Top 5 Tablets to Have

November 27, 2012 by ·

Nowadays people are usually on the run and want a discreet and reliable device for work, school or entertainment. Fortunately, hardware companies have found the solution and they are working on improving their tablets to cater to all the customers’ tastes and wallets. Here are five of the best and most popular tablets for you to choose from:

Apple iPad

Features like incredible image quality, thanks to the Retina display, fast 4G speed, improved camera and a wide selection of fun apps place the new Apple iPad in the lead both from the customers’ and the specialized websites’ point of view. The costs may sometimes increase, when you find yourself in the position of having to pay for additional upgrades, like for example special docks for the new Lightning connector, but that does not seem to bother loyal fans too much.

Google Nexus 7

Leading the market of Android tablets, Google Nexus 7 offers you high-quality design, speedy performance and a powerful version of Jelly Bean, all for a great price. It has its own downs, like the lack of a microSD card slot (same situation as iPads) or of a back-facing camera, as well as some lag when using the Magazine app, but its advantages make you forget about them. All in all, it is considered the best 7-inch tablet and it combines fast quad-core performance and a smart operating system with a top-notch design.

Amazon Kindle Fire

Amazon brings you yet another great-priced Android tablet, which was developed from the world’s favorite e-book reader, the Kindle. Its pros are the solid and compact design as well as the friendly and easy-to-use interface. It also gives you access to a lot of apps and also free videos and books for the customers who are Amazon Prime members. Unfortunately, the 8 GB memory is not expandable and the performance may be a bit sluggish now and then, but the very affordable price makes it worth buying.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1

If the 7-inch tablets are too small for you, you can choose the larger Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 for its bright display and powerful speakers, but also for its long-lasting battery life and other features. If you always lose your TV remote around house, you will be happy to know that you can control your TV using the smart app offered by this tablet. On the other hand, the camera is not spectacular and the charging times are a bit high, but the tablet is still a good and affordable choice.

ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700

The last one on this list, the tablet from ASUS has a very bright and sharp display, as well as improved cameras, long-lasting battery life and a high quad-core performance. The sound quality is good, despite the rather awkward speaker placement; the display may show some distortions if you put too much pressure on it when you touch it. It has its ups and downs, but it is a balanced Android tablet and it is the first one with a full HD screen.

If you’re looking for a new tablet, check out these 5 models first, and you are bound to find something that suits you perfectly.

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Apple iPad vs Microsoft Surface Tablet

November 20, 2012 by ·

The battle between the tablets from Apple and Microsoft has been lasting for a while and the year 2012 is no exception. Apple announced the launching of their new tablet, iPad 4, just a few days before the official release of the Microsoft Surface Tablet – and they promised a powerful processor and a better Wi-Fi connection. So which one would you choose?

In fact, there are two versions of the Surface tablet – one is the already available model powered by Nvidia Tegra 3 and using Windows RT, and the other one will come out soon and it will be dedicated rather to business people, powered by a friendlier Intel Core i5 processor and using Windows 8 Pro. Note that both Surface tablets are significantly larger and slightly heavier than the iPads.

Surface has a bigger screen with great resolution – 1366×768 for the Windows RT model and 1920×1080 for the Pro one – but iPad does offer a brighter image and better detail, contrast and color, thanks to the Retina display. On the other hand, Surface has some pluses, especially when talking about storage size. The model using Windows RT starts from 32 GB built-in-storage, while the iPad offers you 16 GB. Moreover, Surface gives you the possibility of a microSD card if you want to expand that storage, whereas the iPads do not.

Apple customers were a bit disappointed when they heard that the new iPad has a Lightning connector replacing the traditional 30-pin dock connector used for the previous models. That means that if someone wants to use regular cables, they will have to buy more upgrades, therefore spend more money for Apple. Fortunately, Microsoft Surface has the good old full-size dock, usable with all cables – you can plug in USB devices, cameras and printers.

Both tablets offer you fun and interesting apps and let you connect to millions of songs, books, videos and games. A nice feature available on Surface is the Kickstand, which lets you place your tablet almost vertically so you can use it handsfree- while talking on Skype with your friends, watching movies or maybe checking up some recipes online when you are cooking in the kitchen! If you miss the presence of a keyboard – sometimes necessary at work, school or just more comfortable for you when you have typing to do – the people from Microsoft have come up with a great idea. The Touch Cover can be used as a traditional cover that protects your Surface, but also as a very thin and sensitive keyboard.

In the end, it is a battle of tastes, and the success of iPads or Microsoft tablets will resume based on what customers want. There are differences between all the models, which means that the companies are trying harder and harder to bring something new to the scene and to eventually lead the market. That is a good thing for customers, who will have more powerful and efficient tablets to choose from. But will the fans of a certain company stick with it from now on too, or will they switch to the other one? We’ll have to wait and see.

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Microsoft Tablets – A Closer Look at the Surface Tablet

November 13, 2012 by ·

When Bill Gates introduced the first Microsoft tablet, nobody was very interested. But when a few years later, Steve Jobs did the same thing for Apple, the world was thrilled. It seems that now, with the Surface tablets, it is time for revenge, but should Microsoft create more and more tablets to compete with Apple or should they just stick to PC software?

With the Surface tablet, the motto is “Less is more” and it is indeed true! The design is great, very nice to look at – colorful and fun – and also very comfortable to hold. The interior is compact and very well protected by a resistant molten magnesium alloy called VaporMg – it is three times lighter than aluminum, but very durable. Surface also has a special coating to protect it from fingerprint marks, so it will always look flawless.

The Microsoft tablet screen offers a perfect, crystal clear image (16:9 ratio) so you can enjoy all your favorite HD videos or seeing your friends while talking to them. If you want to share something with them, you can use either the front or the rear facing camera. The rear one is angled at 22 degrees and you can use it and be visible when you use the Kickstand. Speaking of Kickstand, it is an intelligent and very useful addition to the regular tablet design. It allows you to benefit from your Surface hands-free too!

One of the disadvantages of using an ordinary tablet is that you sometimes miss having a keyboard, especially when you need it the most! The designers from Microsoft have that covered – with Touch Cover! At first glance, it looks like any other cover, protecting your Surface, but it actually works as a keyboard too. It is only 3 mm thick and pressure-sensitive. It has all the keys and media controls that you are used to, including a trackpad. If you need to get moving fast, you do not have to waste time with turning the tablet off – just flip the cover over the display and it will take care of everything.

Transferring large files is quick and easy with the new Microsoft tablet; just plug in a thumb drive or hard drive and then drag and drop them to or from your Surface. The USB ports allow you to connect mice, printers or even your phone when you need to charge it. You can also opt for a microSD card for up to 64 GB of extra storage.

Working with apps is so much fun – you can have access to all the music you want, as well as books and videos or games using the Xbox, you can even use two apps at the same time and see them on a split screen. Get a SkyDrive account and you will be able to share your work with others, or record seminaries while taking notes in OneNote.

In conclusion, Microsoft tablets are promising. Surface is perfect for everyday use, work and study, both for teenagers and adults. It is easy to use and it really brings some nice changes!

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Is Windows 8 Microsoft’s Crowning Glory?

August 17, 2012 by ·

The grand dame wields her ugly head upon the precipice and things change. This could be the the sum  total of Microsoft’s move upon the computer industry come October. Some expect there to be a major shift in the wings of the tablet market as the behemoth technology company moves to  grabs 12 percent of the tablet industry with the public release of Windows 8 and the Surface tablets.

Grand  Critique

The Redmond company shares that grand appellation with its partner company Apple in Cupertino and to a less extent Google and a few others. But Microsoft sits up high with Apple holding crowns as historical progenitors of the desktop market. Crowning positions command waves of approval and disapproval.

The approval is rather locked in. With an operating system that’s on over 92 percent of the world’s desktops, five hundred million users pay the license fees and the company maintains the dominant position in the business corporate market with its server and database software.

Accordingly, criticism fans the waves as grand dame had seem to sit back on her laurels. But over the last decade, her revenue stream had merely tripled from $23 billion to $70 billion by 2011, great globs of money. This explains why erstwhile CEO Steve Ballmer, who perhaps cannot be fashioned in today’s tight leather pants, is still there.

Critics have deplored the company’s lack of innovation in face of its powerfully driven partner, Apple. But, as we shall see, they were wrong. “Partner” is used here instead of “competitor.” It may be best to see these two companies as leaders building and propelling the consumer technology market together. It’s the simple formula of one leaping forward while the other bounds over the leap into new territory – over and over again.

Of course, the last leap was Apple, who went ahead of all with the iPod and the iPad. Under Steve Jobs, Apple practically defined a new industry in mobile technology. There were cries that Microsoft, having experienced setbacks in smartphone technologies, was sitting behind and was just not innovative enough.

Crowning Glory?

But the critics have been apparently wrong. Microsoft has not been merely sitting on its laurels. From the responses of the consumers and developers who have reviewed the Preview versions of Windows 8 and after over 100,000 changes that have been integrated,  it may very well be that Windows 8 and the resulting Surface tablets may become crowning glories.

The company has not so much moved sluggishly into the tablet terrains as it has moved carefully and with great skill. Some had suggested that Microsoft was too big and that it should break up its outfit into smaller parts, or that it should simply move the Windows division into a corner company all by itself.

But as Steve Ballmer was only too happy to point out, Windows 8 and its Model UI representing the tablet promise, are integral parts of the old Windows calling card. A careful look at the new OS does demonstrate the seamless fit for what Ballmer calls a “seamless consumer experience.” Microsoft has simply wielded its ugly head to yield a few powerfully innovative thrusts. The company had never left the playing field.

Industry forecasters Gartner now projects that by 2016, latecomer Microsoft will have an 11.8 percent share of the tablet market. What’s more, from the news rumblings of phone maker Nokia, Gartner projects Windows Phones, sharing the benefits of Windows 8 technologies, will replace Apple by 2016  to become the second largest smartphone producer by 2016, with Android the first.

Indeed, Windows 8 has some has a few positive workings under the hood. Are they worthy of a crown?

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