Saturday, January 26, 2013

Tablet Wars suspended, prices inflated!



     This is my 2nd attempt to write a blog after some time away from doing so about this particular topic. 1st attempt was done on my new Nexus 7 Tablet but unsuccessfully posted or published so I'm writing another from scratch. Now that we have gone past the frenzy of the x-mas shopping season, the majority of our retail stores have chosen to increase or put back to a normal retail price for most popular mini tablets (7 inch style). The most talked about mini tablets out there are the Kindle Fire HD, Nexus 7, Apple Mini-I-Pad and others like the Archos 8 inch equivalents.  Having been  forced to purchase a mini tablet at this bad time, my selections are many but few meet my particular needs. I had to go through 3 manufacturers of tablets with a local retail store before I finally got one that came close to my requirements but not at all priced attractively.

     I found that the Kindle Fire HD mini tablet was very functional for the most part with fast response times and very well made also the impressive video quality it has but it fell short on two levels. 1st level was they Kindle Fire's customized Android OS interface limiting the owner to their own format only. The other was its inability to properly support the majority of video formats out there including flash, yes I said flash player support lacking. Having the later affect me way too much, the item was returned then came the Archos 80G9 tablet. This tablet was not as fast, constructed more poorly then the Kindle but had a more open Android OS environment. Where it went wrong and why I returned it was because the hardware became defective after only a few days, volume up button stuck when powering up sending user to an unwanted Android diagnostics built in utility and not the normal Android OS. With no other unit to replace it, I returned it and then waited a few weeks before finally deciding on the Nexus 7 tablet. The great features of the Nexus 7 tablet are its made by Asus, processor speeds excellent, built-in RAM high enough to function properly and on board storage of 32GB (not expandable by micro SD cards one minor fault). The only negative was its price, a bit too close at the $300 mark to make it unattractive but still below.

     So should you go out and get your mini tablet now? The answer to that depends on if you can wait because they are not priced to sell right now. You will have to decide whether or not to spend the extra cash for a mini tablet (7inch) or wait later on when the tablet wars restart again in the spring time. If you have to get one, choose it by features like at least 1-Ghtz processor, 512K RAM or more (1MB!), and an open Android OS format with the android play available and not customized or un-liscensed Android versions without the marketplace installed or other features disabled.

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