iPad has no USB ports, so no easy keyboard/mouse hookup. Sure you can do the bluetooth thing, but the average office worker probably won't know about that or want to fool with it. But hooking up a keyboard and mouse via USB, and having some kind of mount on your desk, and viola, your tablet turns into a little PC.
It will be immensely more usable in the average workplace environment. I expect these tablets to sell quite well, better than the Android tablets for sure.
In fact my dad (businessman who does't care how he gets his information, as long as he gets it) asked me the other day if he should get an iPad. He never used his laptop anymore, and just his Blackberry to check email, but every now and then he could use a full PC experience to handle attached documents. I almost told him yes, but then I remembered the new Windows 8 tablets coming out in the next year or so, and asked him if he'd rather have that. He immediately said yes, because he understands how much more usable a Windows environment is in the business world than an Apple one; I agreed with him.
If MS can pull this off, I expect these to be a hit. The question will be performance, battery life, and heat. If these things suck down the juice, are as slow as a Win7 netbook, and create a lot of heat, they may fail. But they will be undeniably sexy to the business world out of the gate.
I don't work for Microsoft in any way shape or form. I work for an IT company in the medical industry, which has had its fair share of problems with MS in the past.
I'm seriously just trying to report an objective truth.
Thanks for trying though. Please carry on with your regularly scheduled Slashdot anti-MS FUD.
I have a Focus with AT&T. Update came through fine for me last week, and overall I am quite pleased with it.
One of the little publicized problems related to the Focus was its issues with music playback. You could start a playlist, turn the phone "off" (sleep mode), and some random number of songs into the list, there would be stuttering and sometimes crashing on a track change. This was a very annoying problem for someone who had come from a Zune HD and was hoping to migrate all my music over to my new phone and enjoy a seamless experience.
Well, that problem has been fixed, completely. I thought the problem was some hardware issue brought on by Samsung's use of cheap memory, or some such permanent issue, but apparently the engineers at Samsung and Microsoft (and perhaps AT&T) got together and fixed this major issue. So I am extending major kudos to MS and Samsung for taking this problem seriously and fixing it.
Also, the rest of the update is good too: Copy & Paste works great, the Marketplace is improved, and the unit just feels more responsive. While I was once a despairing user of WP7 and the Samsung Focus, I can now fully recommend this product to anyone who wants a powerful yet easy-to-use smartphone.
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iPad has no USB ports, so no easy keyboard/mouse hookup. Sure you can do the bluetooth thing, but the average office worker probably won't know about that or want to fool with it. But hooking up a keyboard and mouse via USB, and having some kind of mount on your desk, and viola, your tablet turns into a little PC.
It will be immensely more usable in the average workplace environment. I expect these tablets to sell quite well, better than the Android tablets for sure.
In fact my dad (businessman who does't care how he gets his information, as long as he gets it) asked me the other day if he should get an iPad. He never used his laptop anymore, and just his Blackberry to check email, but every now and then he could use a full PC experience to handle attached documents. I almost told him yes, but then I remembered the new Windows 8 tablets coming out in the next year or so, and asked him if he'd rather have that. He immediately said yes, because he understands how much more usable a Windows environment is in the business world than an Apple one; I agreed with him.
If MS can pull this off, I expect these to be a hit. The question will be performance, battery life, and heat. If these things suck down the juice, are as slow as a Win7 netbook, and create a lot of heat, they may fail. But they will be undeniably sexy to the business world out of the gate.
I don't work for Microsoft in any way shape or form. I work for an IT company in the medical industry, which has had its fair share of problems with MS in the past.
I'm seriously just trying to report an objective truth.
Thanks for trying though. Please carry on with your regularly scheduled Slashdot anti-MS FUD.
I have a Focus with AT&T. Update came through fine for me last week, and overall I am quite pleased with it.
One of the little publicized problems related to the Focus was its issues with music playback. You could start a playlist, turn the phone "off" (sleep mode), and some random number of songs into the list, there would be stuttering and sometimes crashing on a track change. This was a very annoying problem for someone who had come from a Zune HD and was hoping to migrate all my music over to my new phone and enjoy a seamless experience.
Well, that problem has been fixed, completely. I thought the problem was some hardware issue brought on by Samsung's use of cheap memory, or some such permanent issue, but apparently the engineers at Samsung and Microsoft (and perhaps AT&T) got together and fixed this major issue. So I am extending major kudos to MS and Samsung for taking this problem seriously and fixing it.
Also, the rest of the update is good too: Copy & Paste works great, the Marketplace is improved, and the unit just feels more responsive. While I was once a despairing user of WP7 and the Samsung Focus, I can now fully recommend this product to anyone who wants a powerful yet easy-to-use smartphone.