Slashdot Mirror
MSI Will Launch iPad Alternative
itwbennett writes "Underwhelmed by the iPad? Don't give up on tablets just yet, says blogger Peter Smith. MSI has a tablet coming in the second half of 2010 that measures up on price and size and addresses a lot of the iPad's most noted shortcomings. 'The iPad runs iPhone OS while the MSI runs Android,' writes Smith. 'That means the MSI will multitask of course, and Flash support in Android should be a given by launch time (though that isn't certain). It has a camera. It's running on an Nvidia Tegra2 chip which Ars Technica suggests puts it on par with the iPad's A4 as far as computing horsepower. And of course Android doesn't live in a walled garden.'" The post notes that the MSI device does not support multitouch in its built-in apps. Still, would an Android-powered iPad-alike tempt you?
Update: 01/29 17:58 GMT by KD : Dave Altavilla suggests Hot Hardware's coverage of Asus's recently announced tablet, also based on the Tegra2 chip.
Update: 01/29 17:58 GMT by KD : Dave Altavilla suggests Hot Hardware's coverage of Asus's recently announced tablet, also based on the Tegra2 chip.
It's not about "do more things," it's about "do very few things better."
That's why Apple wins.
My wife asked about the iPad last night (she owns a netbook right now) and now she's drooling over one. Why? It doesn't have "files." It doesn't have "windows." She won't have to worry about "flash drives." And so on. She was so excited about all the things it didn't have (and that she therefore didn't have to worry about) that she was disappointed when I told her they weren't in the Apple Store in Manhattan yet.
Meanwhile, the geeks are running around blasting Apple products for all the things they "don't have" and recommending complex alternatives.
That's why Apple is making $$$ these days. Because they're removing 60 percent of the features and making the remaining 40 percent configuration free and so polished they make your eyes hurt.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
If you don't know the meaning of a common semi-technical phrase, it's probably better to just look it up, than to loudly proclaim what you don't know.
with my wife hating multitasking. She never closes a thing (tab, application, etc.) and invariably runs out of memory. Often, there are dozens of background processes. Her hard drive starts to thrash. Things grind to a halt. I get called.
I've tried to explain about things taking up memory, the problem of lots of background applications, the problem of never closing applications. She doesn't want to know what memory even IS. "Why is the computer so stupid," she wants to know, "that it can't figure out that I only care about what I'm working on RIGHT NOW?"
Say what you want, but a) she's my wife, b) she's rather beautiful, c) it's absolutely impossible to even try to say "okay, let me explain to you why..." and d) Apple's gonna continue to make bank selling devices to people just like her.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
"most likely has", "is most likely several times that", "power consumption is also claimed to be several times lower than"
Oh! the facts!
Fact is: no official info has been given about the internals of the A4, only rumors. And yet you come to the conclussion that the Tegra 2 is faster both GPU and CPU wise, and yet
consumes less power. And you criticize sites of being affected by a RTD -did you mean RDF-? maybe you are also in some kind of RDF yourself, of another kind.
When a Tegra 2 tablet is released you will be able to compare the systems. Until them saying one is better than the other is just speculation. Well, in fact it is quite easy to compare
them right now: they have the same performance and the same power consumption: 0, as you can not get either one.
Yet here you are on /.
A better touchscreen interface is the difference between an app
being something that you are vaguely aware of but never use vs.
something that you use constantly. Your basic input devices are
by no means trivial.
If Apple maintains this edge, it will be hard for competitors that
are more functional in other areas to get any anywhere.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yeah, cause when i am on a packed train, all i want to do it talk my private message into my phone :)
Voice recognition is over hyped, and it will not work as a sole means for data entry, ever.
-EL
Sure, it's "her own fucking problem" and it looks like iPad is how she's going to solve it, judging by her excitement at watching the YouTube videos and my answers to her questions about it last night. I'm sure you don't care.
Maybe you think she's an idiot. Maybe I'm really bad at explaining. Both of those things have little to do with my suggestion that geeks will likely continue to wonder until the end of time why not everyone wants a bare/caseless single board computer that fits inside a coffee cup, runs embedded Linux, and is hackable for umpteen million projects.
I'm just ruminating on all the Slashdot anti-Apple posting and the apparent geek frustration at the success of Apple.
A: "Apple sucks!"
B: "Regular people like Apple!"
A: "But Apple isn't a hackable Linux embedded device with hooks for 23 language APIs!"
B: "Regular people don't want that!"
A: "Then regular people are really stupid and deserve to be dominated and reamed!"
B: "?!!?"
A: "By the way, why don't people like us, and why can't I get a girlfriend?"
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Ignoring the fact that a netbook isn't a tablet, there's still a great deal of difference between the two beyond the similar price point:
Acer:
$420
3 lbs
6 hour battery life
8 in x 11.2 in x 1.18 in
No touchscreen
Plastic case with lower coefficient of friction
iPad:
$499
1.6 lbs
10 hour battery life
7.5 x 9.5 in x 0.5 in
Touchscreen
Aluminum case with higher coefficient of friction
The fact that the iPad is half the weight, half the thickness, and has almost 2x the battery life is not something you can easily ignore in a device who's primary goal is to be portable. To setup a litmus test, try to argue that using a netbook to reply to an email while walking through an airport is less awkward than using a touchscreen tablet in the same situation.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Of course I would not expect you tell your wife that.
Really, your wife is really really ignorant or just really good at selling you on her buying a new toy.
I know lots of people who are bad with computers, I certainly do my best to make sure they don't touch one
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I was waiting with baited breath to see what Apple was going to deliver. What a letdown. I typically love what Apple puts out there. I was fully expecting something I could load up with whatever open source software I wanted. Something I could do video iChat on. Etc. After the big release thing I ordered an ASUS Eee PC T91MT. 9" multi-touch screen (yeah, Windows 7, but hey...), 3-5hr. battery life, load whatever software I want, built-in web cam for VTC, not one, but TWO SDHC slots, blah blah blah. Oh, and a real keyboard. I dunno...for my money, the ASUS seems like a much better buy.
"I've yet to see an app that makes me think, "Oh- I have to have that, it is so much better than using a mouse/keyboard/trackpad/etc."
Microsoft One-Note. It's the killer tablet app.
Than and a program to let you pen markup PDF files. I have switched to only carrying a tablet into meetings because of those two apps. Plus I added a nice little microphone http://www.sourcingmap.com/mini-small-mic-microphone-for-laptop-line-chat-p-29294.html to the mic in plug and record the meeting audio as I sit there.
You cant look at a tablet as a pc or a laptop replacement. it's a limited use tool, leverage it's advantages and you really see what it's good at.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Every iPhone app I have (yes, that's the iPhone famous for "not multitasking") stores complete state information when it exits.
Safari comes back with all the same tabs and windows open. It doesn't have to reload them. It is scrolled to exactly the same place I was at. Partially filled out forms are still partially filled out.
The document I was working on in DocsToGo is exactly the way it looked (with the cursor in exactly the same place).
It's COMPLETELY state-stable and FAST, there's no "saving state" when you switch applications, because they store their state continuously as it evolves.
I am a power Linux user. I HAVE a home-built hardware RAID sitting here on my desktop, along with a triple-head display.
I run from the updates-testing repos on Fedora. I have patched my own radeon_drv.so Xorg module to fix the infamous compositing corruption bug (for those who care, when doing copy-from-screen, first do a test to see if the bitmap being copied is smaller than 32 pixels; if it is, don't copy-from, because the bitmap hasn't made it into the buffer yet to be copied back from).
I'm the sort you'd think would be bugged as hell with "no multitasking."
Only I'm totally not. As far as I'm concerned, for an interface on a tiny screen (where you're unlikely to have multiple windows onscreen at once), perfect stateful information is damn close to multitasking.
The only thing that can't be approximated is background processes (i.e. start it and let it compute while I work on something else), but it's not like I'm going to do a 20-day render on my iPhone, is it? Nor on my iPad.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Y'know, I love my netbook, but there are some times that it really just doesn't do it for me. Like in a yaris, at night, while someone else is driving down a gravel road. The position you're in is uncomfortable. The keyboard is awkward. The trackpad is tiny and useless when you're bouncing around.
That seems like a pretty high bar. Tiny uncomfortable vehicle, at night, on a bumpy gravel road? It could be that this is one of those times that a person puts the computing devices away. Under those conditions, it may also be difficult to even read a paperback.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.