I love the Ipads but for what I am after quite frankly I think they are over kill, I want something to read my nice glossy magazines such as Singletrack, display my portfolio which will set up in PDF’s and JPEGS and check my emails, I’ve got a laptop for everything else, so what would you recommend?

My thoughts are:

Go cheap, a generic tablet should do all of this, but will it be slow and clunky and not as crisp?

Wait for the Kindle Fire, sounds perfect for the job, but when are we going to get it in the UK?

Order a Kindle Fire from a US friend, but will it work ok over here and are English magazines available to read on it, mainly titles like Dirt and Singletrack.

Go for an IPAD.

In the Singletrack tradition I’ll recommend what I bought, a HTC Flyer. 7″ is a great size as I like being able to hold it in one hand (other hand free for any screen touch commands). I guess 8″ might be manageable too. I paid £288 here. I considered the Archos 7″ tablet as a lower cost alternative.

Advent Vega?
£200 at PcWorld/Dixons/Comet. Missis wants iPad but I want to wait for the 3 (I have a mk1 version). Vega out of the box is a bit crippled but can be easily upgraded to Honeycomb/Vegacomb to restore more functionality. In an ideal world if you haven’t already got a tablet it is probably worth paying the extra for the iPad IMHO.

worth paying the extra for the ipad? why not pay less for the sony tablet and get something prettier, more comfortable to hold and where the manufacturer does not try to tell you what software you are allowed to use…

Yep, worth it as looks are subjective. What is objectively better about the iPad is the far wider range of software and hardware designed for it. For me the supposed restrictions of the iPad just aren’t an issue. I cant think of a single thing the lack of flash hampers and I’m not interested in tinkering. Tablets for me are convinience computing, I just want to switch it on and use it, not mess about with flashing ROMs and the like just so I can rearrange some icons.*

*Yes, I have just bought a Vega and put Vegacomb on it……but it’s half the price of the Sony which is the same price as the ipad2.

Hold your fire – high resolution tablets due early next year, will make reading much more pleasant:

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/43409/samsung-hi-res-tablet-apple-february

you need a big screen for pdfs IMO, so go for the bottom of the range iPad or an older 2nd hand one off ebay?

worth paying the extra for the ipad? why not pay less for the sony tablet and get something prettier, more comfortable to hold and where the manufacturer does not try to tell you what software you are allowed to use…

Bwaaaahahahahaha! Sony are one of the very worst for using proprietary software, connections, storage…
They were, after all the company that put out a music cd with a rootkit virus deliberately hidden in it.
And who insist on having their own, non-standard memory card format. And who have proprietary connectors that change from model to model.
And Sony had their own format on Minidisc, ATRAC, that forbade you from doing more than one copy of any disc you recorded.
Apple don’t use a proprietary music format, AAC/AAC+ will play on Nokia, Sony and other makes.

i was going to get the sony but i read about that Ford design charger ( think its same as they use in there phones ) and was put right off.

Ok when new but soon get sloppy and loose which in turns causes charging to be a pain.

in the end i gave in and chose the ipad 2…

Kobo have a new stripped down Kindle Fire type ereader/tablet!

Blackberry Playbook sare going cheap at the moment as well!

Kindle Fire release…

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2071007/Cheaper-Amazon-Kindle-Fire-hit-UK-January-Christmas-hold-iPad.html

I know bugger all about them, from reading that does it mean you can not just surf the net using wifi?

the fire is also a 7″ device though. For personal reading that’s probably ok, but if you were using it to share content (you mention your portfolio) then you might find it a little restrictive. I find this picture very telling (not saying an Ipad is the right thing, just suggesting the fire may not be)

PDFs are a pain to read on something of 7inch size.

I use a Sony PRS 505 and read PDFs in landscape – half a page at a time. On top of that I crop their massive margins off before uploading otherwise there is loads of redundant white space.

So I would look for something bigger.

However the IPad has a glossy screen and short battery life, making it more compromised for reading PDFs than my Sony.