Tag Communications

While talking with a colleague here at TAG about the perils of tablet/e-reader gift choices, it occurred to me that we’ve been through another year where ‘everything changes’. Products are coming at us so fast we no longer have the will to keep up…let alone the time. Take the 7” tablets that are all the talk this holiday:  it’s just easier to keep track of what each one won’t do – because most of them do all of the same stuff with differing amounts of ease, speed and success. Being a little more engaged than some (full disclosure: I wouldn’t mind having one), I thought it was worth weighing in on the deal-breakers as they apply to me:

Nook Tablet – Can’t charge it without its proprietary charging cable – which is a bear if you misplace it (with me, that’s a given). Buy a spare, or keep it at the house and charged up.

Kindle Fire – Can’t turn the volume up and down without pausing the audio/video content you’re watching or listening to. No hardware volume button = surefire way to tick me off.

HTC Flyer – A little hard to find now. The price was cut to $299 and Best Buy pretty much sold out of them. Other than that, it’s got an older processor, doesn’t run the newest tablet version of Android, and has a cool stylus that you have to pay extra for. Still, it’s superior to either the Nook or the Kindle.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 – Pricey.  However, you get what you pay for. Dual-core processor, latest Android operating system, fast & light.

Acer Iconia Tab A100 – the proprietary charging cable thing again, the battery dies faster and the screen isn’t as good.

The thing to remember is that all of these devices (and several others I didn’t mention) stream movies & music, allow you to read books and magazines and are generally cool. It’s just the smaller differences that can be a big deal to you – so look around.

If you’ve already got yours…tell me about it in the comments. It’s probably as close as I’ll get to one!