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Thursday, March 10, 2011

WooHoo iPad 2

No I didn't buy an iPad2, but I did check to see what had happened to the price of the iPad, um, 1 I guess, here in Singapore. I was foolishly thinking hey, outdated product, must be discounted cheap whatever.

Nup. I definitely need 3G as I travel into uncharted territories in the heart of darkest Sukhomvit Rd in Bangkok, WiFi is not always available - you can't spend your entire life in a Starbucks... because the coffee is shite - yup, I need the 3G option.

$640 for WiFi 32GB - $839 for the WiFi-3G. $199 for the 3G option. That is over 30% of the iPad's price! WTF!

All that other allegedly life-transforming functionality costs so much, but you ask to get it do something that your $10 phone (even the iPhone) does with no qualms, and it adds SGD$199 to the price! Toefucker! Yet again E@L refuses to be tempted! Unless the price drops even more.

The sales guy in his shop in HarbourFront, accepted this incongruity philosophically. He whispers to me, "You know what advice I give to people when they realize this? I say..." - he leans in even closer - "... 'don't buy it'."

Good advice!

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I completely unrelated news the reviews are in!

IT'S THINNER!



IT'S THINNER! And it comes in WHITE!

Aaaaaaaaaand, wait for it...

IT'S THINNER!

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My favorite review from the link above is:

Rich Jarovslosky, Bloomberg Businessweek: The iPad wasn't slow before. Now it's faster. It wasn't bulky before. Now it's thinner. It wasn't heavy before. Now it's lighter. That, plus a couple of new cameras, sums up the difference between Apple Inc.'s first tablet and the iPad 2, which goes on sale in the U.S. tomorrow. Taken together, the changes are unremarkable. What's remarkable is that Apple didn't really need to do more to maintain its position as the class of the field. Here's something even more remarkable: The iPad is the value-price leader in the market. Trust me, it isn't often you can say that about an Apple product.


And it seems the cameras are just as crap as the iPhone/iTouch cameras. It's not about pixel-MBs it's about crap. And they're crap.

Joshua Topolsky, Engadget: Let's just put this out there: the iPad 2 cameras are really pretty bad. They're not unusable, but it's clear that the sensors employed are not top shelf by any measure. If you have a fourth generation iPod touch with cameras, you can expect the same results. In fact, it seems to us that these are the SAME cameras used in the iPod touch -- there's an "HD" lens around back (which means it's roughly a single megapixel shooter), and on the front you've got a lowly VGA cam. Neither one of these produces remotely satisfying results for still shots, and in particular (when compared with something like the Xoom), the back camera just seems utterly second rate.


NO Sale!

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Should I buy a MacAir instead?

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Plus the upgrade of WordsWithFriends seems to work OK now on my Samsung Galaxy (Android).

E@L

3 comments:

Cherann said...

Stick with Samsung. Their newest Galaxy S II is supposedly better than the iPhone 5! But you have to wait for it!

expat@large said...

Thanks Cherann, I am just about due for a renewal of my phone contract at work, so I'll check if that beast is available yet.

The current GalaxyS (V1) is running OK, partic now that WWF is working properly and not jamming the system. Slow, but properly.

expat@large said...

One problem while I think of it. The Kies program you get with the Samsung has an Apps tool that doesn't support the Galaxy. Not sure if it is a Singapore provider thing, or a Samsung thing.

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