The Motorola Xoom started life as a £399 10 inch tablet, competing against the iPad 2, the theory was it had double the ram for the same price as the baseline iPad 2. Sales were bad and soon they dropped the price down to £329 and in November 2011 brought out the Xoom 2. Recently a few retailers have slashed the price down to £249, such as PCWorld & Carphone warehouse (the same people who also slashed the prices of Blackberry Playbook). I thought I would pop along to local PCWorld and see if they had any in, online stated they had none in stock.

Selling the lie

I asked a sales woman about the price – she stated that the price was only available on-line and I had to buy the product (and have it delivered) on-line also. I went on to explain that it gives you the option at the on-line price to pick up from a store, so the only Online bit was me actually choosing it online. She went on to say that she has no stock and this was without checking in any form, we can assume that she has already been asked about these today or is in fact guessing. She went on to tell me about the brand new Xoom that is coming soon and this is why they have reduced the price, when I asked about which model, she was unsure but as soon as I mentioned Xoom 2, she said that was the one.

I went on to inform her that the Xoom 2 came out in November 2011 and can be bought anywhere and is not ‘coming soon’. The last bit of info she shared was the fact that PCWorld was the only retailer that is selling the Xoom at £249, once I explained Carephone Warehouse have the same model and price – she walked away, almost annoyed I guess.

Tablets going down in price

It stands to reason that as CES 2012 has been and gone, there will be a whole bunch of new Tablets coming out, these are faster (Quad core), better GPU (Tegra 3) and features Ice Cream Sandwich (V4 of android OS). The tablets that are left in the stores have two options, reduce the price to attract the impulse buyer / looking for a cheap tablet or not sell any more of them.

Let us not also forget the Apple iPad 3 is due out soon and this may be a game changer on what to expect in tablets. I am no hurry to buy a tablet and it seems its hard to get them anyhow, maybe the staff bought them all as they did with the HP, at least I have saved myself £250 once again.

BlackBerry Playbook

I currently own an iPad 1, wife has an iPhone 4S and I have a Windows Mobile 7 Phone, so I have enough devices to do what I need on the go. I have been looking at tablets for a while now and a few caught my eye such as Sony Tablet S, Blackberry Playbook and the Motorola Xoom. The end choice is always about money, splashing out £400 for an iPad 2 was too much money in my books and even the £329 price points of Android Tablets seem a bit high. The two machines that are at the £200 price point are the Blackberry Playbook and Arnova 9 G2.

Buying on Impulse

I had watched some YouTube videos already and was in two minds if this device would suit my needs or not, I was standing in the store and had they no 32GIG models in stock (as the online site told me) I would have happily walked away but they had 4 in fact. I bought the device on the grounds that I could take it back for a full refund, this would allow me to try it out fully and see what it can really do.

Packaging & Initial Boot

The box that it came in is very well presented and contains the Playbook, Neoprene Sleeve, Micro-USB Cable Cleaning Cloth and the Mains Charger. There is a piece of paper that tells you to make sure you have Wi-Fi Coverage, press the power button and follow the steps on-screen. The initial steps including connecting to a Wi-Fi, setting up a Blackberry account, country based settings and finally checking for updates. It took a while to download and update the device, nothing major but until this is complete, you cannot use the device. The last thing it does is take you through a guide on how the device works.

Specifications

• 7″ LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
• BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
• 1 GHz dual-core processor (Cortex A9 Processor), w/ GPU
• 1 GB RAM
• Memory: 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions to be available
• 5300mAh battery
• Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
• Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
• Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
• HDMI video output
• Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
• Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, Java
• Ultra thin and portable:
• Measures 5.1″x7.6″x0.4″ (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
• Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)

The Device – Connectors

This is a 7 inch tablet, a lot smaller than the iPad (9.7”) and it runs the screen at 1024×600 which compares nicely to the iPad 1024×768. There are very limited connectors on this device; there is a power button along with volume up and down and a play button on the top. Underneath we have a Micro HDMI, no lead is supplied but you can get this cheaply online. Given the low cost of the cables, I am not sure why RIM did not include this in the box? Next this this we have Micro USB connector and I guess another connector for the Dock you can buy.

Hardware – Camera, Speakers & Microphone

The Playbook has a better front camera than most tablets have back camera. Both cameras can do full HD (that’s 1920×1080), the back camera of course been better quality. They are rated as 3MP front and 5MP back (2592×1944). The microphone is just amazing and can pick up very clear and loud audio. Finally the speakers, unlike most tablets, they have placed them on the front and they are loud and have good bass, perfect for playing music. If you want to think of this device as a HD Camcorder, then that is money well spent in this regard and of course it can do so much more.

The Web Browser

I have tested many sites on this device and I would say that just about all of them work as they would on a normal desktop web browser. I could happily view a stream on Justin.TV and access many of the file sharing sites. The one site that did not work was soundcloud, I could not press the arrow to start the music playing for some reason. I noticed a lot of the applications were in fact just a short cut to the web site, for example BBC iPlayer. Using TVCatchup website allowed me for example to watch TV live which was handy. The reason why most work? Simple, it has a fully functional adobe flash built right in and in no way did the device slow down because of this.

Application Store

This is where the device starts to fall down, there are a lot of applications that are just not there and a lot are things you have to buy. I failed to find for example a decent Twitter program, teamviewer, Skype and so on. One of the reasons why there are applications missing is simply the fact you open a web page and do the same thing, such as Tweetdeck.

Gaming

Battery Life

This is one area where I heard was not so good and it is claimed an 8 hour battery life. With general use throughout the day, I went from 100% to 56% and that was with using it heavily. I agree the iPad has a longer life which means it can last for a whole week without charging but maybe as the iPad does not fully multitask and has no flash is the reason why. I did not feel the battery life was an issue since using this device over the last few days, maybe as I was plugged in via USB half of the time and it trickle charging it?

OS2.0 Beta & Android Applications

I followed a guide online which was as simple as going to the Blackberry site, typing in your PIN number plus email address and I soon had an update flagged on my device (511MB) to the beta OS, which is due out Feb 2012. Before I went ahead with this, I wanted to make sure I could go backwards and again on the same site, it tells you how to do this. One major update here was the fact that wireless which was previously connecting at 11Mbps was now at 65Mbps. You can side load BAR files (Android apps) via a tool called DDPBInstaller. I tested a handful of Android programs and some worked 100%, some looked like they were working but did not function properly and finally some just crashed straight out.

Using this method I was able to get Citrix installed and connect to my work Citrix farm and access the desktop without any major issues. I tried Skype but that failed as well as teamviewer. DS File & DSAudio (both Android Applications to access files from my Synology NAS) worked 100% and I was able to stream any of my music or watch any movie on my NAS box (as long as the format was correct). Doing some testing as to what video formats it can play, it copes with MP4 just fine, it can also play WMV & MOV formats as well. AVI and MKV was a no-go and instead of playing them, just copied them to the device instead.

Bluetooth Keyboards

I used the Apple Bluetooth keyboard as a test and set it to search for devices. It found the keyboard (I held the power key on the right hand side until the LED flashed) and asked me to type in a number on the keyboard. I typed it and pressed enter and the keyboard was paired. I tested an IRC application and was typing away at full speed. Any Bluetooth keyboard would work of course as would a headset.

Comparing it to iPad

Before I compare devices, remember that a 32GIG iPad 2 is currently £479 and this device only cost me £200. The iPad is bigger (9.7”) but no much more screen estate (1024×768 vs. 1024×600). As iOS has a wealth of application, you can normally find just about anything you want but the reason it needs applications in the first place is due to the browser on the iPad not been able to do flash or air stuff. A good example of this is either Ustream or Justin.TV, both need an application on the iPad (which is the iPhone version) while the playbook can not only use the proper website but also stream using the built in camera & microphone. If we add the ability to use Android applications then this opens up the playbook to a more level playing field.

Conclusion

I bought this device with the express thought that I could take it back should it be a waste of my time and for the first couple of days, the “swing-o-meter” was edging towards “take it back”. In fact I almost put it all back in the box and took it back just the other day as I felt it did not do what I wanted out of a device, this was until I placed 2.0 Beta and side-loaded some Android application. Ask yourself this question; what else is out there that will cost you £169, £200 or £329 (16GIG, 32GIG, 64GIG) for so much hardware? I looked at the ‘cheap’ android tablets (Arnova 9 G2) and that cannot do half what this can do plus only has 8GIG ram and costs the same price (£200).

The plan is simple, I keep using this device for another week solid and by time Saturday comes around, if I feel this is just a mere toy and a waste of my £200, I shall flash it back to production OS, wipe it clean and take it back. If it lasts the full week then I shall keep it plus buy myself some much needed items such as a case (which doubles as a stand) and a mini HDMI convertor.

The one last thing to mention is this device has no GPS which means it cannot really function as a replacement SatNav in your car which is a shame as it wound have rounded the device off nicely.

****** UPDATE 10 Jan 2012 ******

I grabbed the device last night to sit down and chill out, I had problems, lots of them. The video player just quit half way through a movie, the browser would hang for a long time on flash related sites and the Android Apps would crash out for no reason. I followed the guide to bring the device back to 1.8.0, cleaned it up and re-boxed it “good as new”. I took it back to the store today and got a full refund. If you do buy one due to this review, the device might work out better for you but I cannot wait until RIM get the software working correctly, maybe this is why they are so cheap?

My wife was in need of a new phone, her last phone she put in the washing machine by mistake which killed it dead, the only problem was the contract does not run out till march 2012. She uses the iPad all the time (the one I won from GFI) and she is not really technical minded at all. The phone she was using was my HTC Hero which runs Android 2.1 and she could not for the life of her get used to that, it was in fact too complicated. There was a few options, one of these would have been a blackberry device for example, plenty of them on offer for £10 a month and it has a keyboard. Why did we go with the iPhone 4S over any other phone? Read on to find out.

Blackberry

I had at work a similar phone to the blackberry as it goes (same type keyboard) and let her have a go of this phone to type some messages out and straight away using the middle button to go through the menu’s was too hard to work out and so was trying to type any sort of message.

iPhone 4S

Here was my thoughts, the iPhone is the same way of working as the ipad, just smaller right, so if she already knows how to work that, then jumping to an iPhone should be second nature. I priced up both the iphone 4 and the 4S and the difference in price was not much at all, same monthly contract, cost of phone was either £20 or £50.

Now the 4S has Siri and we tested this out “Send message to Tom” at which point it got the right name from the address book. We spoke the message and then said Send – it did this without touching the keyboard. We tested typing a message and it got the words right every single time – easy right.

As an added bonus, I added all the music she likes, the Next application and many others. Now she could check her facebook any place she likes, play the music and phone people with here 500 minutes a month. I have not bothered myself to get an iPhone – maybe I am more of an Android man, larger screen and so forth.

Apple today announced a brand new iPad called the iPad 2 funny enough, what they have done is make the device thinner, lighter, more powerful (dual core A5) and fitted a couple of camera’s – none of this was of any surprise to people waiting for this to happen but they made the price the same as the previous generation and in turn – took off a chuck of money from the older version. This puts a bit of a different spin now on the tablet market because we have a 16GIG Basic Model (version 1) for £329 or $399 to the USA Market.  On the surface seems not a great deal has changed but to think outside of the box – what other “half decent” tablet can you get for £329 that is as good as the iPad? Already the Xoom has been spotted at costing £500 and others about the same, yes there is cheap tablets but they are pretty bad let me tell you.

Is the iPad for you?

The main selling point of any Tablet based device has to be battery life, the last thing you want is to sit down for a hour or so and have to plug the device into the wall. The whole thing the tablet brings to the table is the ability to pick up the device, have it come on in milliseconds and do what you need to do, be it watch a Youtube clip, browse the web or check your email. The real question comes though – do you need a Tablet at all? I am guessing as most of my on-line activities seem to be flash based produce, then the iPad fails on this account.

What do I use the iPad for?

The iPad that I own has dual use – I have set up my wife as the main user and as such facebook, email, contacts, calender and so forth are all keyed to her accounts and not mine. As it does not need charging as much, it can be left lying around and used as required during the day to check various things. What is important here is that she has no technical skill and a netbook or a laptop would be too much to cope with in one go – this is were the iPad comes in with simple icons to press to run applications.

I use the iPad once I get from work and after I finished my training schedule for the day and this comprises of checking Twitter, Youtube and various “Non-Flash” related Websites. The other main use at the moment is a game called Coin Dozer which is the old style push penny arcade which has levels and such.

I had planned to use it as a rather fancy picture frame type thing but looking at my same pictures for the 100th time soon wears thin and probably why nobody ever buys the dedicated digital picture frame things. The other interesting aspect is that I have loaded the free Synology DSPHOTO and DSAUDIO applications and I can listen to any song in my collection or look at any picture.

Toys for the Boys

I still stand strong in my view of this device been a nice thing “to have” rather then a must have device. I cannot do everything I want with it, do we blame the web for using Flash Media or do we blame apple for refusing to let flash be installed on there device? I still sit and laugh when the Apple Fan boys say the missing things are not needed and they could not live without there ipad – really guys, time to get a grip on reality and are they finding a use for a device they have bought – seems that way to me.

I keep seeing sites that show a new or upcoming tablet computer and label it as the “iPad Killer” and then it turns out it is in fact not as good or cheap as they expected or worse, the device never see’s the light of day. The iPad has some nice things going for it such as light, well made, large screen, multi touch display, responsive and generally the applications just work. The down side I think most people look are the price (cheapest model in the UK is £439), the fact you need iTunes to even make it work, no way to plug in your own media, no webcam, no way to install your own applications of choice (unless your jailbreak the device) and the fact most apps seems to cost money. I have a feeling we are going to get flooded with devices in 2011 that look and feel every similar to the iPad such as the Samsung Tab and other of its type.

What are the main things a device needs?

I have messed with enough tablet / touch screen devices in my time to start to get a feel for what is required to make the device work. Battery life is very important, I do not want a tablet that has a battery life of 2 hours max (when not doing anything major) and having to be tied a power plug all of the time. My Netbook for example lasts for 1 Hour, this is not acceptable.

The next thing that matters to me is responsiveness of the screen, if I am stabbing at icons or typing on the on-screen keyboard, I need it to register 1st time. Far too many devices have cheap displays (to keep the price very low) and this impacts on a person using it. Some of the Windows Tablet computers I have used feels like I’m trying to push my finger through the screen just to press the X to close the window down.

Speed – When a device stops responding while I am trying to run a program of some sort, this is just so annoying. My HTC Hero (which has a 600Mhz CPU) does this more often than not when I am installing a program, running an intensive program and so forth. I feel with these devices, it is like going back to 1980′s computers to be frank.

Price – When I am looking at prices of Laptops, I do not compare on price alone but what is inside the box and I am happy to pay half for often a faster and better laptop then something with the word Sony or Apple on there. The same can be said of Tablet’s – at the moment the only real competitor is Apple but expect this to change fast.

Competitors offer more for less?

On the iPad there is no Camera, no way to insert more memory cards, hard wired to iTunes to get the device going and finally no way to install your own programs. If you look at the tablets out now by Samsung for exmaple or even the cheap £150 10″ model as Toy’R'Us – they have all of these and more.

The problem with these devices is simple, the £150 Tablet which seems a bargain does not have Multi touch for a start plus Android is great for a phone but not so good for a tablet. We may not have seen the iPad killer just yet but as history has shown us, apple are slow to react to changes and only bring out a device once a year, in the same time many companies will be bringing out better and better devices – it’s only a matter of time.

One of my past times is to sit and watch various shows on both Justin.TV and Ustream. A person who goes by the name of Ron Knights (from the USA) went on about how he wanted an iPad as he could sit on his couch with the ipad and watch the streams instead of sitting in front of the computer all the time. I tried to explain that streaming was not up to much on the iPad due to the fact there is no adobe flash installed – so it is with this, I made this quick video.

Options available

Justin.TV have a free application that is designed for the iPhone and this shows due to have the 2x in the corner and the blocky appearance. You can go look via category and even sign in and find the stream you want. The problem creeps in though when watching a stream, considering I am on Wireless N and the router is like behind me – there should be no dropping of any signal when trying to watch a stream but after a few minutes it starts to break up and given long enough (10 minutes at max) it will finally come to a stop. What is even more important here is how long it take to finally start the stream – just what is it doing we ask? If it is buffering – then why does it fail when watching the live stream?

Usteam also have an application (also free) which is once again an iPhone version and you have the 2x in the corner. Unlike the Justin Application, this is limited on how you are meant to find the stream you want and the search has proven to not find what I want 90% of the time. Once you do pick a stream though it does start it quickly and plays it without falling apart.

If the streaming is not part of those two, then you are plain out of luck I am afraid. You can go to the App store and buy Skyfire for example which will set you back $4.99 but having tested this already on the free Android version – I can tell you that BitGravity Streams does not work as planned – so save your money.

Is the Android any better?

Justin produce only a streaming App and not a viewer application which means you need to try and view them through Skyfire which works but the quality is not all that good. Ustream works just fine and as I already mentioned, any BitGravity type streams do not work either way. At least with the Android device I do not have to keep buying applications to try and watch streams.

Conclusion

As streaming is hard coded flash type thing, you are going to struggle to replace the desktop to sit and watch streams on an iPad, no matter how magical you think it is, this is one area that is not happening.

In an effort to present the ideal Tablet / small computer for mobile staff at work, one of the computers we tried was the Viliv X70. While it is not obious form the picture above, this runs Windows XP, has a built in webcam (as you can see on the right) and is touch screen. Around the back is insteresting as it has some sort of a bracket which I imagine you can get a car kit for and maybe use it as a rather large GPS?

Specifications

It features an Intel Atom Silverthorne 1.33Ghz CPU. The Screen is a 7” touchscreen which runs at 1024×768.  Storage is a choice of SSD (8/16GIG) or HDD (30/60GIG). It has WiFI (b/g) and WiMAx plus Bluetooth along with GPS. Battery life is quoted as 6 Hours continuous movie playback and 200 Hours standby time. As for dimension – 210(W) x 117(H) x 22.5 (T) mm. The thing weighs 600G

In Use

I tested the time it took from switching it on till the OS was ready and this was in fact only 60 seconds max, this is of course windows not loaded with various programs or any AntiVirus to slow it down. The problem came when you try and use it – the fact the screen is so small means you will struggle to press boxes to close programs or windows and that joystick which you *think* is a mouse does nothing of the sort. The A Button is left Mouse while the B Button is Right mouse.

I have always stated that Windows is not designed to be tablet friendly and this is where the likes of Android or iOS comes into play. As this is a standard computer of sorts, you can load any version of Linux you wanted bia memory stick which might work out better for you.

How much is this costing me?

If you look at this device and think, this is a Netbook in fact with a touch screen and the keyboard ripped out – you would be expecting to pay in the order of £250 to £300 right? What if I told you it would come in at the wallet busting £647 ( Well over $1000).

While a company can withstand that cost if the product fills the need, I am not 100% sure that consumers will be too happy parting cash for this one. Looking at how heavy this is I was surprised that in fact it is slightly lighter (and only just) than the iPad (which weighs 680g) but then again the iPad is 9.7” while this is only 7”.

I would have done a much more in-depth review of the device but given the fact most are not going to be buying this anytime soon when there is just so much better (and cheaper) devices out there, I have chosen to list only the basic’s. What else can you do with this device? You can load some form of routing software and as it has a GPS – you can mount it in your car and job done but most mobile phones do this anyhow plus a TomTom is just so much neater and cheaper.

One of the failing I always felt of the Galaxy Tab as a supposed iPad Killer was the price – it was about the same. The device while it had some features missing (such as the screen size been smaller than the iPad), it did come with stuff that the iPad just did not have – these been the dual cameras (Skype Video Calling), a browser that supported Flash, a lot of Free apps that did the job very well indeed (compared to the mostly paid-for apps on the iPad) and of course the ability to take a Sim which means you can use it on the go and as a phone. It seems that the price has indeed dropped and you can now pick this up for £359.20 Sim Free from Tesco or the same price from Amazon.

What does the Galaxy Tab bring to the Table?

It Features a 1Ghz CPU which means it will be able to cope with most you can throw at it. The screen run’s at 1024×600 and from expereince of running windows at this on my netbook – it means some things might be squashed but as this runs Android as the Operating system, it might work out not too bad. Given that it is only 7” Tablet – this makes it a lot more portable than the iPad in my eyes. It has a VBGA port – you can run it from a monitor or your LCD Tv for example and add to this VNC application and you have a very portable machine for remote support.

Which should I buy?

I looked at three devices, the £150 10” Tablet from Toy’R’us will probably be pretty bad for what you want to use it for and you do indeed get what you pay for. This sits now in the middle and I personally would pay that extra money to get a decent Android Tablet and finally if you have the money and can live with the limited use of the iPad, then you won’t be disappointed. If I had to lay my money on the table? I would be buying the Samsung tab.

While this review is technically a year late – the iPad is not a new device and most people have probably seen one, tried one or actually own there own. The purpose of this quick review is to give a viewpoint of someone who had no interest in anything Apple including the iPad and even stating that I could not see a reason to go out and buy one. As you may know from the previous post, I managed to enter a competition GFI were running over the Christmas season and was the lucky winner. As I only had device a few days, it maybe is not a fair review so far, but as I said, it is a first impression of this magical device apple like to call it – does it live up to the hype?

Out of the box

Inside the box when it arrived it came with the iPad itself, a White USB Apple lead which a plug adaptor that allows it to take various plug ends and in my case it came with a UK plug sliding in part. What apple do not supply is any form of cover (even if it was a cheap one), headphones or a cleaning cloth.

Upon switching on the device – it tells you to plug it into iTunes, now why would this be so? What if a person who bought this had no computer? They should really publish this right on the front of the box. The other thing you will need by the way is so form of payment card, this can be visa and such and there is no way to get around this I could see.

Setting up via iTunes

When you plug this into your computer, the first thing is Windows will go and find a driver, on Windows 7 this happens automatically. iTunes will now guide you through the process of setting up an account and it got to a page asking me for credit card information. Although I own a credit card, I do not like the idea that something is set up to automatically bill me if I buy something, I may do this by accident. I just read that it needs an account to get Apps and there seems no way to get around this.

Adding Applications

You have a choice of using iTunes to browse the App store to add applications or you can fire up the App Store direct from the iPad. I have noticed the iPhone Apps looks really blocky on the iPad and they normally stick ‘HD’ on the title to let you know it’s iPad. Coming from an Android background, while there is a need for paid applications there should be more ‘Free’ Applications. The one that sprung to mind was Skyfire and while this is 100% Free on the Android, it seems to be £2.99 for the iPad (and by chance is $2.99 stateside – they never heard of conversion rates?).

There is an App for that

I wanted to expand further on the applications side with everything that I need seeming to cost money. I wish to give a few examples to back up my moans though. TuneIn Radio is an application that lets you listen to internet radio stations, it also gets your locations and presents all the local radio for you quick listening pleasure. This is on the Android Market place and it is Free yet it seems here on the iPad and iPhone it wants to charge me 59p. Now you may say 59p is nothing and worth every penny and maybe I agree but the very same program with the same functionality costs money on the iOS devices? As it happens I would rather use my Android to listen to the radio as its a bit more portable than the ipad.

The device itself

How heavy is this thing? Well according to the apple web site – 0.68 kg (1.5 pounds). After sitting with it in my hands using it for a few hours solid, you start to feel the weight. While the speaker is small and on the bottom, it provides more than ample sound, there is always the headphone socket of course for any type of headphones.

I went out and bought a case, I needed something and the local PCWorld had Speedlink Gala iPad Wallet Case.

I need to add that this looked not too shabby in the shop but once I got home and inserted the iPad, it was not as good as I thought. While there is a hole on the bottom for the power supply lead, there is no way you can plug this in easily whilst the case is on. The Case (as per the picture) obscures the button and same around the sides for the volume and the on/off switch. I will probably buy a much better case later on to be honest – this will do for now though.

What is good about the device?

The Screen is very clear indeed, it will get messed up with smudges and finger marks but overall very clear and glossy. The Speed at which the device starts is good – this is down to the fact it is using a Mobile phone OS of course and essentially I still state it is a big iPod Touch. The Battery life is where it is at – claimed at 10 hours, this works longer then my mobile phone in fact. It is easy enough to find apps and very easy to use. The on-screen keyboard is very good, maybe not for typing a long story but general use it is fine.

The bad side (yes there is one).

I cannot believe how the apple fan boys sat there saying how amazing this thing was and forgot to mention some of the short comings but let me go through some of the points I think is worth mentioning.

Just about every single app that is of any use costs money, there is a lack of “try before you buy” type apps on a lot of the stuff I looked at. I wanted to connect my Bluetooth headsets yet the iPad seems to not find a single device when I activate Bluetooth and this includes 3 desktops, 2 laptops, various mobile phones and headsets. I was hoping to use a bluetooth headset along side skype – seems not.

I managed to find apps that made the screen turn black with no way that I found to kill the app. I tried holding the power button, the home button and combinations of the two – eventually the app stopped working and I could get back to the desktop – does apple not have a hard reset? Am I missing the pinhole that should be there? Not like I can remove the battery right?

I need to mention of course that Streaming sites (aka flash based) are of no use. I tried the Ustream and Justin.TV app and these are ot only for the iPhone but work very badly. My idea of sitting on the couch and watching a stream is not reality just yet.

Should you buy one?

I stated at the start that even when they first come out, I could not think of a use for such a device other than it was “Nice to have”. When I get in from work and after I have had something to eat – I can pop open the iPad, browse a few websites to catch up, run the Engadget program to see what is happening in the world of Tech, catch up on my YouTube Videos and finally look at Facebook. If I had powered up my computer, due to have 2 large screen (dual screen), I could have done all of this in my multi-tabbed browser of course in about the same time.

My advice is that this is a nice toy to have and own, yes you will use it to death in the first week but expect to soon put it to one side once the novelty wears off – much like it did with your smartphone. If this thing had Adove Flash & Air as well as a FREE VNC client – it might well be amazing.

Back in December 2010 GFI ran a competition for 10 people to win a 10 user licence of selected GFI software and they said one of these people would be selected to win an iPad. I entered which was simple enough and to be honest did not expect to win. The email came though and to be honest I almost deleted it thinking it was spam – I must get loads of emails every day telling me I have won this or that.

I was informed anyhow that I had win the 10 user of Vipre Anti Virus but I had been selected out of the ten as the iPad Winner. It took some time for the iPad to arrive as it came from Malta (GFI’s HQ) and it had a UK plug.

Thanks to GFI for a great competition and the rather sexy iPad