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.

Comments

Geeks miss the point again.

[aussersterne]

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.

Re:Geeks miss the point again.

[whisper_jeff]

I'd mod you up if I could.

I have an MSI Wind (a hackintosh) that I love but it is not the same thing as a tablet. Too many people view a tablet as "a computer that is just the screen." Apple has gambled (and I am increasingly thinking they're right on target) that a tablet is not a computer - it's a computing device. If you want a computer, you'll use a laptop or desktop. Those already exist and there are hundreds of choices available. A tablet, however, is an ultra-mobile device capable of very specific computing tasks.

In short, I agree - it's about doing few things better. That's why I think the iPad (hate that name) is going to do pretty well as it differentiates itself from the deluge of "computer in tablet form" offerings from other companies. It's not a computer in tablet form - it's a tablet.

Re:Geeks miss the point again.

[eepok]

While I agree with your analysis as to why the Apple iDevices sell so well, I have to state that "the geeks" aren't interested simply in buying from the company that has the best business model... we just want something that works the way we want. We couldn't care less if our purchase includes us in part of a smug team of iTards or anti-Mac... we just want to know if this tablet has the features we require. Example:

I don't need a camera.
I need multi-tasking.
I prefer to have a modable interface to save CPU/Battery power (less is more)
I want an SD or USB port
I need 3G
I need a text and email program.
I need it to be less than $600.
I don't care what anyone else wants nor how successful the company will be (or if it "wins" in the tablet arena)
etc...

Re:Geeks miss the point again.

[Abcd1234]

Meanwhile, the geeks are running around blasting Apple products for all the things they "don't have" and recommending complex alternatives.

Wait, so multitasking is a "complex alternative"? Please.

Yes, Apple's tablet is meant to be a computing appliance. But ffs, no fucking user-level multitasking? Christ, people bitched and complained about PalmOS and it's lack of multitasking, and now you're cheering it on like it's some kind of feature. It's fucking baffling.

That and the fact that the iPad is a completely closed off system puts it off my list. No, I don't believe a tablet must be a general purpose computer. But I do believe that I should at least be able to install what I want on it from whatever source I like, and I should be able to run more than one fucking application at the same damn time.

Re:"Walled garden"?

[slim]

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.

Re:On Par?

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:Only if it has an IPS panel.

[Albanach]

I don't use Facebook, Twitter, or any of the other ultra-stupid Web 2.0 time wasters. And these days, the further away I am from my email, the better off I am.

Yet here you are on /.

Re:Not really

[Lumpy]

"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.

But Apple has solved that problem.

[aussersterne]

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.