subject: The cheapest laptop or tablet PC- Which one do you like better? [print this page] The cheapest laptop or tablet PC- Which one do you like better?
A lot of people may hear that there will be the cheapest laptop will come to the market. Just as reported, Kapil Sibal, the HRD minister of India, on Thursday unveiled the cheapest laptop with a price tag of just Rs 1,500 ($35) only, which is expected to be available in the market by the year 2011. The device has combined features of I-Pad andtablet PC and can be charged by a solar panel (The cost of the solar panel has not been included in the price tag). The laptop, which has all basic features, is designed by experts of IIT, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
Sibal said the Linux based computing device was expected to be introduced to higher education institutions from 2011 but the aim was to drop the price further to $20 and ultimately to $10.
The laptop can be availed by the public, but is intended for the school children and college students, informed Sibal.
The laptop does not have any hard-drive. It supports internet browsing, video-web conferencing facility. The low-cost laptop also possesses several latest features like multimedia content viewer (pdf, docx, ods, adp, xls, jpeg, gif,png, bmp, odt, zip, AVCHD, AVI, AC3), Pdf reader, unzip tool, Open Office, SciLab for printing support, media player, USB port etc.
While the cheapest tablet PC, which I have found at the price of $85 with free shipping to all over the world. I have bought a 7" Notebook WiFi Apad Google Android 1.6 MID Tablet PC from PickEgg, one of the biggest online stores. I have used it for about a week till now. It is quite thin and light. It comes with a protective case, USB cable and USB mini-to female connector. The latter is very useful to mount USB drives. Be warned the tablet mounts it as the 'scsi' drive. The battery life is quite decent (capacity is 3600mAh).
It has only 256 MB memory and the available memory is usually vey small. So you need to kill the backgroud apps from time to time.
It plays Angry Birds (with some font problems) and other 3D games quite well. It looks like there is a support for 2D and 3D acceleration. However, the Quadrant Benchmark marks around 300. Compare it with Galaxy Tab around 900 and Viewsonic Tablet around 1800.
The screen response is OK if you know how to deal with a resistive screen. You should not use your finger, but the tip of your finger nail or the stylus provided.
No problem with any book readers. Actually can be a decent book reader considering the size and weight. No Google Market as it has any Phone support. Not a big deal as I was able to install apps/games from various web sites.
Overall a decent tablet, very compact and light and performs well within the price range.
So, after the comparison, which one will you choose the laptop or the tablet PC? Personally speaking, I think the tablet Pc with such a price is as affordable as possible.
