Acer Iconia Tab A500 Tablet
Corey Greenberg
How many times have you heard “It’s the year of the iPad!” lately? Once or twice? A metric ass ton?
Hey, I’ve probably been one of those voices you heard banging that gong like the Toy Story monkey. A metric ass ton of us bought the first iPad a year ago, and then another metric ass ton of non-early adopters just bought the new iPad 2. So it’s fair to say that the last 12 months have not suffered a paucity of iPad news, updates, rumors, sightings, agony, ecstasy, and the occasional blending.
But you know what? iPad fan that I am, there are still little niggling things about the tablet I wish Apple had done differently. It’s a great tablet, but like all Apple products, it’s a combination of a lot of things done so very, very right, and a few key huhwuhs that make even the most die-hard Apple fans curse the company’s name out loud in coffee shops and hookah parlors all across the land.
Flash, of course, is the biggest huhwuh. Huhwuh?! No Flash on the iPad?! Hey, I know it’s fashionable these days to bash Flash because it’s a resource sucker and drains batteries like nobody’s business, but the fact is, Flash is and shall evermore be the kudzu of the Internet, covering it like a thick, implacable blanket. If the iPad can’t/won’t play Flash, that leaves a huge swath of the Web literally off the table.
And why no native USB or SD card ports? Yes, you can buy the $30 plug-in dongles, but why should you have to do this? I bought them and I rarely use them because I can never remember where I put them, and when I find one, it’s invariably the wrong one. I’ve never hated dongles more in my entire life than I do these Apple USB and SD dongles. Fie on thee, dongles! These slots should be right on the side of the tablet.
But Apple has a friend that wants to help it do better: Google. Well, friend may be pushing it. They used to be friends, but now they’re more like frenemies. They hang together, make sure their stuff works with each other’s stuff so the whole world can go on turning, and once in awhile they stop suing each other for trillions and attend each other’s kids’ birthday parties at the Palo Alto Chuck E. Cheese. But make no mistake. When Apple wakes up in the morning and its Buick has “Pimp Wagon” spray painted across the side, Google’s fingerprints are all over it. And when Google goes to pour ketchup on its fries and the top falls off because somebody unscrewed it so that the whole bottle of ketchup pours out and the fries are swimming in it, Apple’s sitting on the other side of the room with its friends and they’re all giggling like idiots.
Google’s Android mobile OS is the dark horse stalking Apple’s iOS, the operating system that runs on all iPads, iPhones, iPod touches, and maybe someday all Macs period. Google has very cleverly wrapped a minimalist OS around its key web apps like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Maps, and Google Voice, and developed an alternative universe to the iPad where everything you like about Google works a whole lot better and more seamlessly.
Android has already, by some metrics, overtaken iOS as the dominant mobile platform for smartphones. And now Google’s gunning for the iPad with a whole slew of new Andoid tablets just now hitting the market to compete head-on with Apple’s wildly popular tablet.
The first Andoid tablets to splash down came from Motorola and Samsung, two names I don’t exactly equate with cutting edge consumer electronics. And sure enough, the Motorola Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy Tab have come in for a lot of criticism in the tech press, for offering too little too late when compared with even the first-generation iPad, much less the recently released iPad 2. Poor battery life, iffy Flash playback, and flaky UI response are just some of the complaints lobbed at these two tablets.
That’s why I was excited to see Acer join the Android camp. Acer’s long been one of my favorite CE brands, particularly for Windows laptops where it’s my go-to recommendation for the best build quality and the biggest bang for the buck. You can always count on Acer to have the latest Intel processors, the latest features, and the latest high-tech materials on the PC laptop side, rivaling Apple’s MacBooks as the best-built laptops on the market.
On paper, the new Acer Iconia Tab A500 looks to be a full cut above the Xoom and Galaxy Tab. The 10.1” multi-touch Iconia packs a dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 250 Cortex A9 1GHz processor, supported by the ultra-low power GeForce graphics and 1GB of RAM for blazing mobile performance. Of course, being an Android tablet It also supports Flash out of the box and comes installed with Adobe Flash 10.1. The Acer also has built-in GPS with various apps to enjoy navigation and location-searches while traveling and driving, and Bluetooth to connect the tablet to a variety of other devices, such as headsets and printers.
The Iconia comes with an 16GB of flash storage for programs and apps, and the platform can support a larger storage capacity of 32GB, which is planned for future models. The Micro-SD card reader supports up to 32GB Micro-SD cards, so you can access and load your own videos, movies and eBooks.
The Acers’s thin aluminum body measures 10.24(w) x 6.97(d) x 0.52(h)-inches and weighs only 1.69 pounds. Like the new iPad 2, the Acer tablet features forward and rear-facing cameras for capturing videos and photos as well as video conferencing. The Iconia’s true-HD 1280x800 TFT WXGA display offers higher resolution than the iPad 2’s 1024x768 display for true HD playback.
Acer plans a whole family of Android devices under the Iconia name, and the Iconia Tab A500 is its first shot across the bow. The A500 comes with built-in WiFi and is available now exclusively at Best Buy at a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $449.99.





Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS5 camera: $215













