In some ways I'm like frahse, in the past I always bought PC Tech one step behind bleeding edge to increase it's useful life expectancy. The computer I'm typing this on is mostly 10 years old, I say mostly because it's died and been resurrected with an infusion of castaway parts. Since it's finally nearing the end of it's useful life, I've been looking into the current state of PC's, Laptops and Tablets to catch up and get a feel for the lay of the land as it were. Since there are no parts in my PC that will carry over to a new one that I might possibly build, I took a step back and asked myself "What do I want my PC to do for me?" and "Could my needs be served by something else?"
The defining question turned out to be "What can't my current PC do that I want it to do?". The answer was play games and watch HD/Full HD videos. Even as it is now, it has the processing power to run Open Office for productivity work for another 20 years, baring fatal hardware failure. A PS3 & PSP took care of the gaming bit. So what I needed is a media device, something that combined an e-reader, music and video player. At first I looked at e-readers+ as I call them, the color e-readers that also did music and video, but they were often very limited in their scope of supported file formats and had very low screen resolution nearly all with no way to output that video. That's when I began looking at Android based tablets. I'm getting older and despite the crispness of some of the small screens they are simply too much of a strain on my eyes, so I've focused on those in the 10" range which are roughly the dimensions of a standard sheet of paper [US 8 1/2"x11"].
As someone else mentioned the Android landscape is fragmented and it quickly became clear that finding what I wanted was going to take a significant amount of searching. After a few days I had it mostly sorted out, settling on either a Creative Labs ZiiO or the Archos 101 [what I later learned is dubbed the G8 here]. Both seemed to cover everything I needed, but neither had direct access to the Android Marketplace (AM). A fairly large minus in my book as they weren't "google approved", but in searching I saw that Archos had announced their new G9 tablets would have AM. A point in Archos's favor.
Now for the actual G9 Stuff.
Looking at the sated stats for the G9 it was an even better fit to my needs, barring that Subtitle format bit I mentioned in the other thread. Being Android powered it can use Kimble/Nook or any number of other e-readers, supported FLAC audio [99% of my music is in FLAC format now] and could even play H.264+FLAC MKVs @ 1080p, meaning I don't have to convert any of my videos [all 1.8TB worth] for playback. It's portable, has an option for G3 and insanely nice battery life. Oh and I would love to give special mention the 3G adapter. The G9 info page lists it as costing 49 euros which at current exchange rates puts it @ around $70US. Which is on par with the cost of a USB 3G adapter from Virgin Mobile [$70 @ Walmart] and less then Verizon or AT&T [both $100 @ Walmart]. Not that I would ever use 3G as the data plans are too small [500MB/month for $50]. I average 70 - 100GB of bandwidth a month, I watch a lot of Netflix and rent HD movies from Sony [@5-6GB each].
As for the Ram, I'm with many others and won't get the tablet if it has less then 1Gb, I'm a heavy multitasker. For example, on my PC right now I have 2 web browsers open [Firefox and Chrome] with 11/15 tabs open each, plus 2 Open Office documents, 1 Word Pad document and a PDF while I have a video encoder and Bit Torrent open in the background. This is common for me. My poor single core processor is begging me to let it die.
Someone mentioned that they were surprised at the speed with which multi-core tablets became available. Given the state of the PC industry at large, I'm not. I am a little surprised that quad cores are here this quickly though [with a 12 core!!!! GPU], didn't expect them for another year or so.
The Tablet landscape is changing very quickly, reminds me of the early 3D GPU days with their 6 month life cycle.
edit: Just received an e-mail from Creative Labs, it seems that the ZiiO supports MKV but not Subtitles!!! What the Heck! Having multiple sound and sub tracks is kinda the point of using MKV over say MP4. >_<
