crazyscot

I got an iphone 3gs when they were recent, and that is what persuaded me that when I wanted a tablet, it would be Android. I am heartily sick of itunes, and find it much more convenient to plug the tablet into any computer that has a document or media file that I want, and drag and drop it into tablet memory. It is sometimes more convenient to load stuff I want to use onto a micro SD card and plug that in instead. Neither of these actions is possible with an i-anything. You can sync with itunes on one computer, and if you have to change computers itunes will erase all your content and start again.

I think it is worth choosing a tablet with a sd or micro sd card slot. Then you can carry a spare card with different things on it if you want.

Unlike ios, android has an actual file manager so it is possible to make use of extra storage. Google maps remains much better than apple maps, by all reports.

The tablet I use is a wifi Motorola Xoom. For 3g access for that, or anything else I happen to want to use, I have an unlocked Mifi which I bought from Amazon. Periodically I buy a new sim preloaded with 3GB of data transfer valid for 3 months. That is how I stayed in touch from hospital.

I did need to download a third party app to make the particular imap email flavour that Numenor uses work, but that cannot be said to have been onerous.

I use the tablet for playing media (with bluetooth earphones), reading books, web access, email, wordprocessing (with a small bluetooth keyboard), spreadsheets, and now I am evaluating the free version of a circuit simulator. I will probably invest the slightly over £10 for the full version. Sometimes it is handy to have a pdf data sheet on the tablet while I am working on the cad on another machine, so I can keep all the screen space for cad. The aspect ratio is more useful than what the ipad uses.