MSI Will Launch iPad Alternative 756
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.
On Par? (Score:5, Informative)
Highly doubt the Tegra 2 is on par with the A4, unless the A4 has a dual-core Cortex A9... Info suggests the A4 is only a single core Cortex A9 which would make the Tegra2 at least 2x more powerful. Not to mention Nvidia vs ARM based graphics core.
Touch is just nice (Score:4, Informative)
Touch interfaces are nice. And multi touch is nicer.
I had to go back from a touchscreen TomTom satnav to a non-touchscreen Garmin -- it just felt unwieldy.
Once I'd used an iPod Touch for a while, I kept wanting to pinch-zoom the map on the TomTom.
There are certain things that just feel nice with mult-touch, and it also saves space by doing away with a trackpad.
As a frivolous example - a game like Crayon Physics will be tremendously more satisfying on a touch tablet, than when played with a mouse. But things like photo browsers, drawing apps, etc. will also benefit.
They need to solve the problem of so many things needing text entry, though. Decent handwriting recognition is surely the answer.
Re:On Par? (Score:2, Informative)
Highly doubt the Tegra 2 is on par with the A4, unless the A4 has a dual-core Cortex A9... Info suggests the A4 is only a single core Cortex A9 which would make the Tegra2 at least 2x more powerful. Not to mention Nvidia vs ARM based graphics core.
Absolutely. Ars is a bit of an Apple fansite. Check out Anand's discussion for more reasonable analysis (Anand uses a Mac for his main personal PC, too, but he's not affected by the RTD), suggesting as you say that the iPad most likely has less than half the CPU power of Tegra 2. Among other things, Tegra 2 also enables 1080p decoding of h.264 content, while Apple's A4 can only handle 720p and is locked to some annoying containers, meaning you'll have to transcode. GPU performance on the Tegra 2 is most likely several times that of the iPad, as well. Tegra 2's power consumption is also claimed to be several times lower than that of the iPad. But MSI's tablet will run Android, not iPhone OS.
Re:Not really (Score:3, Informative)
I bought my Acer for travel, as I got tired of lugging my 6 pound Latitude around. And my main laptop is too big to use on an aircraft. The Aspire is a great little machine for the road and would probably even make a decent little home entertainment box, it has hdmi out. But I don't use it at home or work. That's why I don't get the tablet thing. 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."
When I'm at home watching Hulu or Netflix I'm using my television or my laptop with a large screen. I'm not watching movies on a 10/11 inch screen unless I'm traveling. Reading on an lcd is reading on an lcd. It doesn't bother me and I read a lot of books on my laptop but I don't need a special device for that. If I'm going to go with something smaller, my phone is fine and more convenient.
Maybe I'm a weird edge case, but I check out tablets every so often to see if things have changed and every time I'm under no compulsion to get one. The new announcements of this last few months, including the ipad do nothing to change that.
Re:Not really (Score:2, Informative)
It's fucking differnt then a tablet with a different purpose.
You don't ahve a need for a flat computer with a big screen? fine, but don't compare it to a device in a different market space.
It's like looking at a boat and bitching it doesn't have wheels like your car.
For the Eskimos out there, note I said wheels, not tires.
Your device costs 461, the iPad costs 500 dollars. It has abilities and features the Acer doesn't have, but like I said, thats a stupid comparison.
Re:Not really (Score:4, Informative)
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/FX100487701033.aspx [microsoft.com]
http://iheartonenote.com/ [iheartonenote.com]
http://tech4teaching.org/wpblog/?p=602 [tech4teaching.org]
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA010789831033.aspx [microsoft.com]
as much detail as you can get, download the demo and mess with it. You'll learn more that way.
Re:I've had a long-running problem (Score:4, Informative)
And then when she says "Why can't my stupid email program stay open while I'm browsing the web on this thing", your answer will be "well, you said you hated multitasking... now lie in the bed you made".
I can tell you've never used an iPhone. If I'm composing a message in the Mail app, and move to something else, when I return to Mail, the application state is preserved perfectly. The partially composed message is still there with all of its text, the cursor is in the same place, and the keyboard is still up. The same is true of every Apple app and every good third party app I've ever used. And start-up time on these apps is close enough to instant that I don't notice them starting up. From a usability standpoint, this approach is identical to multitasking. From a technical standpoint, I would argue that it's *superior* to multitasking, because the Mail app (and everything else you're using) isn't perpetually running in the background, using memory and precious mobile battery life to do nothing but preserve its state.
The only really compelling reason I've ever seen anyone give for exposing the multitasking capabilities of the OS to third party applications is that it would make it possible to listen to music from a source other than the iPod app (which can already run in the background) while doing something else. That would be cool. But you have to recognize that there's a design trade off here that goes beyond "Apple is evil". If background process abilities were exposed to third party apps, than for every one that used it to accomplish something desirable that couldn't be accomplished any other way, there would be a thousand written by lazy developers that would sit in the background for no reason, killing memory and battery life. And many people who don't know any better (people who are, let's face it, the majority of the market for any mobile device that's had a non-trivial amount of sales) would blame Apple for the iPhone's cruddy performance.
I honestly prefer Apple's approach as an end-user. Luckily android and probably Palm aren't going anywhere, so luckily there is a reasonably healthy market for different approaches to be evaluated. Get a Nexus (or whatever) and let me know if battery life/memory consumption with a large number of third party apps isn't as bad as I suspect.
Re:Not really (Score:1, Informative)
$420 is the absolute top end of netbook prices, for less than that you can get N280 based devices that will last 8-10 hours easily, and let's not forget that the atom supports many more programs.
Re:Not really (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't completely accurate. You get a free iPad simulator with the xcode SDK. If you don't want to test on physical hardware you can just test on that. When you want to actually put the software in the store though you do need to pay the $99 fee.
Re:But Apple has solved that problem. (Score:4, Informative)
I like to listen to music while I read or surf the web. Can it do that? No?
Wrong.
I listen to music while checking email, browsing the web, playing card games, and whatnot on a regular basis.
Please, if you're going to post an opinion on a technological device - especially posting to Slashdot where you're surrounded by tech geeks - at least spend 15 minutes playing with a demo version of at your local computer store so you actually know what you're talking about.
Re:Not really (Score:1, Informative)
except that the Acer is probably more like 250-300$, and is availaible now.
Re:I've had a long-running problem (Score:1, Informative)
Good thing it has Push Notifications for exactly these types of use cases.
Re:But Apple has solved that problem. (Score:1, Informative)
Wrong.
I listen to music while checking email, browsing the web, playing card games, and whatnot on a regular basis.
He's only half wrong, and your response is only half informative.
You can listen to music with Apple's software while checking email or browsing the web. But you can't listen to music with third party software like Last.fm, Pandora, Spotify, etc. while you're doing something else. (On Android, you can.)