You may not have heard of ViewSonic before, but the company’s tablets look appealing enough not to ignore.
Consumers looking to buy into the tablet dream are going to be spoiled for choice as we enter the holiday season. The iPad may currently have the market pretty much to itself but that isn’t going to be the case for much longer.
It’s not only the big tech manufacturers that are busy developing tablet devices designed to compete with the Apple iPad, currently head and shoulders above everyone else’s offerings both in terms of sales and usability. Some smaller companies (relatively speaking) are getting in on the act as well.
The ViewPad 7 was the first to be unveiled. This is a 7-inch touchscreen tablet running Android 2.2 (froyo), with Wi-Fi, 3G, USB ports, front and rearr-facing cameras, up to 32GB of storage, and the ability to make or receive calls and send or receive text messages. So basically the Samsung Galaxy Tab with a phone attached. The ViewPad 7 is expected to be priced at around $500.
ViewSonic is following that up with the ViewPad 100. This is a 10-inch touchscreen tablet which features both Android 1.6 and Windows Home Premium. Making it the first dual-boot tablet we’ve seen. This is powered by an Intel Atom N455 1.66Ghz processor with 1GB of RAM. However, it’s Wi-Fi-only, and comes with 16GB of storage expandable to 48GB. The ViewPad 100 is expected to cost around $850.
I’m guessing the ViewPad 100 is so expensive due to the Windows 7 license, but I fear it’s too costly to really sell. The ViewPad 7 seems to be a better deal but I’m not convinced even that will be able to go head-to-head with the iPad and come out smiling.
I guess we’ll know just how good (or bad) the ViewPads are when they’re released in October.
