Motorola Xoom

[TeaLeaf]

My tablet desire is increasing again and I am generally liking the reviews of this Android 3.0 tablet, it seems the new OS is way better on tablets than previous versions.  The only thing I am not liking is the price.  Give more for less money now!

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/laptops-portable-pcs/tablets/motorola-xoom-933048/review

[DrunkenZombiee]

Very nice!

1080p video playback would be awesome on a device like that =)

A bit steep though for the Spec. You can get yourself a mid range lappy for that cost with a proper processor and way more RAM etc. When they come down below £300 with the same spec might be worth a look.

DZ

[Tutonic]

I like tablets, but the prices are insane.

Paying more money for less fuctionality is not cool.

[BrotherTobious]

I like the idea of having a tablet but not paying for one, so if someone would be so kind as to give me a Android one I be v greatful

[TeaLeaf]

My price point is probably a little higher than £300, but then I guess a lot of it is about what you intend to use it to do.  Personally I'd value the (almost)instant on, note taking, recording abilities that I can use in business meetings which a £300 laptop would not even come close to handling. I can just imagine:

11:00hrs meeting starts
11:05hrs my £300 laptop finishes booting up
13:45hrs laptop battery runs out

What I'm looking for is instant on and 6-8 hours solid battery life which will cover me for almost any meeting scenario.

[T-Bag]

Yeah, but if you compare with a £500 laptop it's a different story (and that's the price that you're comparing since that's what tablets cost).

A tablet can't really do proper note taking. Am I the only one that finds a fullscreen, on-screen qwerty keyboard hard to use. Well, not so much hard as slow. And the weight, you can use that for an hour, let alone 3.

You rest a laptop on your lap or a desk, then you rest your arms on the keyboard. You adjust the screen via the adjustable hinge to stay at the perfect angle. You don't have to hold it there, it just stays.
Compare to a tablet, you hold it just above a desk or your lap so you can see and interact with it. You hold your hand(s) just about the screen ready to interact. You then tilt the whole device forwards or backwards for the best viewing angle. Your arms get tired so you shift position, repeat process.

What you actually want is a modest performance laptop with an SSD and a light OS. Ubuntu could boot in a couple of seconds on the right hardware. With nothing running in the background and power savings options tweaked the battery could last 6-8 hours of note taking.

As for the Xoom specifically. Avoid it for now. It was rushed to release in an unfit state. Many features are missing and to be updated over the air or via a mail in process. Is it worth £500 to have an unfinished product. I'm not 100% sure what note taking you do, I still use pen and paper. But I'm just wondering if a tablet is much advantage over pen and paper in most meeting situations. (Don't get me wrong, I want one but more for media, email and web browsing when I go away so I don't need my netbook)

[TeaLeaf]

What I do know is I definetely do not want a laptop - I have one, it does not do what I described I want.  Personally I would use the tablet flat on a desk, not held, I might scribe not type, but I find a full screen keyboard on my much smaller hero pretty easy to use, so a 10" tablet one should be far easier.  I might record sound to synch with the scribed notes, I might type, I might want to take a picture or video or three to go with my notes, I want full interraction with my current suite of email/calendar/notes/contacts and I want it to turn on when I press the button, not in minutes time when My Gates has finished setting it up.  God forbid I need to snatch a telephone number or email address to give to someone and my laptop has already been shut down, a tablet is up and running again in 5 seconds.  I already have a two grand laptop that does not meet my needs, so a £500 laptop will just fail harder at the same task.

As for the budget, I already said I would not spend £500, but I probably might spend more than £300, so a £500 laptop is not an option either.  Plus I can slot a tablet into my meeting folio which I cannot do with a laptop!

As for the Xoom, Flash etc sure, everyone knows about that temporary problem, but it is the finctionaility & potential of an Android 3.0 tablet that interests me, my post was simply to say I am liking the look of what it can/should do, but I am not liking the price.  As prices drop and the mass of other Honeycomb devices come out of the next 2-3 months I suspect I will find one at my price point and doing what I want it to do.  I quite like the look of the Xoom and if it were £300 I would probably be tempted to go buy one and try it as it would exceed the performance of a £500 laptop my some considerable way, given how I envisage using it.

[T-Bag]

I've recently moved from an HTC Hero to an HTC Incredible S. I've been using on-screen keyboards on phones for nearly 4 years, but on an iPad (which is the only tablet I've spent any time on) typing is very different. You can't reach across the whole keyboard with your thumbs to type so I tend to use one had to type while the other holds to tablet at the right angle for use, so despite the larger buttons the size doesn't make it easier to use and is in fact slower even when rested on an angled surface. Using the iPad keyboard dock is just as fast as using a laptop again and surprisingly nice to use, but isn't portable, so you have a slim tablet that's easy to move, but a bulky stand that's needed to use it to its fullest.

Instant on, Interaction with email/calendar/notes/contacts etc battery life over 8 hours. They all seem do-able with a smart-phone.

As for the argument that because a £2000 laptop can't do something a £500 won't either, I don't see that as valid. Many of the things that expensive laptops do are a disadvantage for the use you intend. Fast CPUs sap battery life, large hard drives are slow to start compared to SSDs, Windows 7 is very slow compared to some versions of Linux. etc I'm not saying that they're useful for what you're doing but a Netbook can have over 7 and a half hours (459mins) of real world video playback.

Tablets are great for watching video/browsing the web/checking emails on the go (most importantly of all, playing Angry Birds and Sudoku). I just don't think they've matured into a form where they can be used legitimately in business over a laptop, phone or even pen and paper.

[TeaLeaf]

I think you're missing the point.  I'm not after a laptop as I already have one and I am not after a smartphone as I already have one.  I'm looking for something different to fill the gap between the two when I do not want to move my laptop and I want more than my pen & paper or my smartphone.  A tablet seems to project into that gap nicely.  

A tablet gives me light, instant access to web-based data and financial modelling software I use with & in front of clients.  It allows me to access the stuff I would otherwise have to get via my relatively small smartphone screen.  Better recording of video or sound allows me to use the facility more often, particularly to record a meeting and then shove it into Dragon to get it auto-transcribed.  A touch sensitive screen allows me to run apps which most laptops cannot, certainly not at the budget of a tablet.  

That's the gap I am looking to fill and as far as I can see a smartphone or a laptop do not do this adequately and that's why I think the market is there for them in the future.  The Xoom seems not a bad start, but I am hoping that cheaper & better will appear in the next 2-3 months as other manufacturers deliver their products to market.

[DrunkenZombiee]

I think you're missing the point.  I'm not after a laptop as I already have one and I am not after a smartphone as I already have one.  I'm looking for something different to fill the gap between the two when I do not want to move my laptop and I want more than my pen & paper or my smartphone.  A tablet seems to project into that gap nicely.  

A tablet gives me light, instant access to web-based data and financial modelling software I use with & in front of clients.  It allows me to access the stuff I would otherwise have to get via my relatively small smartphone screen.  Better recording of video or sound allows me to use the facility more often, particularly to record a meeting and then shove it into Dragon to get it auto-transcribed.  A touch sensitive screen allows me to run apps which most laptops cannot, certainly not at the budget of a tablet.  

That's the gap I am looking to fill and as far as I can see a smartphone or a laptop do not do this adequately and that's why I think the market is there for them in the future.  The Xoom seems not a bad start, but I am hoping that cheaper & better will appear in the next 2-3 months as other manufacturers deliver their products to market.

Sounds like you know what you want and a tablet fulfils your needs :thumbsup:.

I can see T-Bags point though about a laptop being a more multi purpose tool for a better price and its true that there are OS'es like Gentoo and other linux variants with an SSD can beet very quickly indeed!

However you need the right tool to fit your purpose and there is no point carrying around an entire socket set when all you need is a size 14 spanner!

The same can be said for the smartphone argument, as there is no way I would get my phone out in a business meeting to do a presentation on it or to record things. The screen is too small and more importantly its my own personal phone and anyone could send me anything on it at any time .... I am sure clients don't want to know that you need to pick up some more toilet rolls on your way back =P. Even with my work blackberry I would be weary of using! Its designed for personal use only not as a collaborative device like tablets and it look unprofessional.
Now if my smartphone was the size of DOM JOLLY's then it would be different =P.

I would just recommend you do your research into the device before you buy as some of the last gen tablets were very disappointing.

I personally completely understand your use case and I wish work would buy me one for meetings rather than having a 17 inch Lenovo think-pad out on the desk at the time.

DZ

[Penfold]

Yup, I'm onto this bandwagen as well am all ears. TL's specs and needs pretty much mirror mine tbh.

My little EEEPC is fine but it'd be nicer to be able to access and view stuff quicker.

USB would be a must thought so I can show photos to clients and it'd be nice to be able to view and edit word documents etc as well as writing notes on the fly.

TL, what about something like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0PQWe_FWmo

[BrotherTobious]

I like the look of Samsung 10.1 tech radar had some nice things to say about it.

[T-Bag]

I still think http://www.deadmen.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?32660-Asus-EEE-Pad-Transformer is worth a look before the Xoom.

I can't say I rate the gigabyte form factor, the spec wise and the fact it uses Windows gives it a load of functionality.

As far as the Samsung goes, it's more iPad than Xoom but has many of the problem of both, however on top of this it drops the extra connectivity that should give android tablets an edge. I'm not sure this is smart. Proprietary connectors are one of my major grips with apple products. Hardware wise though it looks like a really nice bit of kit, and in general Samsung pack in software features, so it might make up for it in other areas.

[albert]

I agree with T-Bag, avoid the Xoom, it's a stability nightmare and the SD slot isn't even setup to work yet. I rebooted one in PC World as I thought it would help get it stable, I was wrong.

Your're reasons for buying TeaLeaf, 100% my reasons too. But I want 3G in there as well for convenience and a USB port to take a mouse would satisfy my requirement to play wgt as click sync on the touch screen is way off the mark right now. (That's if they get Flash workign right for games). Plus mounting HDDs over USB is obviously easier. The HTC Flyer is the smartest for meeting use I think by far, check that out. Only down side, Droid 2.3 and not 3, only found the Google Nexus to use 2.3.

[TeaLeaf]

Aye I'd want 3, nothing lower.  The ASUS and the Lenovo look the most interesting to me at the moment.