Friday 8 October 2010

An iPad Killer From Down Under?

We are in the process of finalizing an order for a product that is just in the process of being released to the general public.

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Yes, that is an iPad sized tablet running Windows 7. After a colleague dropped an iPad off at our shop for us to use for a week or so earlier this year we were not too impressed with the machine. The iPad has its purpose but that purpose did not suite us here.

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The Tegatech TEGA v2 Touch Tablet was introduced to us by fellow MVP Wayne Small (his article on the TEGA v2).

With a Windows 7 operating system installed the TEGA v2 will do everything we need it to do _natively_ without any additional apps beyond Office 2010.

Running an Intel Atom N455 1.66GHz CPU with a 64GB SSD the TEGA v2 will run circles around some of the older Toshiba Tecra laptops with Pentium M series CPUs that we still use as shop systems. It should also run on par with the Intel Atom based netbooks that we use in our business that have had their spindle based drives replaced with Intel X25-M SSDs.

So, with the TEGA v2 coming with an SSD out of the box that is large enough to host the OS, Office 2010, and a few additional applications and utilities we will have ourselves a very portable and very usable little machine.

Time is Money

BTW, when it comes to deciding on the use of any new technologies we always weigh in on what it will cost us in time to figure the new tech out. With the iPad, there is a bit of a learning curve involved for those that are not part of the “iN” crowd.

That is one of the reasons that we are looking at the TEGA v2. There is no learning curve involved since we already know how to use Windows and Windows based devices.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm not an Apple fan, but that comparison table is a bit bad done. The iPad does in fact have a GPU, and is more powerful than the one found on an atom for sure, and this is not the only place with something odd.

Also there is a big point missing, battery life. And the fact that Windows 7 is not meant for touch use can be very frustating. Have you seen the latest video of HP's tablet? The guy in the video struggles with things so basic as closing an application...

I like competition, it benefits all of us, but the current state of Windows 7 touch solutions is a bad joke.

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

I have not seen HP's tablet.

We have however worked extensively with HP's TouchSmart PCs running both Vista and Windows 7 and really enjoy the touch implementation there.

I had my own frustrations with the iPad and its touch abilities as well. It remains to be seen if the TEGA v2 will require some adjustments on my part to use it.

Philip