There’s a lot of buzz in the tech media lately about the release of iPad 2, many exisiting iPad users have already preordered or at least considering upgrading to the new device, and many non ipad users are looking forward to the opportunity to grabbign aused ipad on the cheap.

But are the improvements in the iPad 2 worth going out and acquiring a new device? Well let’s look at the improvements to see what has changed.

For the most part many features like the screen resolution, screen size, OS, wifi and blutooth devices, the 30 pin and audio port, hard drive options and oriignal retail prices have remained the same. So what has changed?

Firstly iPad 2 is a lot slimmer by a 1/5th of an inch, and naturally this means that the device is a lot lighter as well.

The rear camera has been improved to a 720p HD camera, and a new front facing VGA camera has been introduced. Hopefully there is some use for it, because from early 3G phones we found out that not many people like to look at grainy and laggy pictures of each other while having an conversation.

The RAM and processor has been improved as well, RAM has doubled to 512MB and the processor has been upgraded to A5 meaning that the slightly laggy apps should no longer be an issue on the new device.

All in all, there are some noticable and great improvements on the new device, probably not big enough to warrant an upgrade, but the iPad 2 should be a winner to attract new users to the ipad with a much lighter, thinner, faster device.

Apple recently cut ties with it’s design partner whose been designing tablet computers and other products for Apple in the last decade, 50 employee firm SurfaceInk, The conflict arose when SurfaceInk launhced a tablet PC at a industry trade show, claiming it only wanted to creative and technological abilities to future clients, and claims it had no plans to launch a rival tablet PC of it’s own.

Apple saw otherwise and was quick to cut ties and find a new design partner, meanwhile SurfaceInk is reflective of it’s decision to make such moves.

It’s unclear what the real motives behind SurfaceInk decisions to go into the trade show, it was obviously a well thought out decision, they haven’t considered how Apple may react to this. Apple is a huge partner and it’s difficult to ascertain at this point whether this will affect SurfaceInk postively or negatively, on the one had they’ve lost a huge client, on the other hand this may free their shackles to work with smaller and more innovative clients.

In the next few months to come we will see a major shift in the tablet PC market as more and more players enter the market to take a piece of the pie, the most recent company to venture into the market is Samsung Electronics, who plans to debut it’s 7 inch galaxy tablet PC, which is sized between the iphone 4 and dell streak mini.

Although the Samsung  Tablet PC is likely to compete with the iPad and not the iPhone,

Apple iPad

Similar news is cited by KT Corp who will also introduce a 7 inch tablet PC, as well as LG which will be announcing it’s tablet PC soon.

It appears that companies are lining up to launch their own Tablet PC range just before the run up to Christmas which is when all retailers make the most profit.

The up and coming toshiba slate tablet pc, using the android platform which is the choice of OS for budget tablet PCs has been leaked. Although unlike the iphone 4 , the Toshiba tablet PC hasn’t ignited the same amount of furore, but it’s plenty for tablet pc fans to sing about.

Firstly it features the latest version of Android 4. which is unreleased which will allow some great new features to rival the ipad tablet PC.

As you can see from the features below the Toshiba tablet PC is sleek and stylish, and has plenty of high expandable ports to get your teeth into.

Since the rising popularity of the ipad, you could be forgiven for thinking that windows will follow suit, however windows explains this is not the case. Whilst the Tablet PC has been a success in some selective commercial applications and has been a big hit with some consumers. Windows says it will not hit hard and try to break into the Tablet PC market quite so soon.

At the moment the tablet PC market is dominated by the ipad, and numerous other low cost alternatives such as linux and android. Whilst windows is happy to go along with the tablet pc market trend and provide capability and support in its latest installation of windows 7. Windows explains that the tablet PC still needs to plug the gap for the still quite impractical battery life and lack of support by app developers to create suitable applications tailor made for tablet pc systems.

WIndows explains that it has always been a champion of mobile computers and entered the market back in 2002, with it palm top windows CE devices, however it feels that there is still a long way away before windows dedicates the OS for touchscreen computers.

This is in start contrast to google and apple’s initatives, apple has already created the ipad tablet PC, and google programmers predict that the growth of the tablet pc will continue and isn’t just a “fad”. The move towards the tablet PC has been slowly emerging, mobile phones have transformed into mini tablet devices, and laptops have turned into ultra protable netbooks, at a time when sales of IT have slumped due to the recession.

Google predicts that in the future the two devices will become more and more homogenised and we’ll begin to see more widespread use of mini tablets like the dell streak mini.

Steve Job’s has finally blown the lid on why the ipad slate tablet pc does not have flash on it. You can read the ful report on http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

It turns out the real reason is down to compatibiliy issues and the drain on system resources by flash, Flash is specifically designed for PCs with mice, as it utilises mouseover and rollover effects which cannot function properly on a touch screen tablet PC.

Furthermore flash is stated as being a “closed platform” by steve jobs so the evolution of flash is slow and geared towards where adobe wants to take the platform and not what the end users need. This is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black because apple acts pretty much the same way in with the iphone and it’s products.

The main gripe is that adobe needs to be compatible with all hardware and not just a few specific brands, this make flash not the most efficient software for macs and steve has mentioned that flash has been known to cause crashes and bugs in macs.

Steve jobs prefers an open platform for it’s tablet pc device such as html5, which performs very similar to flash but is much lower in drain in system resources.