I like the form factor of the PDN & would like to see this size tablets go forward. It seems though, most of the new 7" entries in the market are 16:9 format. I guess this is because of the availability of such screens. What would you like to see for the 7" devices? Cheers,kev P.S. Any chance that 4:3 screens will survive?
What do you think of the trend toward 800x480 screens on the small tablets.
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I also prefer the PDN and iPad aspect ratio. I guess everything went to the "letterbox" aspect for watching movies, but I much prefer the 800 x 600 format. I was watching a comparison of the iPad and a Windows7 slate today on engadget and it was a 10.1 inch tablet and man it looked really funny when in portrait mode. Far too elongated. I had a play with the Augen in Kmart the other day and 800 x 480 blows. Give me 800 x 600 any day.Actually, if Apple bring out a 7 inch iPad, which is likely, it will be 800 x 600. It will most likely sell by the truckload so I think the 800 x 600 format will survive nicely. It's far better for reading ebooks and pdfs as they don't need reformatted.
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[quote name='bugeyed;34630]Yeah' date=' except for the $ signs attached to every iPad app! It would be tempting though.[/QUOTE'] Actually a lot of iPad apps are not that expensive considering what you get. Try Goodreader for a couple of bucks and it transforms the iPad in a real working piece of kit. Tie it into dropbox and it really shines. As I've said before, I felt my iPad was useless out of the box but a couple of apps later and it was very cool indeed. Go play with one and see how responsive it is is. Too big and too expensive but stuff just works.
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Lawman, I agree with you on this. If Apple release a 7" iPad with a front facing camera for around 350 smackaroonies, I think it will really hurt the android tablets.Ive been playing with the PDN and android for a while now and, admittedly, the PDN is a reader which has been hacked to a tablet, but I'm thinking of jumping ship back to the iPad. Even running at 800mhz, the PDN is slow and fairly unresponsive. Many apps just don't work or work a bit then crash. The screen is usable but nothing to write home about. The wifi is flakey at best and a comparison between the PDN and my iPhone on my home network is really a no contest. The email client sucks and I found K9 to be far better. Trying to get integration between apps and docs and spreadsheets was a real pain but kinda works now. I'm not blaming the PDN so much, but I think android is a bag of spanners at the minute. It has to cater for Zillions of different devices and configurations. Apple don't have that problem. Oh and another thing. I upgraded the internal memory to 16GB and I think I wasted my time, most things are looking for an external card to either read from or save to.If Pandigital had released the source code I'm sure the smart guys here would have sorted a lot of the problems and given Pandigital a lot of free legwork for anything coming down the line. I made the mistake of going into Best Buy today and playing with an iPad again..... the poor old PDN reminds me of my old Compaq iPaq.lawman;34591 said:
With PDNs coming in at around the $100-130 mark there's really no comparison to devices like the iPad. They're $250-300 more for a reason, and the hardware is a big piece of that. They are slick and they are responsive. As stated above things just work. Of course they aren't open jailbreak em if you like but why bother since there's almost always "an app for that" and the apps don't cost much.All that being said the PDN works enormously well for a device that comes in at just over $100. I don't mind the fact that it can't play 3D games and has difficulty with video. The fact that it can read, browse, run a fair number of decent apps like YouTube and Pandora, and even play decent text or turn based games and I'll say we're getting more than we bargained for. For me the last annoyance remaining is the loss of WiFi on sleep, but hey what else is a good power cycle for?Oh and a great user community and forum is the icing on the cake.Slaterman
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Going on past Apple history, a $350 iPad mini is unlikely. Even if they manage to drop it close to that, it will be 8 or 16GB only with no extra ports, and probably no camera. A comparable Android tablet will most likely have similar functionality (ie. a capacitive screen) plus an SD slot, USB ports and maybe even a camera. So you will still be getting more bang for your buck.I love my tablet, now - I can see where these can fit in someone's day to day. But the Apple tax is just to high for me.
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roebeet;34698]Going on past Apple history said:
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[quote name='gadgetrants;34727]That's the voice of reason. I agree! I'm predicting by Black Friday' date=' we'll have 10" Windows and Android tablets for about $400. A little bit more than $350, but definitely with much better specs (dual core?) than a 7" iPad. But we all know they'll be for people who like to tune and mess with their devices, not those who just want it to turn on and work.-Matt[/QUOTE']The better tablets are coming. Just check thisWatch a Windows 7 Slate Take On the iPadbut Jeezus look at the aspect ratio. It looks ugly as sin. No thanks. Maybe it is time to tell screen manufacturers that not everyone wants to watch fecking movies every minute of the day.........Many people want to hack stuff but once it all becomes mainstream it goes away and it is the people who want to just buy it, turn it on and it works the way they want that make up the buying public.Heck, I'm giving my age away by saying I was shithot at breaking protection systems and rom disassembly on the old Z80 based Sinclair ZX Spectrums and Amstrads and the first Palm Pilots. But everything moved on and so did I. There will always be the guys who want things to do more, thankfully, and that's where the Slatedroid community comes in, but like everything in life, it will have a limited lifespan..Wooooo, far to philosophical there.... 
Completely agree. I really like the ratio of the PDN screen, and hope some future tablets will offer it. All this everything-has-to-be-widescreen is craziness. Horrible for web-browsing, reading, games. Do that many people want to watch movies on tablets, or is it just a matter of manufacturing costs and it being cheaper for them to just mass produce one flavor?gortyargen;34755 said:
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Both. People are really looking for convergence- everything on one device. If you can watch movies on it, make calls on it, take pics with it, listen to music, get directions, blah blah, then you only need one. 300 bucks for a phone, 200 for a nav set, 300 for a netbook, 200 for an mp3 player... suddenly that 400 dollar tablet is pretty cheap...
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