The progress of tablets is fantastic. The future vision of how we would use technology seems to be approaching sooner rather than later. I remember as a teenager watching Jean Luc Picard on the Enterprise thinking that seems so foreign. Now it is a part of daily life.  Tablets are doing more than even Captain Picard could have guessed. The hottest of the tablets are the Motorola XOOM and Apples iPad 2. I did a little comparison for my company to evaluate which we would want to purchase and have decided that the XOOM is the clear winner.

Here are the reasons why:

Flash: If you have ever read my blog then you know I am very much into Flash and have been since the early days. The interesting thing is that nearly have of the web is into it also. Over 40% of all websites have  Flash content. The iPad cannot view any of these sites. This is an issue when http://www.FranklinCovey.com, http://www.FranklinCoveySpeakersBureau.com, http://www.theleaderinme.org, and several other FranlinCovey web properties are built in Adobe Flash.

Free Apps: Yes the App Store has more total Apps than the Android Market Place yet the number of free apps for Android is nearly double. You can’t beat free. Native apps for the Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS is very limited right now but most of the apps I tested work just as well on Android phones as well as on the XOOM. (SlideIt Keyboard was one exception)

Widgets: I love having my email, calendar, news feeds and many other important pieces of information available without having to click an icon and wait for an app to load. This seems so intuitive to me that I don’t doubt that the iPad will have it in one of the future releases.

Voice Commands: Typing, browsing, opening apps, listening to music and navigating can all happen at the sound of my voice. Being able to say, “Navigate to FranklinCovey” and then having the largest GPS unit imaginable is pretty cool. There are many other Google Voice Actions.

Tabbed Browsing: This is a great feature. It may seem simple to some but being able to see the tabs that I have open and go back and forth is a lot less hassle than the ipad (non-multitasking) method that takes me to a separate screen then having to choose which window I want to manage. The browser acts like the browser on my computer. Did I mention the browser has Flash.

Google Integration: Google maps, Google Docs, Gmail, Google Chat, Google Search, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Google Navigation, Google Sky Maps, Google Body, Google Goggles, Google Books, Google everything. I love the way it all integrates together to make my life simple.

Expandable Memory: iPad makes you pay $829 for the 64 GB device with 3G whereas for the Motorola XOOM you pay $599 for the 32 GB device and buy a SanDisk 32GB MicroSDHC Card for $70. Note – The expansion slot is not accessible as of the date of this post. This will be coming within 2 weeks I am assured from Verizon. Price: See above.  64 GB Xoom for $670, 64 GB iPad 2 for $829

Website Load Times: Considerably faster on the XOOM than the iPadfrom my testing and from 6 secs vs. 9 secs load times as tested here.

Internet Speeds: Again the trophy goes to the XOOM. Although Verizon carries both devices the iPad 2 is not capable of 4G speeds. The XOOM will have 4G within a month according to the Verizon reps that I spoke with.

True Multitasking: Enough said.

and…. a

Barometer for when I need to check the weather or altitude. 🙂

In summary, even if I were on the Enterprise I would probably still pick the Motorola XOOM with the Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system.Below is a direct comparison chart.

As always – Happy Flashing
Curtis J. Morley