Galaxy Tab: iPad's first competitor

Samsung's smart pad tablet PC, Galaxy Tab, is being rated as 'iPad's first competitor' in the US, reveals ET News.

According to foreign media such as AP and Baltimore Sun, Galaxy Tab is rated as the best smart pad for mobile usage along with favourable reviews. Its small-display, 3-inch smaller than iPad's, appears to have worked well. It is bigger and heavier than a smartphone but lighter and more portable than Apple's iPad. The foreign media selected the durability and the flash feature enabling the video play in all formats as the major advantage of using Galaxy Tab.

Some forecast Galaxy Tab will not be able to overtake Apple's iPad despite its strengths because the number of applications available for Google Android-based smart pads is too small to make the best use of it and it is more expensive than the iPad.

HP has released HD video conferencing tools for desktops, notebooks and conference rooms, heating up the competition with Cisco and Microsoft, writes the International Business Times.

The tools released include HP Visual Collaboration Desktop software, which could be installed on laptops and PCs and HP Visual Collaboration Executive Desktop, which comes bundled with a 23-inch HP TouchSmart 600 Quad PC with peripherals such as a camera and headsets.

It also released Visual Collaboration Room 100 and Room 220 solution for HD video conferencing for conference-sized rooms.

SAP AG said it will have mobile versions of its business software ready for Research In Motion's (RIM) new Playbook tablet computer when the device hits the market early next year, states The Wall Street Journal.

Its backing is a vote of confidence in RIM, as the BlackBerry maker struggles to defend its corporate market against incursions from Apple and gadgets built on Google's Android operating system.

"SAP is definitely supporting the RIM Playbook," Oliver Bussmann, SAP's chief information officer, said. SAP is the leading maker of so-called enterprise resource management, or ERP, software that many companies use to run basic functions such as finance, human resources and manufacturing. "All of the ERP apps will come out on the Playbook," Bussmann said.