[Tech]iShenanigans

I was going to do a music post, but then I realized that something else was much more important.

Okay, actually it isn't important at all, but it's newer while the music can wait a bit, and I like being on top of news sometimes.

Anyways, Apple released the newest of overpriced shenanigans yesterday, naming it the iPad.

Period jokes aside, I'll take a quick look at the more technical parts and see if it's worthwhile, as well as it's shortcomings.

Problem 1: I think this is the biggest problem of the apple product, and that is NO FLASH SUPPORT. If you make something that is basically an ultra-portable laptop, you're really gimping your experience without being able to play your social networking games on facebook, or scrabble or whatever. I assume that this means it also won't have Java, or at least a very limited amount. For what it's supposed to do, I think this is gimped, especially if you consider that this isn't because flash is hard to implement, but because Apple wants to sell you deliciously cheesy apps for 99 cents. In other-words, it's just to drain money.

Problem 2: It's a large iPhone. It works pretty much exactly like an iPhone, except much more expensive if you want the 3G coverage. Also it becomes much more unwieldy. How are you going to put it in your pocket? Does anyone actually have 9.7 inch pockets? Is Apple going to design apple-designer clothing with pockets specifically built for the iPad? I wouldn't put it past them considering they're practically the new church of Scientology, but short of another way to make money I think it's unnecessarily unwieldy.

Problem 3: Lack of keyboard. When you make a larger screen for internet browsing, you start wanting a keyboard for you know, blogging and such. While Apple does sell a keyboard add-on, why not just buy a laptop instead? It's just like the Wii; you have to buy 7 different peripherals just to play a game. Hidden costs sucks. For a ps3 or 360, all you have to do is buy the game except for DDR and Guitar Hero and you're good to go.

Problem 4: Price. The pricing for this is just ridiculous. It STARTS at $400. Sure it's light, from all reports pretty smooth, has wifi/3G access, and has a 1ghz processor, but should that really cost $500 for an ENTRY level? just for kicks, I will compare it to something else that does exactly the same thing. A netbook.

I will compare the current cheapest netbook on newegg, the MSI Intel Atom 270 vs the latest and greatest of shiny things, the iPad. I'm even going to compare the MSI to ALL iPad, meaning that the best specs of the iPad at ANY level verses the MSI at it's specs.

COST:
MSI - $279 free shipping
iPad - $499 introductory price (I assume free shipping as well)

Pretty simple here. MSI is cheaper all round.

Screen Size:
MSI- 10''
iPad - 9.7''

MSI wins, but the iPad has better resolution from what I hear (1024x768). I'm not too surprised, as this is the cheapest thing out there. If I added another $100 the netbook shopping I could find a better one. And it would be still cheaper.

Weight:
MSI- 2.7 lbs
iPad - 1.5 lbs
A difference, but 2.7 pounds is still incredibly light. Grow stronger if you cant transport it.

Processor:
MSI - 1.60 GhZ
iPAd- 1GhZ
I'd actually expect that the iPad would be faster, but I guess not.

Ram:
MSI - 1GB
iPad - 256? 512?
I'm unsure of what iPads RAM is, but I've heard anywhere from 256-512 so I'm putting those numbers down. Apples site has nothing about it. If anyone knows more let me know.

Hard drive:
MSI - 160GB sata
iPad - 16-64Gb flash
MSI's sata drive holds more and lasts longer. Flash memory cannot overwrite itself as many times without crashing. However, it is much faster and since there are no moving components takes up less space, hence smaller and lighter.

Battery Life:
MSI- "not amazing but good"
iPad - 10 hours
For some reason I can't find MSI's battery life. It is only a 3 cel-lithium battery, but I'm not too surprised about it as they were cutting costs. I'm guessing 5ish hours, give or take.

Wifi:
MSI- Wlan
iPad - Wi-fi and/OR 3g network (3g costs like $150 more)
MSI apparently has some problems with getting decent wi-fi, but it would probably work in buildings so it isn't horrible. iPad's wifi stuff is probably more reliable, but again it's at least twice the cost.

Camera:
MSI - yes - 1.3 megapixels
iPad - no?
I'm pretty sure iPad doesn't have one. Someone let me know if it does.

Sound:
MSI - sound blaster speakers + headphone jack
iPad - essentially the same thing

No big difference there.

OS:
MSI - XP home
iPad - whatever they use

XP home isn't the best, but it's okay. Newer models have windows 7 on them, but cost more. And yes, I have had no problems with windows 7.

I think that's it for comparisons. In other words, you're paying another $250ish + for a gimmick and a pound less wight.

And if you REALLY want a cheap netbook with OsX, get a Dell mini 9 and follow this handy dandy guide to get OsX on your netbook.


That's it for now. I will do a music blog soon as I have it kinda set up, but I want to wait a bit before posting it. Also I'm lazy enough to not bother with writing it yet.

Some other articles about the iPad from gizmoto:
Ipad is Gadget we never knew we needed
iPad just tried to assassinate the computer
8 things that suck about the iPad

Till later then!