use Flash in some form.
Over 80% of videos on the net use Flash.
Flash is the largest gaming platform in existence (including all games consoles ever). The "Farmville" game on Facebook alone is worth $12 billion. Thats more than Electronic Arts (EA) is worth. And 45% of time spent on Facebook is people playing Flash games (FB has over 500 million users BTW).
All the Flash games/apps out there far outnumber the apps in either the Android Market or Apple App Store.

For having no Flash support alone i would stay away from iDevices.

Even if you hate Flash for whatever ridiculous reason i personally dont like being told what i can and cannot view on something i've just payed a ton for.
 
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MR.B said:
These devices are used heavily for the internet yet with the iPad you're going to miss out on a LOT of the net as it has no Flash.

For example:

Over 75% of the most visited internet sites use Flash in some form.
Over 80% of videos on the net use Flash.
Flash is the largest gaming platform in existence (including all games consoles ever). The "Farmville" game on Facebook alone is worth $12 billion. Thats more than Electronic Arts (EA) is worth. And 45% of time spent on Facebook is people playing Flash games (FB has over 500 million users BTW).
All the Flash games/apps out there far outnumber the apps in either the Android Market or Apple App Store.

For having no Flash support alone i would stay away from iDevices.

Even if you hate Flash for whatever ridiculous reason i personally dont like being told what i can and cannot view on something i've just payed a ton for.
Click to expand...

I've had an iPad since October last year and the lack of flash hasn't burned me once.
 
Oh, here we go...

MR.B said:
These devices are used heavily for the internet yet with the iPad you're going to miss out on a LOT of the net as it has no Flash.

For example:

Over 75% of the most visited internet sites use Flash in some form.
Click to expand...

Absolutely, adverts.
MR.B said:
Over 80% of videos on the net use Flash.
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iOS can still play them fine.
MR.B said:
Flash is the largest gaming platform in existence (including all games consoles ever). The "Farmville" game on Facebook alone is worth $12 billion. Thats more than Electronic Arts (EA) is worth. And 45% of time spent on Facebook is people playing Flash games (FB has over 500 million users BTW).
All the Flash games/apps out there far outnumber the apps in either the Android Market or Apple App Store.
Click to expand...

But most of the popular games have an app counterpart. Apps also tend to be of a much higher quality than Flash games in the browser too.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/farmville-by-zynga/id375562663?mt=8

MR.B said:
For having no Flash support alone i would stay away from iDevices.

Even if you hate Flash for whatever ridiculous reason i personally dont like being told what i can and cannot view on something i've just payed a ton for.
Click to expand...

And the 'walled-garden' argument rears its ugly head once again :p

I agree that Flash should be an option on Apple things, they have no excuse for not giving you it as an option, but it isn't really a big problem for the majority of people.
 
Robbo said:
Absolutely, adverts.
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That statistic didnt include ads, it's for video, games, and other content.

Robbo said:
iOS can still play them fine.
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If the site has an App or HTML5 alternative, like Youtube, then you can still view the videos. But the vast majority of sites with Flash video do not have this. Sometimes the video will need features that only Flash can do so a HTML5 alternative isn't even a possibility (encryption, DRM, variable bitrates).

Robbo said:
But most of the popular games have an app counterpart. Apps also tend to be of a much higher quality than Flash games in the browser too.
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Flash does not need a browser. You can make standalone Flash apps (Adobe AIR) or just open the Flash .swf file. Theres thousands of free quality Flash games that can match anything in the App Store.
 
MR.B said:
Flash does not need a browser. You can make standalone Flash apps (Adobe AIR) or just open the Flash .swf file. Theres thousands of free quality Flash games that can match anything in the App Store.
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And there are thousands of free games on the app store that work absolutely fine, too. Just how many games does one need? :p

I know what you are getting at but most people with an iPad wont encounter any flash problems. Hardly any of the websites I visit use Flash to any great extent, and as I said its mostly adverts.

You very rarely see iPad owners complaining about the lack of Flash, you can get by fine without it. You shouldn't really have to, but you can.
 
Skyfall, from your requirement list and the fact that everything bar the screen you liked about the vega, so something like the transfer with a better screen sounds like a good option.
I'm also in the market for a tablet and despite having and loving my iphone 4, for the tablet high up on my requirements list is watching videos, and I'm not very impressed with the ipad 1 or 2 for that. Apart from having to convert the video, the ipad's are not 16:9 res and the black bars on movies can be massive ! Yes, I'm sure you can convert them so that you cut off the widescreen bit but that's not really the solution.
I just can't decide on whether to go for the transformer with keyboard, a Xoom or wait a few more months for something better.
 
I'd go for the Transformer. I often stream Flash based things like football matches which is a complete no go on the iPad. Also I find 10 inch pads a bit large (much prefer my Galaxy Tab for tablet use!) so without the Transformer dock I wouldn't be keeping it. It's great with the keyboard for my work Exchange emails (which has remote wipe etc. as was mentioned as something the iPad supports).

If you want a Tablet though, why not the Galaxy Tab? Can be picked up for under £250, runs extremely quick with the latest Gingerbread update and unlike the iPad or Transformer it fits in an inside jacket pocket. What's the point of a Tablet if you're leaving it at home all the time.
 
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