Motorola will be selling its new Xoom 2 tablets - a 10.1in model and the 8.2in "Media Edition", both unveiled today - primarily through Dixons' stores and Carphone Warehouse. Those are both consumer-oriented outlets, so why will so many business apps - Citrix, GoToMeeting and QuickOffice, for instance - be pre-loaded onto the …

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Thursday 3rd November 2011 15:57 GMT Anonymous Coward

LOL

It seems the media are still focued on "what they think they know", which is why they still talk about comparisons with the iPad2 and the Galaxy Tab.

Neither of these of course are the real competition of course, as the Asus Transformer is king of the tablets. Beating the iPad at the gadget awards.

Thankfully it seems at least some consumers are prepared to see what else is on offer, rather than buying the first things that they see after walking into the shop (iPad2).

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1. Thursday 3rd November 2011 17:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: LOL
  
  Well, that's what the media do best: pick a winner, hype it up, mention it over and over again, and when its star has fallen, drag it through the dirt. And then consider how "delicious" a comeback story would be.
  
  It's an epic story, but only in the minds of those writing it.
  
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2. Thursday 3rd November 2011 17:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  re: LOL
  
  "Neither of these of course are the real competition of course, as the Asus Transformer is king of the tablets. Beating the iPad at the gadget awards"
  
  Well, Stuff magazine's gadget awards - I'm not quite sure how much we should read into that (no pun intended) but it's not the only gadget mag that does annual awards. Not to say that the Transformer didn't deserve the reward, but I dare say that its choice got the mag a bit more publicity than the iPad.
  
  In terms of sales, the Transformer can hardly be called the "king of the tablets" and in other respects, it depends on the user. Personally, I like them but don't need such a hybrid design - also, I use my iPad for music production something I wouldn't be able to do on a Transformer, so going for the Asus option wasn't a realistic one.
  
  "Thankfully it seems at least some consumers are prepared to see what else is on offer, rather than buying the first things that they see after walking into the shop (iPad2)."
  
  Do you not think that the lack of availability of the Transformer is a bit of a sticking point? I know quite a few people that were interested in the model but have given up.
  
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3. Thursday 3rd November 2011 17:17 GMT Tom 38
  
  Asus Transformer is King Gadget
  
  But they gave the iPad 2 the tablet gong - they think it is a better tablet than the Transformer, but that the Transformer is the better gadget.
  
  http://www.stuff.tv/news/events/news-nugget/stuff-gadget-awards-2011-%E2%80%93-asus-eee-pad-transformer-takes-gadget-of-the-year
  
  http://www.stuff.tv/news/events/news-nugget/stuff-gadget-awards-2011-%E2%80%93-ipad-2-takes-tablet-of-the-year-award
  
  Make of that what you will. Personally, I think they are just trying to appease everyone :)
  
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Thursday 3rd November 2011 15:58 GMT Dave 126

The glass has a coating to protect against spills?

um? Could you expand on this? Are Corning using sugar-glass now?

You reporter feels this device can't compete against Samsung, but holds it own against Acer and ASUS's offerings... yet Reghardware reviews give the latter devices a better review score than Sammy's tablet.

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Thursday 3rd November 2011 17:00 GMT Johntron

Ick

Those disproportionate corners are so hideous, only users with poor taste will snatch up this cheap-looking freakshow.

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1. Thursday 3rd November 2011 22:18 GMT sisk
  
  Or those who believe that the appearance of a piece of personal electronics kit has nothing to do with how well it functions. That'd be me, by the way. I'll take an ugly but useful and reliable piece of kit over a shiny turd any day (and there are plenty of shiny turds in the consumer electronics market to choose from.)
  
  I have no plans to pick one up, in case you're wondering. Maybe a used Xoom if I can get one for a song, but really any tablet would end up being just an expensive toy to me. I have more important things to do with my money, like buying expensive toys my kids. Given that they've managed to destroy a 'laptop' made for little kids by LeapFrog I don't want to see what they'd do to a tablet.
  
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2. Thursday 3rd November 2011 22:23 GMT Craigness
  
  Corners
  
  The previous Xoom had round corners. Maybe they decided to go for Nokia-style corners instead of A*&!"-style as there would be less likelihood of getting the thing impounded.
  
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Thursday 3rd November 2011 17:01 GMT Anonymous Coward

Crap

So bascially it's similar to the Galaxy tab 10.1 - but looks crapper.

WTF is the point if it doesn't have Micro SD card slot. I'll be sticking to my original xoom rather than this crap.

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1. Thursday 3rd November 2011 22:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  It's an improvement ...
  
  over the previous generation tablets almost all of which were using Nvidia's tegra2 chipset. This next generation of tablets are the first android tablet that offer complete surfing and multimedia playback capabilities without lots a black holes because it offers hardware-accelerated playback of H.264 high-profile codecs which dominate both online and offline HD-content.
  
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2. Thursday 3rd November 2011 22:19 GMT Ammaross Danan
  
  At a loss...
  
  "WTF is the point if it doesn't have Micro SD card slot."
  
  In case you missed it....read the last little bit of the article again....(there is an SD card slot)
  
  "So bascially it's similar to the Galaxy tab 10.1 - but looks crapper."
  
  This one, you have the USPTO to thank for that. Well, that and Apple for patenting a square(ish) tablet device with rounded corners.
  
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3. Thursday 3rd November 2011 22:24 GMT Gene Cash
  
  SD slot
  
  Hey, the original Xoom had an SD slot, but it DIDN'T WORK until the latest update.
  
  At least this one apparently has separate slots for SD & SIM. The original has the SD tucked under the SIM, so you have to remove both. And that's something that causes it to immediately power down, so if you want to change your SD, you have to reboot. Lame.
  
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4. Thursday 3rd November 2011 22:29 GMT Radelix
  
  Agreed
  
  I rather prefer my original Xoom to this. Less storage, same size, and no expansion...SRSLY? 16 GB is fine just give me expansion options. And please tell me it is compatible with the existing xoom docks.
  
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Thursday 3rd November 2011 22:15 GMT Wang N Staines

no SD

This is to stop MS patent trolling...

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Thursday 3rd November 2011 23:37 GMT Anonymous Coward

it all depends..

iOS is by far the easieast to use. Cats and toddlers can use it. It's fluid, got a better selection of better software Android does not yet have (such as pro music extensions, quick video editing tools, and of course, games).

The ease of use is of course due to you can't really configure it for your taste, apart from wallpapers. Or can't really access the filesystem.

The other part is partly due to the specs (which is currently king in tabletland) and partly there is one single ipad (ok two, one slow and one fast).

As an appliance then, it's the easier choice. But as a gadget, it's too constrictive. Depending on your geek scale, this may bother you or it may not.

Me? I don't like the apple way of doing things. I however am really looking forward to the Asus Transformer 2, with Tegra 3 and ICS (Android 4.x). And I also want the wacom keyboard, so I can use it as a portable and cheap Cintiq. Now THAT sounds real tasty. All the ports I want (can even use regular USB external hard drives), keyboard I can leave at home or tote around as a cover and usable text input device..

Xoom 2 just feels like Xoom 1.1 .

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Thursday 3rd November 2011 23:37 GMT Charlie Clark

Target audience

Who buys the Ipad? Business or consumer? AFAIK it's both so why is only a problem for Motorola?

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1. Friday 4th November 2011 08:19 GMT andreas koch
  
  @ charlie Clark
  
  Who buys iPads? Oh, that'll be the government and the councils. To dish it out to all the people who absolutely need a tablet for their work, like the traffic survey guys who sit on the side of the road and used to use these little hand counter thingies, clickclick click-turn page of newspaper and ignore traffic- clickclick.
  
  They now can play angry birds while not doing their job.
  
  Likewise school teachers are now using iPads for registering the children's arrival at school. This must be done on an iPad because a tick in the register book is not modern enough and the PC in the classroom is so last year.
  
  Thinking about the government's past record of stolen, mislaid and forgotten IT tech, I expect lot's of need for replacement, too.
  
  And, of course, it needs to be an iPad. When the council suggester goes to the council cashcow to propose the purchase of touchscreen tablets, the first question will be: "What are they?" And after the explanation comes the realisation: "Oh, you mean iPads! Yes, go ahead."
  
  Vacuum cleaners are all Hoovers, even Dysons.
  
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  1. Friday 4th November 2011 10:25 GMT Tom 38
    
    You've clearly never worked for a council, an LEA or the DfT. Getting money out of a council is like blood from a stone. I've heard a few stories of councillor's evaluating ipads, none of state teachers being provided with ipads, none of traffic observers being given ipads.
    
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Friday 4th November 2011 15:36 GMT Oli 1

@Tom38

i work in a state secaondary school.... we have 30 ipads for taking registers and virtual desktops.

15 were lost and another 30 ordered.

we're also getting 20 xoom 1's from the US to evaluate them vs an ipad as we can get two xoom's for one ipad.

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Friday 4th November 2011 23:20 GMT andreas koch

@tom38

OK, you win, my bad.

I didn't in fact KNOW about the traffic controllers. It was only a shot in the blue because we have a traffic survey about 200 yards away from where I live (Hampshire, in the UK) and walking past two cars marked with 'traffic survey' parked on the side of the roundabout, I saw both men sitting in them with an iPad each. One of them was playing Angry Birds.

It was no doubt their lunch break and those were private tablets.

The school-iPad-registration-issue I heard from my children. I myself haven't seen the teachers using any tablet for registering or any other task. The kids probably just made it up.

Sorry again for assuming. Upvote for you.

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Sunday 6th November 2011 02:10 GMT Arctic fox

Currently no 3G and no storage expansion?

They may, or may not, turn up in future? Why would I buy now then Moto? As far as I am concerned there is a basic check list for what should be on tablets in the medium to high end segment.

1. USB (and chargeable through it, stuff proprietary chargers)

2. HDMI out.

3. micro-SD slot (no memory expansion, no sale).

4. 3G option available as well as a Wifi only model.

5. Customer changeable battery.

6. Bluetooth.

As far as I am concerned lack of these facilities is a deal breaker. So far Sony, Samsung, Moto, HTC etc have all managed to spoil what would otherwise in many cases be very good kit by not including some of the above. Sony's new table recently reviewed here? No HDMI and no USB charging on what would have a damn good tab. Sammy's new 7-incher lacks.............no I got to stop. The OEMs just wind me right up with their unerring capacity to *almost* get it right.

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