Budget Android tablets are a false economy

Monday, August 1st, 2011

Temptation must be a terrible thing when you’re the boss of a small technology company. Caught on the hop by Apple as it reinvents and reinvigorates a previously stagnant tablet market, the lure of the quick buck must be hard to resist.

I’m not sure any company can beat Apple’s marketing nous, build quality or lawyers, though, so any smaller firm wishing to make inroads has to approach the market from a different angle – by undercutting the fruit-themed firm and heading down the rutted and well-trodden value route.

That brings us to the bottom of today’s burgeoning tablet market. Far away from the Dell Streak, HP TouchPad and BlackBerry Playbook, you’ll find a multitude of familiar – and surprising – names trying to make ground with a constant stream of cheap, nasty and generic tablets.

It’s a counter-productive strategy that’s harmful for all involved, from company to consumer. (more…)

MSI netbook gets second Wind…

Friday, July 11th, 2008

You may have read our review of the MSI Wind earlier in the week. If you didn’t, here’s the deal: we liked it. A lot.

So we were even more pleased to discover that the very same laptop was going to be available from PC World for signicantly less cash – £32 to be precise at £238 exc VAT. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, we reckon.

Aside from the slightly different colour scheme – the Advent 4211 Netbook has a black lid where our MSI review sample was all decked out in white – it’s an identical piece of kit. A decent 10in, 1,024 x 600 resolution wide screen is complemented by one of the most usable keyboards we’ve yet seen in a netbook – and the trackpad’s not bad either.

Inside is an 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor and this is backed up by 1GB of RAM and an 80GB hard disk and around the edges is a decent array of ports and expansion slots. With this specification, the 4211’s XP installation will run at a fair old lick.

The battery is, unfortunately, also the same – with a minimal capacity of 2,200mAh promising similar, underwhelming battery life.

Still, we gave the MSI Wind U100 five stars in our original review, and the lower price means this version looks even better value for that rating. Look out for a full review very soon…