Asus working on two tablets to fight the iPad

Tin (Regular user):

Please tell me this isn't a cruel joke....

Douglas (New user):

"What we don't know is that Asus will offer a Windows unit and one running Android."

This sentence confuses me... is don't meant to read do or is it meant to be along the lines of "We don't know if there will be one running Windows and one running Chrome"?

dateman (New user):

If I buy one of these running Windows...then what? where do I load my music, movies, e-books, contacts, mail, and apps from?

Apple isn't selling a piece of hardware, they are flogging a window to content, your content. Microsoft are only just working this out, and Google have a lot of work to do to compete on this content front with Android.

I'm sure these will have better specs and do all things like flash and multi-tasking blah blah blah, but after you get one, then what? The media should be looking at the competitor to iTunes, not the iPad.

Douglas (New user):

Quoting dateman:
If I buy one of these running Windows...then what? where do I load my music, movies, e-books, contacts, mail, and apps from?

Anywhere. Contacts and mail from Gmail, Microsoft Exchange, your ISP, from your current computer. Apps from the internet or an external optical drive. And of course, eBooks, movies and music from almost anywhere that sells them.

Quoting dateman:
Apple isn't selling a piece of hardware, they are flogging a window to content, your content. Microsoft are only just working this out, and Google have a lot of work to do to compete on this content front with Android.

Android currently syncs with Google services. As an avid user of Gmail, I would be more than happy to have every sync up with it. Apple want you to pay some ridiculous sum of money for a year subscription to MobileMe. Gmail is free.

Windows will sync up with almost anything. Again, if you're in a business that has it, there's Exchange. And Google, of course.

Quoting dateman:
I'm sure these will have better specs and do all things like flash and multi-tasking blah blah blah, but after you get one, then what?

You get a real computer that can do pretty much everything a laptop or a desktop can in the case of Windows.

Quoting dateman:
The media should be looking at the competitor to iTunes, not the iPad.

Enlighten us, please, as to what this competitor is.

dateman (New user):

Ahhh yes but you completely missed my point...There is no competitor to iTunes yet everybody focuses on the iPad specs.

Your examples are valid, but prove my point that I dont want to hunt around half a dozen apps to manage my content. With Apple they have stealthly deployed the home server concept with iTunes and I will plug it in and sync everything through a single interface.

The point I'm trying to make is that just having a piece of hardware that is better spec'd doesn't carry much weight with me these days, I want a simple way to manage and access my content. If others want to really compete against the iPad then they need an iTunes clone, not an iPad clone...

Tin (Regular user):

Quoting dateman:
If I buy one of these running Windows...then what? where do I load my music, movies, e-books, contacts, mail, and apps from?


Wherever you want. Since it's not an iProduct, you aren't stuck with iTunes.


Quoting dateman:
Apple isn't selling a piece of hardware, they are flogging a window to content


Good for them. Of course there's nothing stopping a non-neutered device from having content on it too. Especially if it runs Windows and therefore can have iTunes directly on it.


Quoting dateman:
Google have a lot of work to do to compete on this content front with Android.


Why is it then, that Android handsets are shooting up in sales? They have had bugger all advertising compared to Apple's thing, yet analysts are expecting them to outsell iPhones by 2012.


Quoting dateman:
I'm sure these will have better specs and do all things like flash and multi-tasking blah blah blah, but after you get one, then what?


Gee, I don't know... Maybe start using it to get on the net, run apps that actually have a purpose... And even run apps that wouldn't please the "iStore gods".


Quoting dateman:
The media should be looking at the competitor to iTunes, not the iPad.


Oh no... Please don't let that happen. If I wanted crap software on my computer/devices, I'd install iTunes and buy an iPod/iPhone.

Laraine (New user):

It had better be better than the Asus laptop my sister had then. By the time they'd finished fixing it under guarantee there was just about nothing left of it but the case. And it STILL kept giving trouble!

Tin (Regular user):

Really? Doesn't sound like any Asus stuff I've ever had. What model was it?

Laraine (New user):

Sorry, tin, but I don't know. She got it around Septembe/October 2006 and it's long gone so I can't check. But I do know she didn't pay enough for it to have been a decent computer.