The iPad did a lot of things for a lot of people, including lining Steve Jobs’ pockets with a bit more cash and while competitors were quite thin on the groun for a while there has been slew of tablet PCs released that aim to dethrone the king of what is essentially a giant and more powerful smartphone. The ideal tablet PC for your needs will depend on a numbe of factors including whether you’re one of “those people” that can’t bring themselves to buy Apple and how much budget you can stretch to.
The iPad is basically the king of all tablet PCs. Even if you don’t like it you can still thank it for pushing the likes of Dell, Samsung and soon Samsung, to release their own versions and some of them are arguably better equipped and certainly less expensive than the iPad.
The Dell Streak is pretty much identically priced to the iPad and it looks seriously good. It only has a 5″ screen compared to the 9.7″ iPad screen but it also has a front loaded webcam, a 5mp digital camera that people have been going potty about (in a good way). The GPS is also very good and intuitive to boot. It’s 1GHz processor makes it an incredibly powerful smartphone (realisticaly, it’s a tad too small to be considered a full on tablet).
The joojoo is a very conveniently priced tablet with a huge 12.1″ screen. Unfortunately, it’s cumbersome both in terms of physical size and graphical interface use. You also can’t download apps, which is especially surprising considering it’s built on a Linux framework which usually means you’re guaranteed to find useful little applications and programs. The £319 price tag is incredible but we think you’d be better saving the extra £100 for the iPad or even the Dell.
That’s pretty much all you get to choose from now in terms of true iPad competitors and in all honesty the Dell is a little too small to include in the list (we were struggling). However, by the end of the year you can expect competition from Samsung, Blackberry, and Lenovo to name but a few.
