Wooo, iPad 2 launch I hear (from the US at least). When the original iPad was released, I became rather (in)famous for bashing the hell out of it. I thought it was overpriced, heavy, and lacked a lot of features that make it a viable alternative to something like a netbook. Now that the second one has been launched, the original iPad now makes perfect sense to me. 

The trouble with the state of the iPad at the original launch, for me, stemmed from two things: 1) Lack of multitasking was a disaster, and 2) It was priced out of the netbook alternative range. Recently, multitasking has been brought to the iPad with various releases of iOS 4.x, and even more recently prices of the original iPad have dropped. Prices of the iPad 2 have not changed (starting at around £430 for the basic, non-3G version), but Apple has dropped prices of the original iPad (which is still on sale) by about £100. Essentially, this means that the original, 16GB wifi-only iPad’s price has dropped right into my netbook budget. 

I’d been looking at various Dell and Sony netbooks to use as a sort of ‘side bitch’ to my main setup, and all of these start at around £350. So you can see what my dilemma is; a netbook for £350 that runs full Windows 7 (albeit, the Starter edition), or for £20 less an iPad that runs iOS 4.3? Before any of the fanboys play the ‘it has better graphics and two cameras’ card, I won’t be using my iPad/netbook for any serious gaming or for video chatting/photography. While I’m on the subject, I think having a camera on the back of a tablet is stupid; but that’s a different blog post. The iPad’s email application looks outstanding, and for casual on-the-go web browsing and multimedia, it’s perfect. I only plan to use my netbook/iPad for writing documents (Pages for iPad supports .docx, a huge win in my books), emailing, web browsing, and video/music playing. 

The main attraction of the original iPad though is its new price. A 16GB wifi-only model is perfect for my needs (I won’t need 3G as my phone has hotspot functionality); it’s also about £30 cheaper than the netbook I’m looking at. I’ll need some time to decide, and I’m going to wait for a friend of mine to pick up an iPad 2 before making any final decision. 

Sidebar: If y’all think think these are the justifications of a fanboy, I wrote this post on a computer running Windows 7 and I have an HTC Android phone sitting on my desk. 

Yeah, shock horror skid slide smoke. Everyone is constantly telling me how amazing their Android phone is after root. It’s not that I can’t see the advantages; I could probably think of more to do with a rooted Android device than most people, but the reasons behind why I won’t root stem from which side of the argument I take. Before I go on, I use an HTC Android phone and probably always will, because I don’t like stock Android. At this point you’re probably ready to quit reading because I come across as a complete idiot, but hear me out on this one. There are two reasons why I use Android over other platforms: i) You can customise the hell out of Android, and ii) Deep integration and synchronisation of services. The latter is the main reason, and HTC’s Sense actually takes this to another level with even deeper social integration within Android. I love that my Android phone is constantly tied to my Google account, so if I create an appointment on my Google Calendar at my desktop, it appears in my phone’s calendar instantly, and vice versa. Synchronisation is at the core of Android’s appeal for me, and in my opinion is light years ahead of iOS and Blackberry in this department. 

This brings me on to the main point about why I won’t root. The image above is misleading in my opinion; it insinuates the view that many have toward rooting Android, which is that their device will be set free. The point I’m making is that non-rooted Android, for me, is already an incredibly open and free platform. I don’t need any hacks to make my HTC’s experience any better, far from it. You all know about the consequences of rooting an Android device, and also the consequences if it all goes wrong. For me, that’s a big risk that won’t really be worth it in the end. Sure, many people will disagree, but for how I use my phone, rooting is totally unnecessary. 

Somewhat ironically, I’ve jailbroken my iPod Touch, but this is a perfect illustration of what will happen if I were to root my Android phone: I hardly ever take advantage of the potential that a jailbreak gives me, so I won’t do the same with Android.