Oct 4th 2011, 5:23:06
I think for the money, the Samsung Galaxy is my current fav, and would certainly meet your needs. If you buy it from a Verizon retailer, I believe you can pick it up for $350 right now with a 2 yr contract for service. Super fast processor, nice 10" display, lots of data capabilities (Can handle Flash - no Apple device does this), and still lightweight and portable.
http://www.samsung.com/...galaxytab/10.1/index.html
The Asus Transformer/Transformer 2 are supposed to be nice (and have a kick ass name!), but I haven't tried them personally. They're right in the same price range as the Galaxy, so might be worth a look. Same goes for Acer Iconia A500.
I'm not a fan of the Motorola Xoom. I played with a couple of them, and they just felt cheaply built and like it would shatter into a bajillion pieces if I looked at it funny. Plus Motorola insists on putting all sorts of useless fluff in their OS that you can't get rid of (Social networking tickers, info streams, etc).
Ultimately, if you're just looking for streaming stock quotes as your primary use, I'd have to agree with fordie - get a smart phone with a nice big 4" screen. It's infinitely more portable, just as easy to use, and will deliver every single bit of data that a tablet will. My Sony Xperia has about 80 quadzillion different stock tickers it can download (most of which include a widget to put on the home screen for real time), can do IM, Facebook/Google+ (although I deleted Facebook cuz I don't like being spied on), and all of those other really awesome smart phone type things as well.....and it even makes phone calls!
The way I look at it, and this really is a personal opinion thing - what works for you works for you, tablets are the stepping stone between smart phones and laptops...the missing link, if you will. The only problem is, they're not advanced enough to ever compete with a laptop, and not simple/portable enough to ever replace a smart phone. Essentially, it's serving the same role as the missing link in human evolution - that thing that got phased out because it really just wasn't necessary on either side of the equation, and didn't have any original benefits to bring to the table that the other devices (species) didn't already have.
If someone can shrink a laptop to tablet size, I'd probably be all over it. But without a keyboard, a tablet is just an over-sized smart phone that can't actually make phone calls.
http://www.samsung.com/...galaxytab/10.1/index.html
The Asus Transformer/Transformer 2 are supposed to be nice (and have a kick ass name!), but I haven't tried them personally. They're right in the same price range as the Galaxy, so might be worth a look. Same goes for Acer Iconia A500.
I'm not a fan of the Motorola Xoom. I played with a couple of them, and they just felt cheaply built and like it would shatter into a bajillion pieces if I looked at it funny. Plus Motorola insists on putting all sorts of useless fluff in their OS that you can't get rid of (Social networking tickers, info streams, etc).
Ultimately, if you're just looking for streaming stock quotes as your primary use, I'd have to agree with fordie - get a smart phone with a nice big 4" screen. It's infinitely more portable, just as easy to use, and will deliver every single bit of data that a tablet will. My Sony Xperia has about 80 quadzillion different stock tickers it can download (most of which include a widget to put on the home screen for real time), can do IM, Facebook/Google+ (although I deleted Facebook cuz I don't like being spied on), and all of those other really awesome smart phone type things as well.....and it even makes phone calls!
The way I look at it, and this really is a personal opinion thing - what works for you works for you, tablets are the stepping stone between smart phones and laptops...the missing link, if you will. The only problem is, they're not advanced enough to ever compete with a laptop, and not simple/portable enough to ever replace a smart phone. Essentially, it's serving the same role as the missing link in human evolution - that thing that got phased out because it really just wasn't necessary on either side of the equation, and didn't have any original benefits to bring to the table that the other devices (species) didn't already have.
If someone can shrink a laptop to tablet size, I'd probably be all over it. But without a keyboard, a tablet is just an over-sized smart phone that can't actually make phone calls.
