Thinking of getting a tablet...recommendations?

Soldato
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Torn a bit between the Ipad 3 & the Asus Transformer based on a number of reviews. I understand there is a new version of the Transformer due out in a few months so if I went the android route I guess I would wait a bit longer to get one.

It seems both can do what I want them to do but having never owned an apple device & disliking what I have seen of ITunes (and hearing everything has to go through it) I am leaning toward the Transformer. I must admit to not knowing a great deal about tablets in general so any guidance would be appreciated. I would mainly be using it for, remote desktop control, calendar & email, ebooks and of course angry birds ;)

Cheers.
 
Soldato
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Personally if I was getting a tab it would be between the 7.7 and a iPad. iPad is the only tablet out there with really apps interms of entainment, if your looking to be more productive then I would go for the transformer but if you want a tab for fun then it has to the the iPad just based on the selection of apps availble to you and not going into any of the hardware details.
 
Soldato
OP
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Having never owned anything Apple, how restrictive are they (in particularly itunes)? Quite like on my HTC phone being able to customise things, not to the point of rooting etc but putting icons where I want them, widgets etc.
 

RSR

RSR

Soldato
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I'd highly recommend going for iPad over any Android device. The whole UI is much more user friendly and if its apps you require there are a lot more of them.
 
Soldato
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Having never owned anything Apple, how restrictive are they (in particularly itunes)? Quite like on my HTC phone being able to customise things, not to the point of rooting etc but putting icons where I want them, widgets etc.

I don't find it restrictive personally, but then again I don't tend to fiddle with something if it works, I only fiddle if it's not working.

Try one out in a shop if you can, and if you really like to tinker then I'm sure there will be a jailbreak at some point. :)
 
Man of Honour
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iPad and despite what people say iTunes is very good these days, ignore 90% of iTunes comments based on info 10years out of date.
Not only is it a one portal for updating/syncing/backing up. It is the only real media store, which android hasn't even remotely matched.
It's why we need w8 tablets. For store competition as they have zune. Or for android to pull their thumb out.
 
Man of Honour
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The new iPad by an absolute country mile, there is no comparison (and I don't say that lightly).

Also with regard to iTunes, it has always worked well for me on Windows and I think problems are mostly down to people failing to understand how it works more than anything else.
 
Associate
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As a transformer prime owner I say go for the iPad unless you absolutely have to have android or really hate itunes
 
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Soldato
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As a transformer prime owner I say go for the iPad unless you absolutely have to have android or really hate itunes

Agreed, I've owned a Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime now for near on a week and I'm not entirely happy with my purchase.

Firstly the Prime struggles to render some web pages that my Galaxy Nexus eats for breakfast and this isn't down to screen resolution as the GPU in the Prime is far more powerful and resolution isn't too different. My browsing experience on this thing pretty much consists of constantly clicking the "Ok" button on the "Browser isn't responding" message.

Also when applications are written to the /data partition from the Google Play store, the device comepletely locks up. This again doesn't happen on my Galaxy Nexus when installing the exact same application but it used to happen on my HTC Desire; it really shouldn't happen on the Prime given the specs.

Then there's a complete lack of tablet applications on Android. Take for example the Sky Sports applications on iOS vs Android, the iOS tablet application which my housemate has on the new iPad2 is excellent; on Android it's just a stretched out mobile view and doesn't even rotate.....

I'm so underwhelmed by my experience that I'm considering moving completely away from Android when it comes to contract renewals. Getting hold of this Prime was trying to get hold of stardust, unlike my housemate who waltzed into the purple shirt store a week after launch of the iPad and snapped one up....

Unfortunately I don't see the quality of Android tablet applications ever reaching the quality of iOS counterparts. You can read it on pro-Android blogs that developers struggle to make 25% of the revenue that their apps on iOS do, from Android. I'm not sure why this is as Android's market share has become so strong but I suspect it's down to a lot of Android users just not wanting to buy content.

Another gripe with my Prime is the blatant lack of testing this device has been given. Due to the form factor, typing on this thing in portrait mode is impossible with the software keyboard; to the point I actually get shooting pains in my wrist by the time I've written simple paragraph. I installed thumb keyboard off the Google Play Store which helped a lot but it wasn't perfect as I had to reduce the height and width of the keys with the Ice Cream Sandwich theme but that made the numeric key pad mode completely squashed up.

Was playing with the iPad in a large Tesco store the other day with a colleague who owns one and he showed me a cool thing with the on screen keyboard. He simply slid his thumbs from the centre of the keyboard to the edge of the screen and the keyboard split in half, replicating thumb keyboard. I give it to Apple, their products have been designed to be as ergonomic from every angle before shipping, unlike the Asus which has blatantly had little testing.
 
Soldato
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For that size of tablet I'd take the iPad anyday. Although I prefer ICS by miles there just isn't the tablet app support of the iPad at the moment. Although iOS is extremely cumbersome to use sometimes it's more the quality of the apps that matter.
 
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