How the iPad 2 could cost you more than the Xoom

MarketWatch ^ | March 8, 2011, 12:00 a.m. EST | Brett Arends, MarketWatch

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — What a showman Steve Jobs is.

Last week the chief executive of Apple Inc.

— emerging from sick leave

— took to the stage

to unveil his latest technological marvel, the new iPad 2. And in a bravura performance he successfully persuaded most of the world that it’s better and cheaper than its new competitor, the Xoom from Motorola.

No wonder shares of Motorola Mobility Holdings /quotes/comstock/13*!mmi/quotes/nls/mmi (MMI 27.06, +0.11, +0.41%)  have tumbled 10% since last week’s iPad moment, falling from $30 to $27. Apple’s stock, meanwhile, is up about $4 to $354 — near a record high.

There’s just one problem.

The price difference isn’t quite what it seems.

Some of the new iPads will be cheaper than the Xoom.

But for some people, the Xoom will actually be cheaper.

If you’ve been following the media coverage over the past week, you’ve probably missed this fact. Why? Because it doesn’t seem to have caught the attention — of analysts or, perhaps, many in the media.

The headline figures look pretty straightforward: The iPad 2 starts at $499. The Xoom costs $799. So far, good for Apple.

But the $499 iPad 2 is the bare-bones model. It only comes with WiFi, lacks a 3G connection on a cellular network, and it has a mere 16 Gigabytes of memory. (More on that in a moment.)

[Swordmaker]

Talk about lying... and FUD.. PING!

Actual cost of ownership of the Xoom with Verizon plan after subsidy on contract at

• $20 (plus $6 to $8 for fees and taxes *) for 1GB data plan is $1079 minimum
• $35 ($8 to $10 for fees and taxes *) per month for 3GB data plan is $1439.00 minimum.

• * depending on your local taxes.

There is no contract for the iPad on AT&T requiring monthly payment at all... if you want 3G access for a month, it's a flat $15 for 250MB or $25 for 2GB and $10 for each extra GB if you need it.

Please, No Flame Wars!
Discuss technical issues, software, and hardware.
Don't attack people!

Don't respond to the Anti-Apple Thread Trolls!
PLEASE IGNORE THEM!!!

Apple iPad v. Xoom Ping!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[Vendome]

word that.

Total lie to create FUD.

Guess when your product doesn’t matchup to a competitor your only tool is that of a so called disinterestd 3rd party using subterfuge insupport of a product aint gonna cut it.

[steve86]

I have home videos that come in over 4 Gb

Just out of curiosity, what CODECs/container formats do you use? I happen to be organizing some of my home videos right at this moment and I don't think any of them are larger than half a gig, but they are compressed and are not HD. I've evolved through various CODECs over the years and it's still fluid. There are probably 4 or 5 different compression schemes in there.

[Swordmaker]

the Xoom is heavier, but it has a better screen

No, it has a higher-resolution, but lower-quality screen.

Here's proof:

---

Ars Technica's creative director posted this micro photo in the comments section to show that the Xoom's supposedly "superior" resolution screen was NOT superior at all... In fact, it is nowhere near superior!

"I also found the Xoom screen almost grainy, the pixel grid is too apparent to the naked eye. You don't really notice it so much on a photo, or something with a lot of tonal changes, but on say a white background like Google or an eBook you see faint pixel grid lines. We decided to not include this photo in the Xoom review, but I took this closeup shot of both screens with a 100mm Canon macros lens, same image on both, same distance from camera (tripod), same area of the image focused on. To my eye that Xoom pixel grid explains why I see it from a normal distance too, it's just a much larger gap:

I could talk about a lot of other things I didn't care for, but for me personally and my tablet uses (YMMV) the screen was already a non-starter.

[dangerdoc]

The old stuff is MPEG2. 4 gig is about an hour. Most are in AVI containers. I had an old Hi 8 camera years ago and recorded those movies to DVD when I went digital. When I realized the discs were starting to go bad, they all got dumped to drives directly as ISO files.

The new HD stuff is all MPEG4. Some are in MKV containers, others are in MP4 containers. A few are even in DIVX containers. Unfortunately, I have a hodgepodge of legacy devices and I have to think about where I am going to use them before choosing. My newest gear will play all three.

Plus I have a number of shows recorded off the tuner on the computer. Those are on whatever format Media Center uses, those are MPEG2 and run in the 10’s of gigs, the Sound of Music was like 40 gigs! Those I convert if I want to move them off the computer. Otherwise they are watch and erase.

[steve86]

My historical experiences remarkably similar, even the HI 8 and DivX CODEC and deteriorating discs, but my platform has always been Linux with Mythtv for tuner capture and usually VideoLAN (VLC) for playback. I see VLC is available also for Windows. I am about halfway through organizing and renaming old videos and getting them ready for my mother’s digital frame.

[dangerdoc]

My new TV is great, I just plug the hard drive into the USB plug and is will play all the videos, everything but the ISO files. I have an old media player connected to the TV that will see those ISO files as physical DVD’s and play them just as if they were the original DVD, with Menu(s) and all.

Someday if digital ever settles and it looks like one standard file format will survive, I may transcode everything but it is way too much work and things keep changing.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks antiRepublicrat.

You can do that on an iPad too, since YouTube and others have been transcoding away from Flash to H.264 for a while.

That's also true of FR -- recent vids tucked between messages one and two on various threads have that standard link about how my computer won't do H.264.

[Cyropaedia]

Wow... a picture is worth a thousand words.

[Cementjungle]

Tablet people typically expect more battery life than a laptop can muster. The iPad 2 blows away the Xoom in that department.

Yes. Both the iPad2 and Xoom are rated at 10 hours battery life, so in Apple-speak it "blows away" the competetion.

[Dr. Sivana]

iPad gets 50% better battery life, with brighter screen, and more contrast than Xoom according to CNet

Tablet name	Video battery life (in hours)	Web site load time (in seconds; lower is better)	Maximum brightness (in cd/m2)	Default brightness (in cd/m2)	Contrast ratio
Apple iPad	12.6	9	388	161	881:1
Archos 70 8GB	4.7	13	302	216	581:1
Archos 101 8GB	5.8	11	177	133	1106:1
Dell Streak 5	4.7	8	340	135	1172:1
Dell Streak 7	3.3	7	330	146	868:1
Motorola Xoom	9.3	6	312	131	1,200:1
Samsung Galaxy Tab	7.8	8	364	123	674:1
Viewsonic G Tablet	7.8	8	364	123	1,093:1

[Dr. Sivana]

Self-correction, 33%, not 50%, but still blows it away.

[ctdonath2]

“Even a 64 Gb tablet is significantly limited without access to SD cards or external storage.”

It is? Been using a 64GB iPad 3G for near a year, and haven’t noticed. Tethering and Dropbox take care of shifting stuff on/off the tablet.

Look, it’s a tablet - not a full-blown computer. Getting tired of naysayers whining about a half-inch-thick 1.5-lb slate not living up to a full-bore multi-core multi-screen multi-terabyte multi-cubic-feet desktop.

[dangerdoc]

Yes it is, trust me on this one.