Tablet computer

AllThingsD’s review columnist Walt Mossberg has graced us with his Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime review this evening, giving the device a pretty high score. Mossberg, a renowned reviewer, calls the Prime the best Android tablet he has tested. Mossberg compliments the Prime on its fast quad-core Tegra 3 processor and keyboard dock which can be purchased separately.

Just as Joanna Stern from The Verge said, Mossberg isn’t too happy with the software on the Prime. He calls it sluggish and not as complete as the iPad. For his final words, Mossberg says the iPad is still the best tablet out there, but if you’re interested in Android and a physical keyboard this tablet is for you. Be sure to read his full review.

I still believe the iPad 2 is the best overall tablet available. However, if you’re looking for a model using Google’s Android interface and are yearning for a well-designed, easily integrated keyboard solution, or want to play more power-hungry games, the Transformer Prime is a good choice, as long as you can tolerate its software limitations.

The Prime launches in the United States on December 15th. The 32GB model will be available for $499, and the optional keyboard dock will be available for $149. We look forward to getting our hands on this!

ChangeWave Research in a new survey polled 3,043 consumers on consumer tablet demand for the holidays, including a close-up look at demand for the Amazon Kindle Fire vs. the Apple iPad. Overall, tablets are big this holidays as sales in the United States increase an estimated 130 percent.

Everybody wants a tablet, it seems. A total of 14 percent of respondents plan on buying a tablet in the next 90 days, an eight percentage points increase over an August ChangeWave survey and more than triple the level of a year ago. However, nowadays shoppers no longer have to pick between an iPad or an array of same-looking Android tablets because Amazon is now the second most-popular tablet brand (people clearly want an Amazon tablet).

According to ChangeWave:

The Amazon Kindle Fire is going to leapfrog the competition and become the number two product in the tablet market, as long as it can provide a quality user experience. But the Amazon surge may also contain a silver lining for Apple, by damaging the tablet market hopes of the remaining competitors in the field.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents (65 percent) plan on buying an iPad, or two out of three tablet buyers. People are loving their iPads and it shows in satisfaction ratings. A total of 74 percent of all iPad owners are Very Satisfied versus 49 percent for all other tablet manufacturers combined.

More than one in five, or 22 percent, eye an Amazon tablet and just four percent plan on buying a Galaxy Tab from Samsung. Apple’s score is in line with iPad’s IDC-estimated 68 percent share of the tablet market. In addition, Canalys projected Apple will overtake Hewlett-Packard to become the #1 PC maker globally on the heels of iPad 3 release, although not everybody is down with counting iPad as a computer. More tidbits and charts after the break.

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhWVmMYquYY]

The fine folks over at the Touch-Droid forums have posted a guide that outlines exactly how-to port Android to the HP TouchPad. A lot of consumers bought the HP TouchPad duing the fire sale last month, only to realize WebOS isn’t exactly the greatest mobile OS out there. Luckily, fine developers everywhere have been working on a port.

The steps outlined are pretty technical, so this isn’t exactly for the feeble — yet. We expect developers will probably get a much simpler version up soon. But for those of you who are up for the challenge, this should work for now. Check out the instructions over at the forum, and the video above. We’re not sure exactly how stable this build is.
Expand
Expanding
Close