If you were to ask yourself what a large touchscreen tablet was about a year ago, no one would have expected products from Samsung, Apple and BlackBerry to be this fast and sophisticated.

Not just this, with all of the tablets around now, it’s become more and more confusing into which tablet is best suited for your business and pleasure. The question of ‘what does X have over Y’ and ‘which would best suit my needs’ is one many questions surrounding these products.

As the tablet arena has 4 major competitors within in, I will try my best to cover all the major areas of the tablets, the hardware and more.

Apple iPad – iOS

The Apple iPad – probably the most predicatble one to start this blog with. With Apple having the head start on the smart pad market, Apple has most definately had the upper hand against the competition for a fair few months – until now.

Now when the iPad was released, it did start a revelution of smart pad competition. The only down-side with the iPad is the Hardware – the iPad has a 1GHz A4 processor (found in the iPhone 4) but only has 256MB of RAM.

The other thing with the iPad is that everyone knows that Apple holds these little conventions where they just have a massive press release and then go ‘welcome another new product to the Apple family’ – and rumor has it that there may be a new iPad on the scene around Christmas/ January time.

In terms of what could be expected from the new iPad V.2 could be anything. Undoubtedly the new iPad could punch FaceTime calling as well as a higher pixel screen for better resolution, gaming experience and just make it that little bit more cutting edge.

Read More on iOS

Samsung Galaxy Tab – Android

First Apple with their iPad, welcome Galaxy Tab a la Android. Samsung have produced this smart pad with Androud 2.2 OS which is probably the only smart pad which is close to hitting the market at the moment.

Android has definately been around on many different rip offs from China but Samsung have produced something which can be commercially sold to both SME and Consumers.

With a 1024 X 600 7″ display, the quality and pixel density is where the Galaxy Tab has the upper hand.

RIM Playbook – Blackberry OS

With manufactures such as Samsung and Apple, everyone knew that they were going to have a stab at the smart pad market. Blackberry on the other hand had a little step back, thought thoroughly about what to put into their smart pad and then just people thinking what Blackberry may actually produce.

With a dual-core 1GHz processor, 1GB RAM and both front and back facing cameras, the Playbook is something which has just come onto the smart pad market and shook it by the neck.

It is safe to say that if you’re a BlackBerry mobile phone owner, then you should be really interested in this one. Blackberry even claim that their development of their PlayBook is going to work closely with all their exisiting Blackberry products – could this be BIS and BES? Read more here

HP Slate – Windows 7

The HP Slate is going to be a smart pad but with a contriversial twist. If you notice that all of the rest of the smart pads have mobile operating systems on – the HP Slate has Windows 7 (a desktop operating system).

In comparsion to how it stacks up against the rest of the competitors – who knows?

We just need to wait for an update on what will exactly be crammed into this little bundle of joy and if it will come with a docking station for CD/DVD peripherals.

-For more information go to the original article source here at Zath

BlackBerry have been the standard for corporate email on the move since late 1999, with emails being the bedrock of modern business and increasing numbers of businesses embracing this, there is the inevitable increase in demand for mobile access of inboxes, calendars and notes meaning it looks like for now BlackBerry are definitely here to stay.

I for one certainly got confused when it came to switching across to my BlackBerry and being given the option of a BIS or BES solution so hopefully I can help to explain exactly what these are:

What is BIS?

BlackBerry Internet Service, also known as BIS can allow you to have access to the internet on your BlackBerry. Every time you access a new website, webpage or get a new email, you access it through your BIS solution.

What is BES?

BES which stands for BlackBerry Enterprise Service can give you access to a corporate network.

What’s the difference?

There are significant differences between the two of these services but the main difference is that BES is more for business hence the ‘enterprise’ in the middle opposed to BIS.

Both BIS and BES allow you to get emails on your phone, access web pages and download applications from the BlackBerry App World included in your data plan.

The conventional way of communication is from the handset to the BIS/ BES Service and then the BIS/ BES Service will then communicate with the outer world on your behalf. BIS is looked after through your carrier e.g. O2-UK whereas BES would be looked after and maintained by your business, this means that with your BlackBerry PIN, if your handset is mislaid or stolen, with BES all you need to do is phone up your IT department and they will be able to remotely wipe your device protecting any important information.

BES has mass potential within a corporate environment if you are a user of Microsoft Exchange. It will not only forward and update your mail box if you are away from your computer but if you delete an email it is deleted automatically and notes, calendars and events are automatically pushed to your phone real-time.

With BES there is a much better level of synchronisation including not only calendars, contacts, tasks and emails over the air but the installation of new applications can be pushed out automatically as well. The downside is that it can be quite expensive to run the full BES server but for all of the features, security and slick structure it’s definitely worth the money if you’re a large corporation and email is a vital part to your life. If you can’t afford your own then you could get this through a hosted service giving you all the benefits with minimal hassle and cost.

The most significant difference between the two services is the price. BIS can range anywhere between £5-£10 dependent on your operator charges and is the cheaper option to go for.

With BIS, the largest disadvantage is if you want to synchronise any information such as contacts, calendar entries, notes and more, you will need to install the BlackBerry software and physically sync the information with either a USB cable or via Bluetooth with your computer.