Ultimate Tablet Showdown: iPad vs. PlayBook vs. Galaxy Tab vs. Slate

By Ray Nicolini

   

The iPad's finally got some competition; in the past few weeks, the HP Slate made a brief appearance, the Samsung Galaxy Tab debuted, and just BlackBerry unveiled its business-minded PlayBook today. Here's how they all measure up:

It should be noted that there are still some things we don't know about the PlayBook, and the HP Slate specs are taken from a leaked internal document that hasn't yet been officially confirmed.

Still, the battlefield's a lot more clearly defined than it was when we first compared tablets—both real and rumoured—back in January. And as its rivals catch up, the iPad's looking increasingly outgunned.

That's just on the hardware side, though. Apple's still got three major advantages that opponents haven't made up much space on: iOS, the App Store, and a huge head start. It's going to take more than a pair of HD cameras to overcome that.

Via www.gizmodo.com

HP Slate gets unofficially reviewed before release date

Tech blog, Conecti.ca, reportedly got its hands on a pre-release copy of the HP Slate and did a quick unofficial hands on review. The review, in Spanish and machine-translated by Google, is not kind toward the Windows 7-powered device. The review is peppered with negativity including the observation of ”a long and annoying load time operating system” and a final verdict upholds the less-than enthusiastic theme of the review by proclaiming that the device and its experience is “meh”. On the plus side, the device has “expansion ports ad-nauseum” and, though made of plastic, the slate “feels dense and tough”. Overall, the reviewers see this device as a portable competitor to netbooks and not necessarily the proverbial iPad killer that the device is touted to be.

[Via PC World]