Tech Blog

As Cersei said to Ned, "When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground." You can apply this quote to the Tablet Wars, and if King Robert Baratheon was the iPad, and Joffrey Baratheon the iPad 2, then is the Galaxy Tab 10.1 Robb Stark?

Perhaps that doesn’t work because Joffrey isn’t actually Robert’s son and…okay, as you can see I have been watching too much of HBO’s brilliant Game of Thrones TV series. Trying to find suitable analogies in a fantasy epic for the battle for dominance in the emerging tablet market might be a bit of stretch. But it’s true to say that the overwhelming market leader, Apple’s iPad 2, will soon have a real fight on its hands in the shape of the new Galaxy Tab 10.1.

The 16GB Galaxy Tab 10.1 Wi-Fi is  $499.99 and can be pre-ordered from Future Shop here

Having now played with Acer’s newest — and only — Android tablet, I find it to be a pretty capable device, and an intriguing entry into the increasingly crowded tablet space. Rather than try to outdo everyone else on everything, Acer seems to be trying to offer something that can perform up to expectations at a more affordable price. The results are good, but there is still room for improvement.

Toshiba becomes the latest manufacturer to unveil a tablet when the company demonstrated it at a media event in downtown Toronto. The Android-based tablet will be available to Canadian consumers in August, though no exact date has been confirmed yet.

  Google recently released an update to their Tablet orientated flagship OS Honeycomb, bringing the build version from 3.0 to 3.1 and it is scheduled to be arriving soon on Canadian Honeycomb devices

  It may not immediatly sound like a big deal with such a small version update but there's a lot of improvements added throughout the system. Tune in after the break to find out what they are and what they mean to you.

HP’s first foray into the tablet market, the TouchPad, will be hitting Canadian retail on July 15. Running on webOS, the mobile operating system HP took over when they acquired Palm, the TouchPad is expected to be a solid competitor to the iPad, PlayBook and Android-based tablets flooding the market.

Making your Android device better:

When your phones feeling a little blah nothing perks it up like a change in the wallpaper. When Google released Android 2.1 they brought a major 'fun factor' to your boring backgroud image, Live Wallpapers.

This story has been around for a few days already, but sources with knowledge of Microsoft’s plans indicated that the company would demonstrate a tablet version of Windows sometime this week. This would just be a demo, of course, as the final version wouldn’t allegedly be available to consumers till early 2012.

Another tablet has hit the Canadian market, this time from LG.

The LG Optimus Pad (known as the G-Slate in the US) is powered by a dual-core Tegra 2 processor and will feature Google's Honeycomb Android 3.0 OS. Okay we've seen that already in the Motorola Xoom. So what makes this tablet unique?

First off, congratulations on the purchase of your new tablet!

Time to get it setup and start playing. Read on for 3 quick steps that will get you connected to the internet and enjoying the Android Market before you can finish that cup of coffee.

While the iPad and its successor, the iPad 2, are still the gold-standard for tablets, 2011 has already seen the release of a number of challengers for its throne.  Both the recently released Motorola XOOM and RIM Playbook have some features that are better than the iPad, but neither of them has managed to recreate the “magic” that Apple infuses the iPad with.  While most of the tablets still to come this year are going to Android Honeycomb based - Samsung, Toshiba, Dell, HTC, Lenovo, LG all have models due this summer – there is one tablet that stands out from the crowd and, in my opinion, stands the best chance of usurping the iPad. The HP TouchPad, which runs webOS.

In typical Acer style, the second-largest PC manufacturer is entering the tablet market by trying to offer something for everyone. This means a few different tablets at varying sizes running on different operating systems. The W500 is the one based on Windows 7, and it’s coming to Canada this month.

Today is the start of a new regular series I'll be posting here on the Future Shop Community Blog. I'll be sharing tips, tricks and great apps for your Android device to extend the features, make it faster, and let you personalize it the way you want it.

The BlackBerry PlayBook was released last Tuesday to some considerable fanfare, so I went out and grabbed one.  I've finally had some time to sit down and play with it, and there are some really great things about the device and some things that take getting used to. Now then, this is running the officially released software versus the pre-release devices covered in most of the initial reviews, so my impressions may be a little different. Read on for my comments and thoughts. 

On April 7th Motorola announced that the XOOM Android 3.0 tablet was available in Canada. Future Shop had jumped the gun a bit and started selling them the day before, so instead of waiting for a review unit to be sent to me I rushed out to buy it right away. I had hoped that I would be able to get some hands-on videos posted soon after. Sadly, due to Real Life™ this was not to be. Now a few weeks later the videos are ready.

In my videos inside I go over the impressive hardware, that features the usual impressive Motorola build quality, and look at some Honeycomb apps.

Having already unveiled their two tablets back in November, Acer is finally ready to cut them loose to the Canadian market. Both the Iconia Tab A500 and W500 are ready for pre-order now in Canada, with availability set for May, albeit without an exact launch date yet.