March 18, 2011
The iPad 2 seems to be talked about (and advertised) everywhere. And you cannot have missed the ads for the new Android-based Motorola Xoom—the ad where the intense looking guy fiercely folds up his laptop and turns it into a tablet with 3-D buildings on it. These companies are spending a ton of money on advertising, trying to win the early tablet market share battles.
Inevitably, the media head-to-head comparisons of the two go on and on. You saw my link to a feature by feature comparison earlier. Here are a few more reviews you might be interested in.
First, I tend to trust Pouge at the New York Times when it comes to technology reviews. He seems to nail the common-sense points that make a device usable or compelling—or dead on arrival. Right now he likes the iPad 2 the best, mainly due to it’s light weight and continued ease of use. See his write up here: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D02E4D9123EF933A25750C0A9679D8B63&ref=davidpogue
Pouge reviewed the Xoom earlier, here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/technology/personaltech/24pogue.html?ref=davidpogue and found it compelling.
Next, Retrevo decided to compare the OS’s, independent of the devices themselves. They liked the new Android tablet OS (found on the Xoom) better than the new OS on the iPad 2. See it here: http://www.retrevo.com/content/blog/2011/03/which-stronger-tablet-os-ios-4.3-or-honeycomb?cmpid=EmailAMarch18b
And here’s a longer article from Network World that takes a detailed look at each function a business person would need to use on a tablet and compares them across the two devices. iPad 2 wins but they still like the Xoom. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/031411-tablet-deathmatch-apple-ipad-2.html?hpg1=bn
Michael
