I've decided to buy a tablet. Any input?

[WildHorse]

I've decided that I need a tablet
.. . .

Bullshgit. It's your mere TOY.

So plunk down your $200, so what?

Here's what:
now you've got a problem... how to pretend it's USEFUL????

Now solve that!

Hint (it's a T O Y!!!) It's necessary to INVENT uses for your toy, one of which is to "look cool" at Starbucks, maybe even ACTUALLY STRIKE UP A CONVERSATION with a HUMAN about your toy. Ridiculous.

Your same $200 would've HELPED a REAL LIVE HUMAN BEING on any of the "Indian" reservations, just to mention one of the THOUSANDS of REAL URGENT needs. Homeless kids. Drug addicted preggos. Homeless veterans. BUNS (Bunnies Urgently Needing Shelter).

Don't rely on obama-mega-ego or YOUR CONGRESS to equitably ASSIST where help is manifestly N E E D E D...those needy humans don't marshall a significant voting bloc so they are invisible. They N E E D!!!!

Maybe some folks don't "need" a kindle fire quire so badly?

I'll just nominate Papago reservation in AZ as a worthy recipient for that same Kindle Fire $200, since, after dropping off my next donation (good ones, valuable!) I like to pass hours all alone sitting in their church probing inside in TRUE deep silence, plus what I SEE around there provokes my feelings, compassion. "We" did that to them. Shame beyond bearing. It would move the feelings in a stone.

They N E E D anti-alcohol counseling desperately. These are REAL NEEDFUL HUMAN BEINGS!!! You on other hand have your amusing toy? Hooyeah for you!

Find your own local worthy, else waster your $200 on your Christmas gift kindle fire toy, obsolete soon (guessing obsolete by summer 2012? or earlier? Ha! That's the usual way of things.)







While this post contains an interesting perspective - that tablets are a complete and utter waste of money and people would be better served donating money to a Native American charity - it's written in a confrontation style and belongs in Politics and News and not a technical forum like Mobile Devices and Gadgets.

Infraction for posting in the wrong forum.

Moderator PM

 

[Pliablemoose]

Bullshgit. It's your mere TOY.

So plunk down your $200, so what?

Here's what:
now you've got a problem... how to pretend it's USEFUL????

Now solve that!

Hint (it's a T O Y!!!) It's necessary to INVENT uses for your toy, one of which is to "look cool" at Starbucks, maybe even ACTUALLY STRIKE UP A CONVERSATION with a HUMAN about your toy. Ridiculous.

Your same $200 would've HELPED a REAL LIVE HUMAN BEING on any of the "Indian" reservations, just to mention one of the THOUSANDS of REAL URGENT needs. Homeless kids. Drug addicted preggos. Homeless veterans. BUNS (Bunnies Urgently Needing Shelter).

Don't rely on obama-mega-ego or YOUR CONGRESS to equitably ASSIST where help is manifestly N E E D E D...those needy humans don't marshall a significant voting bloc so they are invisible. They N E E D!!!!

Maybe some folks don't "need" a kindle fire quire so badly?

I'll just nominate Papago reservation in AZ as a worthy recipient for that same Kindle Fire $200, since, after dropping off my next donation (good ones, valuable!) I like to pass hours all alone sitting in their church probing inside in TRUE deep silence, plus what I SEE around there provokes my feelings, compassion. "We" did that to them. Shame beyond bearing. It would move the feelings in a stone.

They N E E D anti-alcohol counseling desperately. These are REAL NEEDFUL HUMAN BEINGS!!! You on other hand have your amusing toy? Hooyeah for you!

Find your own local worthy, else waster your $200 on your Christmas gift kindle fire toy, obsolete soon (guessing obsolete by summer 2012? or earlier? Ha! That's the usual way of things.)

Um, wrong forum?

 

[WildHorse]

Um, wrong forum?

Um, wrong skill-set? (In other words, the "skill" of just slapping up a post of a quote without exercising one engram in that mighty throbbing Pliablemoose brain to actually engage in meaningful dialog).

In other words, here we have the Mighty Moose just neffing and teasing us plebes--- leaving us piteously ignorant of the tantalizing mystery....just what the hell does moosiey actually THINK bout all this.

(The big moose creates entire new micro ecosystems in the depressions left by his heavy footprints in the wet mud, where water pools, organisms hatch, and the whole world benefits. Mooses are good.)


I'm not sure that I totally understand this post, but it's clearly intended as an insult to Pliablemoose for pointing out that the posters previous rant was in the wrong forum. This is a warning against mild personal attacks.

Moderator PM

 

[Brian Stirling]

I want to get my hands on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 as that is much closer to the size I'd be interested in. Also beats the iPad resolution and therefore has MUCH higher DPI. At this point I'm torn between wifi only and cellular capable but I'd shell out for the 64GB to hold lots of media.


Brian

 

[Aikouka]

In regard to the iPad, you may be better off picking up an iPad 1 rather than an iPad 2. It doesn't seem like the extra power from the 2 would benefit you that much compared to the price difference.

Also, there have been some nice deals on the ASUS Transformer lately. NewEgg had it for $400 and you got the dock ($150 value) for free. The dock might be nice for reading, because it essentially provides a sturdy stand and extra battery life. The only con for me about the Transformer was Tegra 2's inability to play a decent amount of h264 content without re-encoding. I mean... if I'm going to have to re-encode anyway, then I might as well just stick with my iPad 2.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

In regard to the iPad, you may be better off picking up an iPad 1 rather than an iPad 2. It doesn't seem like the extra power from the 2 would benefit you that much compared to the price difference.

Also, there have been some nice deals on the ASUS Transformer lately. NewEgg had it for $400 and you got the dock ($150 value) for free. The dock might be nice for reading, because it essentially provides a sturdy stand and extra battery life. The only con for me about the Transformer was Tegra 2's inability to play a decent amount of h264 content without re-encoding. I mean... if I'm going to have to re-encode anyway, then I might as well just stick with my iPad 2.

What are you using to play the video? I haven't run into anything MoboPlayer won't work for and I have video files of all sorts of codecs/formats.

 

[poofyhairguy]

What are you using to play the video? I haven't run into anything MoboPlayer won't work for and I have video files of all sorts of codecs/formats.

Moboplayer just uses the CPU and NEON. That is fine for divx and some light HD content, but for real stuff (like my 10+GB mkvs) they will eat a Tegra 2 alive even with Moboplayer. To play those files you must have proper DSP support.

EDIT: Tegra 2 doesn't even have NEON, so Moboplayer on a Tegra 2 is limited to CPU power. We are four or more generations away from the CPU being powerful enough to decode 1080p.

 

[squirrel dog]

WildHorse,your words are strong.I will take these to my people.




That post was infracted as off-topic. Discussing it will be off-topic as well. So, we aren't going to discuss it here - even in jest. Let's drop it.

Thanks
Your humor-challenged moderator
Moderator PM

 

[sontin]

Moboplayer just uses the CPU and NEON. That is fine for divx and some light HD content, but for real stuff (like my 10+GB mkvs) they will eat a Tegra 2 alive even with Moboplayer. To play those files you must have proper DSP support.

EDIT: Tegra 2 doesn't even have NEON, so Moboplayer on a Tegra 2 is limited to CPU power. We are four or more generations away from the CPU being powerful enough to decode 1080p.

Why should anybody care about CPU-decoding of video files?

 

[Aikouka]

Why should anybody care about CPU-decoding of video files?

Because almost all GPUs handle it a lot better, but note that I said "almost all"... Tegra 2's GeForce ULP is not one of those.

To pull a quote from an Anandtech phone review:

You can play back H.264 1080p30 content, but it has to be Baseline profile—no B frames, two reference frames.

 

[sontin]

Because almost all GPUs handle it a lot better, but note that I said "almost all"... Tegra 2's GeForce ULP is not one of those.

To pull a quote from an Anandtech phone review:

No ARM-CPU will be able to decode 1080 High Profile in the next 5 years or more. The decoder of Tegra 2 is able of 1080p Baseline or 720p HP. And even 720p is to much for a DualCore-A9 with NEON. And don't forget the CPU would be running at 100%.

nVidia said that Tegra 3 will play 1440p with 40Mbit/s and "Blu-Ray settings".
ARM-SoCs need a better video-decoder!

 

[Aikouka]

No ARM-CPU will be able to decode 1080 High Profile in the next 5 years or more. The decoder of Tegra 2 is able of 1080p Baseline or 720p HP. And even 720p is to much for a DualCore-A9 with NEON. And don't forget the CPU would be running at 100%.

nVidia said that Tegra 3 will play 1440p with 40Mbit/s and "Blu-Ray settings".
ARM-SoCs need a better video-decoder!

Oh, I wasn't trying to insinuate that the CPU should be able to handle it. The issue is that Tegra 2's GeForce ULP (or rather, I assume its video decoder) doesn't handle the high profile (B Frames) h.264 content. A decent portion of the content on the web uses this.

Now, this is just my opinion, but if I'm going to have to re-encode the video file to be playable on the Transformer (or any other Tegra 2 tablet), it loses a benefit over the iPad (which I already own), which (without jail-breaking) also requires re-encoding the file. For someone that doesn't own a tablet already, this isn't a huge deal, but it served as a big blow to a tablet that I was very interested in. I hope Tegra 3 fixes this.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Seriously. iPad.

Honeycomb is dead and it's a forked version of Android. ICS is supposed to bring things together, but there are tons of articles saying they're not even that focused on tablets with ICS. So in the end ICS is just a massive boost to Android phones.

I'm running CM7 on my TouchPad, and honestly, it's barely usable. Sure you can customize the HELL out of it, but it's a giant Android phone in the end. I have the advantage of apps over webOS, but I can't get Honeycomb apps on it. Gmail and Facebook look meh.

Would I be happier with Honeycomb if it got ported over? Probably? But how does this beat the fact that I can wake up if I had an iPad and open Flipboard and enjoy a good morning read in bed? Pulse doesn't even come close. I see this when I'm at my gf's, and she powers on her iPad while I turn on my Touchpad. It's clear who has a better experience using a tablet. Are there any decent twitter apps for my tablet? On webOS yeah, not on Android. What about iPad? Tons.

It's unclear where Google's direction is with tablets right now. The 2.2 tablets were rushed to market, and so were the 3.0 tablets. I suggest you wait it out of this fragmented mess, and if you want something now, get an iPad. It will be supported in the future at least.

 

[Aikouka]

I'm running CM7 on my TouchPad, and honestly, it's barely usable. Sure you can customize the HELL out of it, but it's a giant Android phone in the end. I have the advantage of apps over webOS, but I can't get Honeycomb apps on it. Gmail and Facebook look meh.

It's good to mention that CM7 on the TouchPad is listed by the Cyanogen team as being in an alpha state, so I wouldn't expect it to be a great experience.

 

[s1njin]

I have had the opportunity to use a Honeycomb tablet for a few days now (Samsung Galaxy 10.1). In my opinion, it really can't touch a iPad. For me, customizing how it looks doesn't matter. What I really want is a stable OS that is silky smooth and responsive. I also want said OS to be able to provide me a plethora of apps to make it a worthwhile investment.

That being said, iPad/iOS is really the only game in town for me. The others just do not compare favorably. I really WANTED them to compare as I was so interested in picking up a Moto Xoom for 400 bucks and save at least 100 bucks on the cost of a iPad 2. In the end its just not worth it.

And for all those that say 'It has FLASH !!!' - all I can say is if your primary mode of consuming content is through apps it doesn't matter one bit (and as stated, Apple has far more quantity of useful apps to choose from). For those sites I do have to visit, I find next to no problems unless its a lesser known / fringe website.

And as to flash, try running HBO Go in one of the browsers. Since Honeycomb doesn't have a native app, this is your only recourse. Should be okay though right? I mean, after all Android tablets have FLASH. Watching HBO Go through a browser on a Honeycomb tablet makes me throw up in my mouth. Just awful.

 

[Pliablemoose]

So donating $200 to the Papago indians to help them not drink alcohol is off the table?