iPad 2.0 - What do you want?!

[Jayce]

Affordability.

 

[Oreo]

Affordability.

£399 is a pretty good price. Not cheap, but for what you get, it's hardly a ripoff.

 

[Yami]

Agreed - I'm not exactly a fan of Apple, and probably wouldn't buy anything Apple at any price, but I have to admit it's one of the best-priced tablets around.

 

[Arbiter]

I would say it is decently affordable and you do get what you pay for. I've played around with the new iPad in the store and it looks like it would be worth every penny, a great toy for the cash. If you don't feel like buying a laptop, I would grab one of these if I had the money, although I would prefer a nice laptop over the iPad. I'm not even sure it's valid to compare an iPad with a laptop.

 

[Jayce]

We have about 9 that have been sitting on our shelf. They were bought with intention to integrate them to the network, but they just don't have anything to offer for our environment.

Sure, that Motorola tablet makes the iPad look affordable, but its price is still far too high when you consider what you really "do" get out of it.

 

[Kharn]

Jayce your in a educational environment, have you or your school district looked at getting applications developed to assist in the class room? IE teachers guide to X or interactive lesson planning etc?

 

[Puddle Jumper]

This will likely come as a surprise for some but I think the device that may have made the iPad irrelevant for at least some users is the 11" Macbook Air. It's not that much bigger or heavier than the iPad in the grand scheme of things yet it is considerably more powerful and runs a full OS with all of the capabilities and uses that entails. The price is a bit of a pain but if it gets a Sandy Bridge upgrade like many people expect it could actually be somewhat reasonable.

 

[Oreo]

This will likely come as a surprise for some but I think the device that may have made the iPad irrelevant for at least some users is the 11" Macbook Air. It's not that much bigger or heavier than the iPad in the grand scheme of things yet it is considerably more powerful and runs a full OS with all of the capabilities and uses that entails. The price is a bit of a pain but if it gets a Sandy Bridge upgrade like many people expect it could actually be somewhat reasonable.

Not really, it's not very comfortable to use at that size. I don't like netbooks, the trackpad is too small. Not only that but it has considerably less battery life. It's not powerful enough to play fully fledged modern games nor does it have access to all the apps on the iOS app store. So it is kind of stuck in between. Sure if you need a productivity device for on the move you'd be a fool to choose an ipad instead of a MB Air. But i think for a device which is enjoyable to use as a casual media device, ipad (and all tablets for that matter) win.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Not really, it's not very comfortable to use at that size. I don't like netbooks, the trackpad is too small. Not only that but it has considerably less battery life. It's not powerful enough to play fully fledged modern games nor does it have access to all the apps on the iOS app store. So it is kind of stuck in between. Sure if you need a productivity device for on the move you'd be a fool to choose an ipad instead of a MB Air. But i think for a device which is enjoyable to use as a casual media device, ipad (and all tablets for that matter) win.

I guess my issue is I don't see the point of a casual media device, I want some measure of productivity and usefulness from everything including tablets. If I'm at home I would never use a tablet to watch videos since I have a HDTV for that and while a tablet would nice for browsing the internet from the couch a decent ultraportable should be able to cover that role as well. If I'm not at home I either wouldn't have a tablet with me in the first place or could have just brought a ultraportable with me instead.

The Air shouldn't be hard to use, it has a bigger screen than a iPad and if you don't want to use a touchpad you can always use a wireless mouse. You don't get the iOS app store but having access to all of the apps for OSX and/or Windows should more than make up for it. Plus even if you can't play the latest games you can still enjoy ones from a few years ago that blow away anything available for a tablet.

Laptop battery life won't be an issue as soon as the X220 is released, fully loaded it can manage close to 24 hours of battery life.

 

[Jayce]

Jayce your in a educational environment, have you or your school district looked at getting applications developed to assist in the class room? IE teachers guide to X or interactive lesson planning etc?

That was the idea when they were "impulse bought". The touch screen really offers an attractive feature for some students in certain classrooms. We're still seeking apps to make use out of them, but so far they don't offer near enough to warrant the purchase. Through the time I spent using one of the iPads it became apparent the devices have far more to offer at the home user/personal level than the educational/business level.