Although the iPad from Apple is the most popular tablet PC today, another set of tablet PCs from China and India is increasing in popularity. These devices are referred to an aPads, ePads and gPads. Do not mind the names – they are all virtually the same.
I bought an aPad a few months ago from eBay. There were both positive and negative reviews about it but I wanted to see it for myself. One thing I learnt is that experience is the best teacher, so I took the risk.
I am glad that I took the risk. I was very impressed by the look and feel of the device.
When I showed the unit to my friends, they fell in love with it. The awareness is growing by the day and a good number of individuals are accepting the aPad as a Tablet PC of choice.
Here are some of the striking features of the aPads.
Performance: The aPads can compete with the PC netbooks when it comes to performance. The aPad I purchased has a Telechip TCC8902 ARM 11 processor running at 720 Mhz with 256MB DDR2 RAM running Google Android 2.1. Tapping, screen rotation, watching movies are activities you can do without any problems.
Internet Capability: All aPad clones have WiFi Capability. The Android OS comes with a browser that works well online. This is one of the most important features of the unit. Users can access their email account and download applications from the Android Marketplace from any hotspot, can watch movies on YouTube or listen to online Radio. Some aPads even support 3G technology which will be a delight for lots of people to browse the web on demand.
Portability: One major feature of the aPads is its portability. Users can purchase either a 7″, 8″ or a 10″ widescreen aPad. Most users prefer 7″ units – I watch movies on my aPad and the experience is awesome.
Support for Memory Expansion: aPads support SD and mirco SD cards of up to 32 GBs in most cases. This means you can download ebooks, movies and archive them when required. No need to delete items to conserve space. Some aPads come with USB OTG support which allows you to connect the aPad to an external hard drive or a keyboard. This is sweet.
Access to Tons of Applications: Support for applications was a major worry for users in the past, but it is now no more the case. There are tons of free applications available on the Android Marketplace. With Android OS 2.1, you can download games, applications, office tools and other cool apps once you are online. If you cannot access the Android Marketplace, there are lots of sites that allow you to download “*.APK” files to your computer which can be copied to the device
Entertainment and Multimedia: With the aPad, you can watch MP4, AVI and even HD movies. You can listen to WAV and MP3 songs on the go. Some models come with a WebCam that will enable you take pictures and record video with the free camcorder software. jojoy