A Tale of Two Tablets

One reason that I love being a business owner is that I can create justifications to get some really cool toys. Over the past 12 months, I’ve been fielding more and more questions about whether the websites that I have been working on were compatible with tablets.

A year ago, I had had to revamp a site to be cross browser compatible and I had put a lot of effort into my javascript to be usable on any platform, but I could not say definitively that the site would work on a tablet.  Sooooo… I had to go buy one.

My original intent was to buy the iPad 2 because that was the tablet that I had been specifically asked about compatibility. However, when I finally decided to purchase, I couldn’t see getting an iPad and having no idea about the functionality and compatibility with the Android world. So, I ended up purchasing both an iPad2 and an Samsung Galaxy at BestBuy on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Both units were 16Mb units and retailed for just under $500. Although I thought I had seen a discount for the iPad on Black Friday, by the time I purchased there was no discount. However, there was a $50 sale on the Galaxy, so I was able to get it for less than full price.

At 36 hours, I wrote my first review of my two new tablets. Both performed at and above my expectations. Prior to my purchase I had read several reviews of different Android tablets, trying to decide exactly which way to go. I was a bit concerned about the negatives I read about both tablets actually, but in practice I found that neither was as difficult or problematic as the negative reviews indicated. I had no problems connecting my iPad to iTunes and registering it and the Honeycomb version of Android seemed stable and much more usable than the negative reviews indicated. So, at that point I was very pleased with both platforms.

At that time, I concluded my review with these thoughts: “So, overall, I would say that I’m really pleased with both devices and really find it hard to distinguish a competitive advantage of one over the other. I think like many things people will find the one they choose appealing based on how the device fits their other past purchases…. Those who have or love iPhone/iPod should find the iPad very comfortable and those who wouldn’t buy any Apple product will get a lot of value out of the Android platform. I know that after my initial Internet searches I was really pleased to see that the Android Honeycomb OS was not as bad as some reviews I saw. “

I think that the tablet format is an important evolutionary step in computing technology. I know that there is a healthy debate whether tablets will replace laptops. From my perspective, I don’t see the tablet taking the place of either my laptop or desktop computers because I am a developer, and I use a wide array of tools that do not translate at this time to a tablet format. There is a lot of functionality that I will see myself getting out of the tablet, however, and most noticeably it will be the fact that I will carry a tablet on the road with me much more than I did my laptop. I did not have a “small” laptop (17″) and it was a monster to deal with and I only took it when I had to work while I was away from home for 3 or more days. Any time shorter was not worth the effort. I purchased an HP Mini that I thought would provide an easier travel companion and since it equalled the computing power of my big laptop, I thought it would be ideal… but the resolution did not fit and the keyboard was uncomfortable enough that I did not want to use it unless I really didn’t have a choice. So, my mini did not travel with me much.

My tablets, on the other hand, are not that way at all… I can’t walk out of the house without one in my hand. It is as natural for me to grab my tablet as it was for me to grab my legal pad when I needed to go visit customers. In fact, I now grab a small legal pad that slips inside the cover of my tablet and I hit the road at a moments’ notice. (I still prefer to keep my doodling on a piece of paper so I can throw it away after the meeting… ) I purchased a Verizon 4G Mifi hotspot and service plan so that I could host numerous devices with my data service and I simply grab the hotspot throw it in my pocket and take off with the tablet.  Whether I’m at a customer site that has wifi or just want to set up anywhere,  I have the choice.

One feature that I thought I would like the most and which I turned out to be right about was the resolution/screen size of the tablet. I was able to locate RDP client software on both tablets and with that software I can access my Windows servers and my Windows desktop computers. I have been able to run database queries, start tasks, connect to remote networks and numerous other things from my tablet by simply reaching out to my primary work machine from the living room and even my customer’s board room. And with the size of the Tablet screen, I don’t feel constrained or restricted in the things I can accomplish.

Since my 36 hour review, I’ve now had over a month to work and play with my tablets. I still have yet to work out IPSEC VPNs which is a big deal for me since I need that capability to get through my firewall. But the iPad has gracefully handled PPTP vpns to my customer locations. I have also dipped into the creative world by installing music/keyboard programs from both the Android Marketplace and the Apple Store. I’ve found that my favorite was called MusicStudio and was only available on the iPad. I still have a lot to learn about the program but it helped me work on a musical part for a Christmas Choir that I participated in.

I utilize Facebook on both as well as check and respond to email on both. I had no setup problems with either. I found that my bank had an App for both platforms and that it fuctioned flawlessly. Because I had almost 2 years of experience using an iPod, I found the iPad to be much more familiar when it came to starting, stopping and working with apps. However, it was not a significant learning curve to get used to the Honeycomb arrangement of desktop features and applications. One feature I do appreciate is the notifications on the bottom of the Galaxy that let’s me know when something changes in any of my running programs.

But neither tablet is not without its problems and weaknesses. Most notably for me is the poorer battery life on the Galaxy. Through natural selection, I have favored the iPad because it has my favorite music software so the Galaxy can sit for days without attention, but I’ve noticed that even at an idle it has a healthy appetite for power and can drain 10-20% of the battery per day with no use. The comparable time on the iPad only siphons off 5-10%. There was an annoying bug in the Android Marketplace where I would find an application that I wanted to install, I would select it and then it would hang with the message “Installing…” After a little google research I determined that it was a routine problem with Android Marketplace and that the fix was to go the control panel, and launch the install from the “pending” applications.

On the other hand, the iPad has an annoying habit of forgetting that it is an HTML based OS… I will go into my App Store and the screen will not display the soothing gray variant background with pretty graphic logos and text… instead I will be presented with a single column of text and hyperlinks. The same thing can happen in the iPad version of Facebook. The seeming fix is to kill the application and relaunch it (if it is App Store) or open the side panel and select the appropriate Feed (Facebook). I have also found that when the iPad goes to sleep it appears that it can disconnect from the WiFi (good for preserving battery life) but doing so will cause certain programs to bug out because there is no available network until you do something that re-establishes communication to the Internet. This has caused my HuluPlus to act up on occasions when I was looking for something to occupy my time.

I also like reading my Kindle books on both machines. I was pleased to see that Kindle came bundled on both tablets and when I opened it for the first time it asked me to log on to my Amazon account and voila my books were ready. And because of the Whispersync, as I read a book on one platform it will bookmark my progress and when I open the book on the other it will prompt me if I want to go to my furthest progress. (Now that I think about it, since I synched my iTunes purchases to the iPad, the Kindle software may have come from that integration. I know, however, that I did not install Kindle on my Galaxy… it was already there.)

I’m glad that I had an opportunity to purchase both tablets and do a head to head comparison with them. I know that I personally favor the iPad because the user experience with it is just a little crisper and polished. I also felt that the available software was more mature as if the publishers had had more time and experience building their app for the iPad and they rushed the job a little getting ready for the Android version. However, I am sure that if I could have only purchased one of them, I and my business would have gotten a lot of value out of either of these platforms. In the end, the one you will favor will probably be more based on the other devices you have purchased in the past than on the tablet itself.