Why not mention the iPad?
I despise Apple (the company) for many of their business tactics and practices. I think poorly on them for a lot of the crap they pull and I believe their sense of corporate secrecy is appalling. I would never, /ever/ deal with them on a business level and I will never /ever/ trust them in any way, shape or form to be reliable or consistent in anything.
But that iPad doohicky of theirs is pretty sweet. Like the iPods before it – and gods help me even the iPhones – the iPad is a great /CONSUMER/ device. From a business standpoint, I tend to prefer dealing with a company that does things like publish roadmaps, have a proven track record of not abandoning it’s userbase at the drop of a hat or deprecating things without so much as “how-do-you-do” until after the outcry becomes deafening.
From a “build you a disposable computing appliance that you will use for three years strictly on a personal basis and then discard” they can’t (currently) be beat. That said, I have no intention of discarding any of my toys after three years. I do use them for business purposes and like consistency, reliability and quality support.
So personally, I build my own PCs. For business I use Supermicro and when it comes to portable…I go HTC.
That said, HTC doesn’t have an iPad replacement. Samsung’s is flimsy overpriced and inadequate. There are a squillion cheap Chinese aPads available – all with 2 hours of battery life if you turn the screen of and don’t look at them sideways. You could get a slate/netbook running a fat operating system like Linux or Windows – but it will have equally terrible battery life, cost a heap and still not deliver a comparable experience to the iPad.
Let’s face it; as much as I despise how Apple treats the clueless walking wallets that lap up it’s crap; if you are in the market for a tablet (as I have been for about 15 years) then they have – by far – the best one going. I await HTC’s gingerbread tablet with great anticipation. I will be absolutely crushed if it isn’t at least 1366x768 with an SD slot, a USB port and at least 10 inches.
I don’t care who makes it. I don’t care what OS it’s running. WebOS, iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7…so long as I can root it ensure that I can run what I want without some ungodly restrictions. I want 10 hours of batter life, 1366x768, standardised removable storage coupled with decent internal storage, a USB port for peripherals and charging, a screen large enough to properly type on and I want it running a dual-core Cortex A9. First company that comes along with that will get between $750 and $1000 of my hard-earned depending on the details of the specs.
Right today at this moment the closest still seems to be Apple. So pump up the iPad I say. Give it as much press as possible and mention it everywhere. Get the manufacturers interested and get some real competition in this market. Let’s get to the point that we have a real – and open – tablet platform that has good performance, battery life and touchscreen experience.
If that means being nice to Apple (for a little while at least) then so be it.