You've got your hands full: A tablet primer

Without a doubt, 2010 was the Year of The Tablet, the tablet in question being Apple's iPad, of course. In all-too-familiar fashion, Steve Jobs proved to the world that the tablet was the device we never knew we needed. (Well, Bill Gates knew it years ago, but apparently he didn't have the recipe quite right.) Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery - as well as the basis for many business plans - 2011 is destined to be the Year of Even More Tablets. But that's certainly not a bad thing; the competition will keep front-running Apple on its innovating toes, and bring forth a wide field of new contenders, many of them worthy candidates for the Next Big Gadget crown. Most major tech manufacturers announced a tablet device of some sort during the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last month, including Motorola, LG, Toshiba, Lenovo, Asus, NEC, Acer and many more. But there are more announcements to come, not the least of which will be Apple's announcement of the next-gen iPad. Sure, the next version of the iPad will likely be a list full of ‘more' and ‘better': rumours point to a new Retina-style display at 2,048x1,536 pixels, a dual-core processor, 128GB of memory, better speakers, front and rear facing cameras. But Apple is never one to simply rest on past accomplishments. Jobs and Co have long shown a willingness to shake things up in an attempt to keep things fresh. Just look at the various iterations of the iPod nano for prime evidence of this. And this vendor-be-damned attitude is just the sort of spirit needed in the face of the overwhelming flood of competition that Apple faces this year. So perhaps the iPad 2 will just be a newer, juicier-specced version of last year's model, but don't bet the holiday fund on it. New Operating Systems Codenamed "Honeycomb" in Google's continuing tribute to tooth decay, Android 3.0, the first version that is really, really meant for tablets, promises everything we've seen before and more, with some attractive differences. Honeycomb takes ample advantage of the additional screen real estate, offering a slightly more desktop-like experience with widgets that allow many common tasks such as checking email and calendars to be done without opening an app. This, along with some creative implementations by developers, could give Honeycomb some serious functional advantages over iPad's iOS and its current one-app-at-a-time interaction model. And that's certainly not all the tablet OS news to be had. RIM is set to introduce their BlackBerry Playbook tablet which runs the very intriguing QNX OS. The Playbook will feature a seven-inch, 1,024x600 pixel display, a Cortex A9-based, dual-core 1GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, and 3MP/5MP cameras, 16GB or 32GB memory and WiFi. Additionally HP, having bought up Palm and its WebOS has a chance to make its mark on the tablet scene. Sure, WebOS didn't help the Palm Pre kill the iPhone, but it remains a solid technology that could be the basis for a compelling tablet offering. Look for an announcement soon. New Processors As the "tablet wars" ramp up, so are the designs for the engines needed to power those new creations. One of the most notable is Nvidia's Tegra 2, a "system on a chip", meaning that it integrates CPU, graphics and other functions together to help reach those high performance/low consumption goals. The Tegra 2 will be the tiger under the hood of Motorla's Xoom, possibly the most anticipated new entry to the field. The Xoom will have Android 3.0, 1GB RAM & 32GB memory, a 10.1" 1,280×800 screen, 2MP/5MP front/rear cameras, 3G/WiFi and ten hours of battery life. Also sporting the Tegra 2 will be the Asus Eee Pad Transformer which converts from laptop to tablet and back again by way of a dock that includes a keyboard. Specs include a 10.1" 1,280 by 800 display, 512MB or 1GB of RAM, Android 3.0 OS, 1.2 MP/5MP cameras. What About Windows? In genuine hasn't-this-been-tried-before fashion, not a small number of the new tablets announced to come out this year will be Windows-based. There have been a number of tries at Windows tablets, going back as far as ten years, and none of them have made much of a ripple. But several of the tablets revealed at CES were hybrid Android/Windows devices, allowing the user to switch back and forth between the two, some even offering dual hardware setups. A gimmick? Perhaps, but you can't look at the pictures of Lenovo's IdeaPad U1/LePad tablet and not hope that it's as cool to use as it looks. The tablet will be sold alone as a 10.1" Android tablet, or with the IdeaPad keyboard attachment with which it can run either Windows 7 or Android. In notebook form the IdeaPad runs an Intel Core i5 1.2 GHz processor with 2GB of memory and 320GB hard drive, while the tablet has a 1.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 1GB of RAM and 16-32GB of storage. But even bigger news on the Windows tablet front came when Microsoft made its surprising announcement that it would be porting the next version of Windows to run on the ARM processor family which powers a vast array of mobile devices. How successful this gambit will be is a big question, but with newer, multi-core ARM processors such as the Tegra 2 leading the way, this is one Microsoft scheme that may surprise us all. But it will be 2012 before Microsoft manages this feat, so don't wait up for it. What Tablet Should You Buy? Screen size: Or more importantly, what you can do with it. The seven-inch tablet is fine for reading ebooks, but not so good for web browsing, movie watching and many of the other tasks that tablets are so valued for. The iPad's 9.7" screen is about as small as one will want to go for many uses. With numerous tablets being offered at 10.1" and more, think about the size trade-off carefully. All about apps: Apple iOS is of course king in this area, but Android is coming on strong and will soon match the former's offering. The other OSes lag far behind in available apps, but ask yourself, "Do I really need 100,000 apps?" Consider the utility of the apps available for your prospective purchase. Count the cost: There is a lot of similarity between many of the tablets out there, but in many cases, huge differences in price. Apple devices are usually considered among the priciest, but when it comes to tablets several other manufacturers seem to have decided to beat them at that game. On the other hand, companies like Creative are producing reasonably specced offerings at relatively cheap prices. So when comparing features, the bang-per-buck factor may count more than usual. More Power: Battery life is the spec that may matter most of all in tablet comparisons. One of the most impressive features of the iPad is its tremendous battery life, and with good reason. A dead tablet ain't much fun. Pay close attention to battery life claims, and even more to reports by actual users.