I recently purchased both of these tablets to try out from Best Buy.  I’ll see what’s what and then return one, likely.  My purpose for buying was two-fold… I need a pair at work to help me communicate with client at a certain satellite site and I wanted one to have a home to use as needed and to keep synced for on-the-road use.  I looked at several different items during my brief review process, as you can see below.  Feel free to chime in to correct or comment.

1. Style – A win for the Tab here.  It’s sleek, light, svelt, and an easy competitor for the iPad2.  Style is what this thing was MADE for.

2. Brawn – Tie. Both loaded up apps with similar speed, initiated video streaming similarly, and tabbed through apps easily with multiple apps running at once.

3. Video playback – Win to Tab. they both did pretty well, but the Thrive stuttered once in a while in videos – usually at very reproducible spots, for some reason.  It was not a deal-breaker, but then again I didn’t sit and watch an entire movie.  I suppose it could become annoying after a while.

4. Camera – Tie.  Both did well and looked a lot like my non-software-optimized cell phone pics… better in bright light and never truly wonderful.  I do not plan on taking photos with either one.  Of note – camera placement on the Thrive could have used a little more forethought; it really is in the way sometimes, but seriously, just flip it the other way if you’re a lefty/righty and you’re good to go.

5. Music playback – Tie.  Likely this is due to the fact that I don’t plan on listening to music on either device a lot unless headphones are plugged it… when headphones were plugged in, they sounded the same.  Playback was flawless on each.

6. Skype – Tie.  I WILL BE using Skype on one of the other when available; currently I tested voice chat with Google Talk and they both did fine.  This is one of the MAIN reasons I want a pair of tablets, mind you.  Both did well with keeping up and not stuttering, both were low-def, both were passably accurate at voice transmission.  The Thrive was a little darker and did not auto-adjust to the ambient light.  In a poorly lit area, the Thrive would fail me; in a brightly lit place (usual for my communications, thankfully), either one would suffice.  Still though, due to the lighting problem, I favored the Tab… not a deal-breaker and otherwise a tie.

7. Evernote, Gmail, Calander, etc. - Tie.  I use these apps frequently and need them all.  Both tablets did fine, as with most applications of this nature.  Responses were quick, etc.

8. UI – Win to Thrive : after flipping back and forth to different home screens and opening and closing apps, etc., it became apparent (not glaringly so) that the Tab stuttered just a little tiny while the Thrive did not.  This was not a deal-breaker.

9. Handling – win to Thrive: to each his own on this one.  At least for my clients I need a tablet that is not slippery and/or breakable; out of the box, the Thrive has more weight, feels like a solid build, and has the rubberized backing which is a great touch.  I think people will hold onto it more naturally than the Tab, which I think people will be worried about bending or breaking.  That being said, the Tab is totally sleek and the lighter weight makes it more able to be held in one hand for a long time.  The Thrive is either on my lap or held two-handed.  I STILL liked the rugged and solid feel of the Thrive.

10. Ports – Ok, the Thrive wins here obviously; I like the ability to plug in an SD card and take a look at photos/docs/whatever without any difficulty or dongles.  That being said I did not buy or TRY any dongles for the Tab; maybe they aren’t that bad?  I wonder if I can boot Linux on my Thrive with a USB card?  Maybe then I can run Silverlight on it…

11. Screen – Win to the Tab: People have talked about this already on different forums; the Thrive has sort of a “mesh” look to the images people say.  I have them side by side in my lap and there is, quite easily detectable, a big difference in the brightness and look between the two, the Tab being much “nicer” looking than the Thrive.  The best adjective to describe what I see is that the Thrive looks a little faded, more dull, while the Tab pops.  They are both turned up to full brightness, btw.  When they are not side by side, I have no problem with the Thrive.  It is bright, it is clear, it is usable, it is totally fine and stuff looks fine on it.  The Tab is brighter, clearer, and stuff looks great on it.  The Tab has a little more red and yellow richness, sometimes too much but overall looks great.

12. Battery – Win to the Thrive: ok, the Thrive wins by default… truthfully I wonder if I will PERSONALLY want to keep the thing past 3 years or if I will, more likely, give it to a relative or sell it on eBay or something and buy something cooler, faster, etc.  I have an unused extra battery for my last laptop.  It died before I needed the battery.  It is now a brick.  You can see where I’m coming from.  On the other hand… if it lasts, then by all means I will keep the Thrive till it rots on the BUSINESS side of things, and therefore it still wins on this category for my intended purpose.

13. Buttons – win to Tab: I agree with those that say the buttons are harder to push and find on the Thrive.  Yes, this sounds dumb… the buttons on the Tab have a nice inaudible but feelable? ‘click’ to them.  This is not a deal-breaker.  I mention it because some people care to know about these things.

14. BUGS - The Tab is going wonky on my when I flex or hold the right side or right bottom corner to tightly.  It’s not always reproducible, it’s very very annoying when it happens.  Is this a bug on my unit?  Does it happen a lot? I haven’t taken the time to look in the forums…  The Thrive is waking up from sleep on its own when I’m not touching it; is this the “sleep bug”?  Sorry, I haven’t read much up on that either yet.  I can’t get the OfficeHD to “browse” the internal memory.  It seems to be looking for an SD card… maybe “I’m doing it wrong”.  You can’t judge a platform on unit-specific bugs, but I thought I’d mention them…  I’m sure there are other weird glitches here and there – to be expected…

Overall….  The Tab:  I like the look and the touch of the  Tab in general, and it is a great travel companion.  If the “hold the side” bug persists with a different unit, I will not buy the Tab – it is that annoying and problematic.  the Tab is great for media viewing and the camera is passable, and it has a fine amount of horsepower.  It has polish and looks zippy.

Overall…. The Thrive:  I like the heft and the “grippyness” of the Thrive, and I don’t mind holding it in my 2 hands to get things done.  The screen is completely fine when you don’t compare it side by side to the Tab and actually has more REALISTIC color representation than the overly vivified Tab.  The USB will be fun to try out for me and the SD card reader is almost a requirement in some instances for me and is essentially a deal-breaker or almost so for the Tab.  The camera needs a software revision to assist with dark-lighting adjustment and this would help me a little in some instances of video calling use.  The ability to change the battery out is not useful likely for my personal unit in the future, but my business unit will likely get as much use as it will stick around for (hopefully 5 years+).

My Take…. I don’t love or hate Toshiba or Samsung.  I buy exactly what I think I need at any time, no matter the producer, but I steer away from any Sony product that needs a proprietary memory card (but that is another post).  I went into this thinking: “I like the Tab, but I want the ports of the Thrive!”  If I could take the Tab and put a thin rubbery back on it and stick AT LEAST an SD card reader, then I’d buy it immediately.  The rubbery back, I can buy something for, but the lack of ports is horrible.  No, I’m not all “up in the cloud” with all my data.  My data needs to be accessible at times that I have no Wi-Fi and a crappy 3G/4G signal (tethered to phone).  I said I liked the heft of the Thrive, but if I could trim off just a little (2mm?) of the thickness it might be just a little easier to tote around.  In the end I will likely buy 2 Thrives… I want the USB and the SD card reader that much and none of the other differences between the two are deal-breakers (the battery aspect is a bonus).  If I did not need the access points, and was buying something just to take on road trips, etc., I’d likely buy the Tab due to the sleekness, thinness, and nice looking playback for videos, music, etc.

Hope this helped someone out there!

-ENT

This is a great place to start ::  [http://www.wikihow.com/Convert-Protected-Audio-Into-a-Plain-MP3].  It gives several alternatives to the copying process and is a nicely explanatory site.  I’d like to comment on the various alternatives given on that site and then add my two cents worth on what I myself ended up doing.

1. Direct method – yeah, so this is obviously what the RIAA (and therefore what Apple) wanted you to have to do to free your songs from DRM.  It sucks in that it’s lossy, it takes time, and it takes multiple CD’s or a CD-RW.  Did I mention it’s a colossal waste of time?  It is.

2. Using a virtual CD-RW program – this is slightly better, is still lossy, still takes time (not quite as much) and doesn’t require CD’s, etc.  Is it a waste of time?  Yes, but not as much, iTunes will not copy more than 1hr worth of music at a time, which means the process can only be automated as much as with a real CD – that is, 10 CD’s at a time.  I used this method… see below for details.

3. Image Burning – a little more involved and likely about as lossy, but can be quite a bit faster, as you can “burn” many songs at once, usually.  Nero is required for this, or something like it.  I decided not to use this method, as I don’t own Nero and had already purchased a “converting program” – see below.

4. Using Audacity – Not a bad alternative, if nothing else is possible for you.  This method is very very time intensive, as all your conversion takes place in real time. This would take me about 2 weeks to convert all my songs – day and night, 24-7.  It is also lossy and you usually have to not be doing any other audio stuff on your computer at the same time.  This all adds up to suckage.

5. Using Digital-Only Lossless Method – I don’t know what a virtual Audio Cable is… this is listed as “Very Advanced”… I am not that, although I may educate myself on this method a little more.  I’m afraid though that this method also requires you to record at real-time speeds – which sucks.

6. Using Hymn – Some people say Hymn is illegal and some say otherwise.  It effectively bypasses the DRM and directly converts m4p to mp3.  This has been deemed illegal and is no longer a workable option.  I direct you to this :: [http://macdailynews.com/2008/02/25/apple_orders_hymn_project_to_cease_and_desist/].  As a side note, DoubleTwist still exists but it no longer functions to strip DRM, but is a great little mp3 and ogg player (et.al.)

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I ended up purchasing NoteBurner (ver 2.35) and am using it to convert all my iTunes m4p music to mp3.   The process is tedious, but at least I don’t have to use real CD’s, and it can be nicely automated, to a point – it needs input about every 10 minutes to get the next playlist burning.  The software itself acts as a virtual CD-RW which iTunes can “detect” to burn a CD to (virtual device) and then it continues the process by taking the burned virtual file and ripping it (encoding it) as an mp3 to a custom-designated site on the HDD.

On this version, I am having difficulty with the program sometimes correctly naming the newly created mp3 files and sometimes not.  I’m not too perturbed, since I can easily use another piece of software called mp3tag (ver 2.49) to create corrected filenames for the mp3′s from the tags (which are still transferable via the NoteBurner software).

All in all, not a bad way to go.  It cost me $35 and will eventually take me about 4-5 days (24hrs a day) to convert my entire library – compared to likely twice that long for using real CD’s and 4 times that long or more for real-time conversions.

Here are links to the two pieces of software I used:

http://www.noteburner.com/

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

… I used iTunes itself to “burn” CD’s to the virtual drive, btw.

I am fairly sure these programs are not virus-ridden, but make no assurances.  Good luck with your own m4p to mp3 conversion processes.  Note to self… iTunes was great, but now I’m off to DoubleTwist, etc., instead, whenever possible.

-ENT

ENT

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It is dense and slightly heavy; it feels good in my hand and is not bad in loose-fitting jeans pockets.

The keyboard is fine to use, though I have small fingers.  In two weeks, I have a little plastic key about to come off – will be taking this one back for a replacement likely.

I enjoy having a slideout keyboard.  The software keyboard is ok, though in upright orientation the keys are too narrow.

It works fairly quickly and I’m happy with its non-lagginess.  The Verizon “3G” network speeds are… tolerable if not fair.

The screen is a beauty and browsing the net is nice, pics are crisp and videos are pleasant.

Battery life is adequate for a full day and evening of moderate/heavy usage.  In two years, when the battery is sucking… I dunno.

Vanilla Android is “ok” to use, and truthfully, I really don’t know if I mind missing out on the few perks of HTC’s SenseUI for now.  Caveat: this is my first smartphone, ever.

I would like a combined contact messaging/calls/emails thread compiler like is present in the HTC Droid Eris (I think).

The Google navigation tool/mapping is excellent and the voice recog is a nice bonus.  Neither one do I use much.

The sound quality is very good, but not “excellent”.  People on the other end usually hear me just fine.

A major issue at times – usually when I’m driving in a car in bright daylight: after I’m done talking on the phone and take it away from my face the proximity detector somehow misfires and the screen won’t come back up – wtf?  so I have to wait like 20 sec. for it to hang up on its own (without the screen on there is no “hang-up” button).  If I try to use the powerbutton during that “rest” period it takes forever to be able to use again – like it’s locked up (perhaps 30 seconds?) .  This problem is irritating at times.  When I’m in lower light situations, it’s not a problem.

Overall, I like the functionality of the phone, so far.  I’m sure there are better smartphone experiences out there though… we’ll see.  I’m waiting for HTC’s Incredible – if it ever appears.

I may end up returning this phone for now, though — just not thinking it will last me  years, that’s all.  For now though, simply have a smartphone of ANY kind is fun and certainly usable.

Cheers.

Both I and the wife have discontinued P90X completely.  She will be taking up training for a marathon come the new year, and I’ll be back at the P90X in January.  I’m likely going to be switching to morning workouts due to time constraints regarding family and work.  Not my favorite time to workout, but I think I can make it work…

I’ve likely been averaging 2-3 workouts per week and feel that, along with the dietary changes, I am treading water for now.  That’s ok – it’s good to know I can loosen up a bit and still fit into these jeans (2 sizes smaller than when I started 2 months ago).  I still plan on finishing and will be stepping back into the more rigorous routine soon.

Regarding the videos themselves and how I feel about the program, in general, now that we are 2 months in… I still enjoy watching Tony joke around on-screen, I still enjoy yoga and kenpo most, I still get my butt kicked by plyo.  What you put into any workout regimen is what you get out – I like putting in the effort on these videos – will I forever? no, but 90 days is enough, eh?  “Keep hitting play.”

By the way, if you don’t like artsy, ambient stuff, you won’t like this.