iPad2 vs Acer W500 Windows 7 Tablet

[Sharp]

Hi all.
I recently bough an Acer W500 Tablet PC which runs Windows 7. It costs less way less than the iPad2 (32GB), has a 10.1 inch multitouch screen, Dual Core Processor, 2GB RAM, and a very fast 32GB Solid State Drive.

It has the Microsoft Surface / Multitouch Pack installed, so using it is dead simple. Windows 7 responds extremely simply from the Touch Screen.

It’s very fast, boots from Sleep mode in 1 second and if you leave the programs open you were using, they are all instantly available.

Install ASIO4ALL on it and you have a cracker of a VST HOST with very low latency.

The fact it runs on Windows 7 means it will run pretty much anything within the abilities of it’s Dual Core Processors. Bearing in mind that this cost me less than an iPad, I seriously wonder what the future holds for Apple. My Windows Tablet PC’s can do infinitely more than the iPad could ever do right now, and this is really only the start of all this. More table PC’s are coming down the line, and with Windows 8 which is highly optimised for Tablets and Multitouch is on the way, the future looks rather bleak in my opinion for Apple’s share of the Tablet Market.

Most importantly, it runs Angry Birds too lol…!!!! Plays deadly smooth, better than my iPhone 4.

Regards
Sharp

[Pepperpotty]

What are the aps like that are available for it? Have you come across anything that wanted but isn't available on a Windows os?
What are the chances of you getting a virus on it?
I've got an iPad and I love it but you do get reminded that it's made by Apple every time you visit a site that requires flash on it.

[xmlguy]

On of the reasons I bought the iPad was because it didn't do flash. Jobs was right. Flash sucks, particularly for touch interfaces.

[Sharp]

What are the aps like that are available for it?

It runs a full copy of Windows 7 so it runs pretty much anything you can install on a desktop PC. The iPad iOS is a very different thing. Its not a Mac, where my Tablet is a PC if you get what I mean.

What are the chances of you getting a virus on it?

Same as any Windows PC I guess. It’s possible, but highly unlikely if you have good anti virus software installed and you don’t hang out on strange websites or download and run suspicious EXE files.

I use Microsoft Security Essentials on my Laptop and Tablet PC. It’s free and works very well. It's been many many years since I had a virus and even at that a single click removed it.

I've got an iPad and I love it but you do get reminded that it's made by Apple every time you visit a site that requires flash on it.

I should probably change the title of this thread. I don’t mean to compare an iPad to my Windows Tablet. That’s totally unfair as the iPad is not a Mac running a full desktop OS where my Tablet is running a full desktop OS.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is that for the money, the iPad is grossly overpriced. It should cost the same as an Android Tablet since they compare much better against each other.

Plus the fact that I can’t see there being much hope for Apple in the future if they don’t drop the prices. With all the Android tablets out now half the price of an iPad and the Windows Tables now coming out… well… why pay so much more for an iPad?

Regards
Sharp

[Sharp]

On of the reasons I bought the iPad was because it didn't do flash. Jobs was right. Flash sucks, particularly for touch interfaces.

I’d have to completely disagree.
Android Tablets which cost half what the iPad costs work extremely well on Flash sites. Your iPad YouTube App for example does not give you access to all YouTube's webpages offer.

YouTube and FLASH works very well on my Tablet too. I don't have to press the tiny controls, I can just touch the videos to select, start and stop them. Maybe it's the Microsoft Surface / Touch Screen addon, I don't know. Either way it's smooth and I'd rather have it than not just because Steve Jobs decided he didn't want it.

It's my PC. I want to do what I want with it, not what Jobs only allows me.

Regards
Sharp.

[michelkeijzers]

As far as I know, FLASH is not the nicest way of how things can be done, but since it is so popular.

In the past there have also been video formats better than VHS for example but still VHS went popular. If a video player does not support VHS the device capabilities would be limited.

So Steve decided he could dictate that FLASH should not be used by not supporting it on an Apple, but (luckily) he does not decide what the rest of the world wants.

[xmlguy]

On of the reasons I bought the iPad was because it didn't do flash. Jobs was right. Flash sucks, particularly for touch interfaces.

I’d have to completely disagree.
Android Tablets which cost half what the iPad costs work extremely well on Flash sites. Your iPad YouTube App for example does not give you access to all YouTube's webpages offer.

YouTube and FLASH works very well on my Tablet too. I don't have to press the tiny controls, I can just touch the videos to select, start and stop them. Maybe it's the Microsoft Surface / Touch Screen addon, I don't know. Either way it's smooth and I'd rather have it than not just because Steve Jobs decided he didn't want it.

It's my PC. I want to do what I want with it, not what Jobs only allows me.

Regards
Sharp.

Hi Sharp, I have nothing against other Tablets, and my opinion about flash wasn't meant to express anything negative about your purchase. Your tablet sounds cool, so I'm interested to hear about any music related purposes you find for it. I'm not an apologist for Apple, and the iPad and iPod are the only Apple hardware products I've ever bought. I think it's very good to have other competitive tablets available. I haven't seen much music software for other tablets that's any good, but it would be great if developers target a wide variety of hardware for their music apps. The challenge with android and windows tablets is that developers seem to find it difficult to target those products because there are too many significant differences between them to make it worthwhile to invest the money to adapt an app for each one.

My first question about the Acer Tablet is battery life for running and sleeptime. The iPad2 has excellent battery life, which I find to be one of its most important benefits, so that is one of the most important aspects I consider for any other tablets.

[Sharp]

Hi Sharp, I have nothing against other Tablets, and my opinion about flash wasn't meant to express anything negative about your purchase

Sure, I totally got that too.
I also don’t want you to think I’m knocking the iPad. Let be totally honest here, it’s is pretty awesome for everything it does do. Very slick and effortless. Turn it on, press an icon. That’s it. Simple. You can’t screw it up.

I'm not an apologist for Apple, and the iPad and iPod are the only Apple hardware products I've ever bought. I think it's very good to have other competitive tablets available.

Sure competition is great. Everyone wins. I’m just curious where Apple will fit into all this in the future. The iPad is awesome, but so too are the Android Tablets which cost a lot less. With a Windows 7 Tablet also costing less, it’s going to be interesting to see how much of a market share Apple maintain in the very near future.

I haven't seen much music software for other tablets that's any good, but it would be great if developers target a wide variety of hardware for their music apps.

Considering the amount of software already written to run in Windows, I wonder how attractive other platforms will be in the future.

The challenge with android and windows tablets is that developers seem to find it difficult to target those products because there are too many significant differences between them to make it worthwhile to invest the money to adapt an app for each one.

I think iOS and Android are by far more limited in this regard than Windows. Android and iOS will go through more version than Windows which will force people to upgrade their hardware.

You wont really have much of a problem under Windows Tablets.

My first question about the Acer Tablet is battery life for running and sleeptime.

Well, now that will be a problem as the hardware will be significantly faster and far more demanding than the likes of an iPad or Android.

I can get 4 to 6 hours depending on what I’m at. I have no idea how many days it will sleep for.

The iPad2 has excellent battery life, which I find to be one of its most important benefits, so that is one of the most important aspects I consider for any other tablets.

I can’t imagine a Windows Tablet ever being able to match in battery life with an iPad 3, 4 or whatever comes up in the future. iOS exists for simplicity and battery life. If battery life wasn’t an issue, Apple would have used OS X.

Regards
Sharp.

[xmlguy]

The thing with tablets is that apps that aren't specifically designed for the touchscreen interface and built assuming a mouse are often unusable because the controls are too small, drag and drop doesn't work the same, the lack of right-click, the difficulty of doing double clicks, and there's no support for special articulations like swipe and multitouch. The issue of managing multiple windows is more of a problem too. I've built Windows apps for flat-screen touch panels, and it requires that special considerations be made for the imprecision of a fingerpress vs. a mouse click. Even some iPad apps need some improvement in this regard, case in point being iMS-20, which has controls and text that's too small, in my opinion.

There's also the issue of CPU demand and load limiting to keep the interface responsive and battery life good on mobile CPUs. I don't want to use the standard Windows app interface on a Win-based tablet, even though it would be great to have the power of Live, Pro-Tools, and VSTs on a tablet. There's just not enough horsepower under the hood on most tablets to do the same level of music production that the software is designed to do on a desktop/laptop class multi-core Intel, while still maintaining long battery life and UI responsiveness.

[DaniH]

...I seriously wonder what the future holds for Apple. My Windows Tablet PC’s can do infinitely more than the iPad could ever do right now...

Apple will always sell because it is now more of an image than a product. I like my iPhone 4 but I know Android and some Windows phones are MUCH better. (I would be perfectly fine with my old Razor but the iPhone 3G was cheaper and the same monthly plan.)

Look at the 4S, faster processor, better camera, and a bitch who talks back to you. Now why is it selling out and causing idiots in China to riot?? Because it is just an image. How many times do you go to get cereal and pick the better brand than the lesser known brand even though the two have the same amount of crap in them. You do this because you recognize the brand name and trust what you know.

[axxim]

With windows in a new machine it's always the same: It runs smooth and fast. Then you have to install "unnecessary" software like antivirus, firewall, addblocker, secutrity updates, patches etc. I write that word in "" because this is software that is not productive or usefull for the functions you buy a computer for. It's only a "should have" because else you will have a crappy system.

When you get a new PC, you test and try this or that software, buy hardware components, want games which are state of the art, go and update (buy) a new graphics card to find out that the so acclaimed game has problems with the audio: Your system and thousands others only produce a cracle on your X.1 soundsystem and searching in forums you find out that the developers of the game created a new sound engine that isn't conforming to the specs or standards that were defined for most PCs. This was the case with Crysys!

You buy a new USB-MIDI device and find out that it wouldn't work because it was installed as MIDI device 11 ot higher and Windows only can handle up to ten. Then you run Korgs MIDI channel remover (thx KORG) and the device is now in your setup but doesn't work anyway... Why? You go to the forums of M-Audio and find out that if you have a Logitech cam, it hinders the M-Audio USB keyboeard from working. You deinstall the cam drivers and voilá it works.. Why does on cam driver obstrudes an USB MIDI device? Its not the first time. My actual best mouses at work and home are Logitechs, but the drivers and utils are banned from my system. Sounds familiar to someone?

Why the Pianoteq demo Sharp asked me to try, has a latency of nearly 500mS when I use the direct player but as VST in Cubase it has only the usual <10mS? The same happens with NI's Reaktor 5, Why?

If you buy software or new hardware what is the first you have to do? Update update and update... Why? Im not ranting against Windows, its rather that any mediocre company feels able to produce HW or SW and launch it to the crowd to see what they forgot to specify and test....

Why a MS-Sidewinder Joystick isn't supported in WinXP anymore?

As said I work with windows every day and maybe only one thing hasn't changed since I started to work with CAE systems in MS-DOS about 25 years ago: When I turn on my PC and let start the CAE program, I have enough time to go to prepare my coffee...

Well returning to topic, since I get my iPad, I can appreciate what an advantage could be the tight apple approval (due being a "closed" system, something that I critiziced a lot years ago). It simply sets a higher obstacle to any developer (of course at higher prices) and a lot of "i-want-do-too" have to stay outside.

I also know there are better pieces of HW out there, but until you got all the bugs and issues fixed, your system is outdated. And thats not very different with apple products, but at least I think they have a little more product life than others.

But one is sure for me, my next desktop will be an iMac, so I can have both worlds OS and Win in the same machine and then I would be in a good position to decide which system fits bes for me.

And being honest? Where do you get such nice apps as for example the Animoog for 0.79 EUR?

Probably the best choice is to have more than one system: One for music, one for gaming, one for working one for Internet etc. At least the users in this forums should know that every machine has its pros and cons depending for what they are used

[axxim]

Apple will always sell because it is now more of an image than a product...

Yes that may be true but, how many effort does it cost to create such an image? How many has it to do with innovation and reliability? Why much others imitate it instead of going their own way?

I am not a "hyper" and I think Apple will have a hard way to go without S.J. In any case it is easier and faster to loose an image than to acquire it (It grows like the palm and falls like the coconut). So let's wait and see...

[DaniH]

Thee iPods and iTunes are what made apple an image really. They were so successful that they spawned off a whole new line for apple. Without the iPod apple would be merely another computer manufacturer.

[Sharp]

Why the Pianoteq demo Sharp asked me to try, has a latency of nearly 500mS when I use the direct player but as VST in Cubase it has only the usual <10mS? The same happens with NI's Reaktor 5, Why?

Don't use direct player, you must use ASIO.
If you don't see that option at all, then install ASIO4ALL

Regards
Sharp.

[axxim]

I think you missunderstood my post a little. I always use ASIO4ALL.
What I meant was the direct play mode or standalone option (or whatever it is called) where the program itself reads MIDI and plays without any VST-Host like Cubase. Indeed, in this standalone player you can setup which audio device you want to use. No matter what device I select, the latency is veeery long.