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It’s like there’s always something on the horizon trying to wipe established laptops and computers out. At first, when Asus came out with its EeePC mini laptop four years ago, people couldn’t stop wondering if a small portable laptop that did most things well was all you needed and how a full-fledged laptop was overkill.

These days, iPad-like tablets have all but left netbooks in the dust and there’s talk of how the big computer manufacturers are scared of how the tablet is going to put everything out of the running.

If you’re looking to jump on the handheld computer bandwagon, should you go with the iPad or should you go with one of the alternatives? Which is the best tablet PC on the market for your money?

The thing is, choosing among the different tablets doesn’t work the way it does when you’re trying to choose from among different kinds of laptop. There are different kinds of things you need to compare – not just power and screen size.

For instance, when you buy a laptop, you get just one of two different operating systems to choose from – Windows or MacOS.

Go over to tablets, and you have iOS, Android, BlackBerry OS and Windows 7. Since all of these have comparable feature sets, and you can’t really go by those to make a distinction.

And of course, there is HP’s sad WebOS – an option you could choose if you wanted a tablet just for the fun of it. HP’s WebOS-powered TouchPad came out to much fanfare just a few months ago, and then sold so poorly that the company just abandoned tablet computers altogether.

If you’re not worried about buying a dead-end product, you can get one at Best Buy on firesale for $99.

If you’re looking for the best tablet PC out there, there are two kinds of ways you can judge a product for its OS. You can either look at how beautiful, elegant and easy-to-use it is, or you can look at how many downloadable apps there are available for it that will help you do all kinds of things with your purchase.

When it comes to OS elegance, Apple’s iOS is certainly the winner. But HP’s a WebOS is widely recognized to be extremely beautiful too. But HP’s product, when you buy it, is a dead end. There are no programs or applications for it.

You only have more or less what this product comes with. Apple’s App Store on the other hand is insanely well-stocked – with hundreds of thousands of apps.

Android is certainly not as slickly designed or is visually pleasing as Apple’s iOS. But it does have a very complete App Market.

So basically, picking the best tablet PC on the market comes down in one measure, to the kind of applications that are available for its OS.

You can also pick a tablet for the kind of specifications you look for in a laptop. Apples iPad happens to be about the lightest for the kind of performance you get. If you want something even lighter than the iPad, you could look at 7 inch tablets such as Samsung’s Galaxy Tab or even smaller ones by Dell.

In the beginning, about 20 years ago, people would say that if you wanted to pick the best computer for your needs, you’d first pick the kind of software you planned to use on it, and then just look at the kind of computer you needed to get to run it properly.

The same would apply today to tablet PCs. Pick the apps that are the most attractive, and then pick the tablet that would run that app.

What to Look for to Pick the Best Tablet PC is a post from: Computer Spot

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The mobile OS scene is about to get a whole lot more interesting. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, are planning to put together a mobile version of its popular open-source PC OS. Bringing in another option for not only developers to have on their devices but also for OEMs and carriers to hopefully adopt.

Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical founder, stated that he feels Android is the primary competitor and even took his comments a step further saying that Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility has “[shaken] up the hardware vendors, so some of them are looking for non-Android alternatives.”

OEMs have tough choices. They can build their own operating system, such as what HP did for a while with webOS or work in a consortium. Consortiums can’t win. They can’t take a forceful, direct view with their products. The smartest OEM strategy is to play people off against each other. Thus, some OEMs want to have Ubuntu as a disruptive element. A strong Ubuntu can be both more co-operative with OEMs than a larger company and give them leverage with Google and Microsoft.

“An application for Ubuntu in the future will have multiple personalities. When it is running on a desktop computer, it will have a different personality from when it is running on a tablet,” Shuttleworth said. “From a developer point of view, there will be a phenomenal amount of coherency and reuse of the core capabilities on the application.”

We have already seen a number of clever developers out there port various version of Ubuntu to current Android handsets. Of course they were ports of the desktop version and not always the most user friendly ports around for fast past navigation. The project is most likely not going to see a viable version until April of 2014, according to Shuttleworth. The idea is still rather tempting. By then we will have plenty of hardware available for them to made it possible.

Anyone out there looking forward to seeing what will happen with Ubuntu in the mobile space?

Source: PCWorld

HTC has opened up about its interest in HP’s webOS as a possible candidate for acquisition.

In a freshly published interview with the Chinese-owned Economic Observer of China publication, Cher Wang, chairwoman of HTC Corp., reveals that her company is actively considering buying another smartphone operating system. “We have given it thought and we have discussed it internally, but we will not do it on impulse,” Wang stated.

If HTC goes forward with this option, it will suddenly become a smartphone maker that can serve up three different

WebOS’s demise was ugly, quick, and unforgiving. For an operating system as promising as WebOS, it deserved better. But, there is light at the end of the tunnel for those who loved the little things that made WebOS special, like its “Card” based app switching. That light is the iOS jailbreak community.

CardSwitcher is a $1.99 tweak that does exactly what it’s name implies: brings WebOS’s card-switching multi-tasking metaphor over to iOS. The implementation appears smooth, but some users have

There is a rumor out of Digitimes that Samsung may have an interest in HP’s computer division.  This has been bolstered by news that they have hired HP’s former Personal Systems Group VP of Marketing Raymond Wah and put him in charge of Samsung’s PC sales. There seems to be some debate about the rational behind a move such as this by Samsung. It would seem to be a strange play for Samsung, as HP’s PC division has a low gross margin and would likely affect the high gross margin of Samsung’s DRAM and display panel divisions.  This looks to have sparked the speculation that the real prize for Samsung would be WebOS.
Their source is stating that Samsung has plans to directly compete against Apple and Google.

I question some of these assertions as I feel a few problems are present in their logic.

Android has helped Samsung move into the number two spot in global smartphone vendors, behind Apple. As of the second quarter of 2011 they hold 17.2% of the global smartphone market share and their growth percentage from this time last year is actually triple that of Apple’s.  This IS a company on the move, so it’s easy to speculate that they may strike out on their own. Some sites are backing this up with the intellectually dishonest, yet hot-topic idea that Samsung and others may jump ship based on fears of the recent Googorola merger.

While Samsung may have a great deal of momentum behind them, I am almost certain that their executives know this has a great deal to do with the Android OS they ship in their products. To suddenly change course and try to make a push for BADA worldwide, with WebOS infused into it, would surely have a massive effect on said momentum. The remaining idea for this rumor would be to continue pushing BADA in Asian markets, while shifting its focus to WebOS in other markets. This does not change the argument posed above and would still cause a break in their momentum.

The only thing that this idea has going for it, is that consumers do not know what Android is. They simply know that they are purchasing a touch-screen smartphone and nothing more. This goes back to some of the comments posted in Apple, Google and an 800 pound gorilla, stating that Google needs to step-in to do more marketing and advertising for Android as a brand. They should not leave this to the manufactures that have no real incentive presently to acknowledge their devices Android underpinnings.

I suspect that the real intention here is the same as the Googorola merger. Samsung is sniffing around WebOS to pad their existing patent portfolio. This would help with any patent disputes with companies like Apple moving forward.

Personally I would like to see Google themselves make a move on HP and WebOS. There are two reasons I can think of off the top of my head, why I would like to see this.

First, Google could use a hardware division like HP to help flush out their budding ChromeOS platform. Remember that HP almost single-handedly pushed the market into relatively inexpensive Windows-based systems after their buyout of Compaq, further solidifying Microsoft’s dominant position in the desktop and laptop ecosystems.

Secondly, it seems like it would be a natural fit for Android. If you don’t remember, last year Google managed to court former WebOS design guru, Matias Duarte, away from Palm. He now holds the title of, Director of User Experience for Android. It would be great to see what he could come up with if he could start adding portions of WebOS into Android.

Via DigiTimes

News of HP trying to spin-off its paper-thin-margin PC business and killing WebOS devices shocked the PC world yesterday. The reason for the Touchpad’s demise was more than performance, but The Next Web is reporting it was a problem, and WebOS engineers knew it.

WebOS engineers went as far as to port the OS to an iPad 2 and the results seemed to add insult to injury. WebOS ran nearly twice as fast on the iPad 2 compared to the TouchPad according to the report’s source. The constraints of the Touchpad’s hardware reportedly stopped the WebOS team fron innovating “beyond

Review: HP TouchPad
HP has made another attempt to establish itself in the tablet arena, transitioning webOS beyond smartphones in an attempt to compete with Android, iOS and BlackBerry Tablet OS. Although HP suggests its TouchPad does not aim to displace the iPad, the company followed Apple’s tablet strategy by choosing a 9.7-inch display with 1024×768 resolution and a 4:3 aspect ratio. In our full review, we take a closer look at HP’s latest jump into the tablet market….

http://www.electronista.com/rss/macnn_mostpopular.rss

A recent survey conducted by Nielson has revealed that despite popular belief Android users actually consume more data than other mobile platforms.

After surveying 65,000 consumers’ bills Nielson figured out that Android users burn through an average of 582MB a month, with iPhone users coming in second at 492Mb. Among others the other compared webOS was a close third at 442MB, and Blackberry slid in with a measly 127Mb.

While the data consumption may not seem like very much, consider that the survey was based on a relatively small portion of people as compared to the actual user base per carrier. Studies such as this one are the reasons we’re seeing more and more tiered data plans. With the leaps and bounds being made in LTE and HSPA+ technologies I’d expect these numbers to more than double by next year.

Source: Mobile Burn via CNN

Android 3.0 codenamed Honeycomb is a tablet-only operating system (OS) and a recent report by DigiTimes suggests that according to “sources from upstream touch panel players” its unstable performance may benefit Apple’s iPad 2 and other tablet PC vendors.

Due to Android 3.0 currently still having several issues that are unable to be resolved immediately and which are causing unstable performance in terms of operation, HP, which is ready to launch its TouchPad tablet PC with its own OS, webOS, in the second quarter, and RIM, which will soon launch its PlayBook with BlackBerry OS in the middle of April, as well as Apple, are expected to gain benefit from the mischief of Android 3.0, the sources pointed out.

Apple products are known for tight integration between hardware and software. iOS for iPhone and iPad provides a consistent and stable user experience which has proved to be one of Apple’s biggest strengths in marketing new products.

When Apple comes out with a new product customers already know how to use them. Millions of iPhone users already knew how to use iPod touch even before it was launched and the same concept worked when iPad was introduced. This is because Apple has worked very diligently to unify the OS for their tablet and smartphones.

Google has however taken another route where they have to now focus on developing and supporting two operating systems which might end up taking more time to bring together. Android chief Andy Rubin recently in a blog post said, “the Android team is still hard at work to bring all the new Honeycomb features to phones.”

Apple’s second gen tablet has seen a successful launch and is expected to sell 30 Million iPads by the end of 2011. While on the other hand DigiTimes reports that iPad competitors like Motorola “shipped around 700,000 Xoom tablet PCs before the end of March”. Further the report speculates that Motorola might be preparing to launch its next-generation tablet and therefore not planning orders past June.

DigiTimes