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State of the Art: Tablets Are Hot Holiday Gifts, but Which One to Buy? — Review

November 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment

But all six callers had the same question: “What tablet should I get?”

There were variations, of course. “— for my kid?” “— for my elderly father?” “— just for reading?” “— for not much money?” But in general, it was clear: the gadget most likely to be found under the tree this year is thin, battery-powered and flat.

No wonder people are confused. The marketplace has gone tablet-crazy. There’s practically a different model for every man, woman and child.

There’s the venerable iPad, of course. And now the iPad Mini. There are new tablets from Google, also in small and large. There are Samsung’s Note tablets in a variety of sizes, with styluses. There are $200 touch-screen color e-book/video players. There’s a new crop of black-and-white e-book readers. There are stunningly cheap plastic models you’ve never heard of. There are tablets for children (and I don’t mean baby aspirin).

So how are you, the confused consumer, supposed to keep tabs on all these tablets? By taking this handy tour through the jungle of tablets 2012. Keep hands and feet inside the tram at all times.

DIRT-CHEAP KNOCKOFFS You can find no-name tablets for $100 or even less. You can also find mystery-brand Chinese tablets in toy stores, marketed to children.

Don’t buy them. They don’t have the apps, the features, the polish or the pleasure of the nicer ones. The junk drawer is already calling their names.

E-BOOK READERS The smallest, lightest, least expensive, easiest to read tablets are the black-and-white e-book readers. If the goal is simply reading — and not, say, watching movies or playing games — these babies are pure joy.

Don’t bother with the lesser brands; if you’re going to get locked into one company’s proprietary, copy-protected book format, you’ll reduce your chances of library obsolescence if you stick with Amazon or Barnes Noble.

Each company offers a whole bunch of models. But on the latest models, the page background lights up softly, so that you can read in the dark without a flashlight. (These black-and-white models also look fantastic in direct sun — now you get the best of both lighting conditions.)

The one you want is the Kindle PaperWhite ($120), whose illumination is more even and pleasant than the equivalent Nook’s.

Of course, plain, no-touch, no-light Kindles, with ads on the screen saver, start as low as $70. But the light and the touch-screen are really worth having.

COLOR E-READERS/PLAYERS Amazon and B. N. each sell a seven-inch tablet that, functionally, lands somewhere between an e-book reader and an iPad. They have beautiful, high-definition touch-screens. They play music, TV shows, movies and e-books. They can surf the Web. They even run a few handpicked Android apps like Netflix and Angry Birds.

They’re nowhere near as capable as full-blown, computerlike tablets of the iPad/Nexus ilk, mainly because there are so few apps, accessories and add-ons. But they cost $200; you’re paying only a fraction of the price.

The big two here are, once again, Amazon and B. N. If you’re not already locked in to one of those companies’ books and videos because you owned a previous model, the Nook HD is the one to get. It’s much smaller and lighter than the Kindle Fire HD. It has a much sharper screen. And the $200 price includes a wall charger (the Fire doesn’t) and no ads (the Fire does). Or get the classy Google Nexus 7, also $200. Although its book/music/movie catalog is far smaller, its Android app catalog is far larger (but see “iPad versus Android,” below).

BIG COLOR READERS/PLAYERS This year, both Amazon and B. N. have introduced jumbo-screen (9-inch) versions of their HD tablets. Here again, B. N. offers a better value than its 9-inch Kindle Fire HD rival. For $270, the Nook HD+ offers a sharper screen, lighter weight, no ads, a memory-card slot and a wall charger.

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/technology/personaltech/tablets-are-hot-holiday-gifts-but-which-one-to-buy-review.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: ,

Bucks Blog: Monday Reading: How to Find Bargain Lift Tickets

December 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

December 12

Monday Reading: How to Find Bargain Lift Tickets

How to find bargain ski-lift tickets, fighting poor recycling in other countries, holiday gifts from your kitchen and other consumer-focused news from The New York Times.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=b60812fedfb3f1b855b7cca154bf230e

Filed Under: Your Money Tagged With: , ,

The Boss: Sharon Daniels of AchieveGlobal, on Her Love of Coaching

November 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment

We moved to Immokalee, a farming community not far from Naples. My father managed the agricultural supplies store. I attended the local school, where all the students, through high school, were taught on one campus.

The summer after sixth grade, I wanted to earn some money, so I opened a baby-sitting service in our house. I watched over four, and sometimes more, children a day. At 14, I started working as a waitress at a nearby family-owned restaurant after church on Sundays and during the summers. Back then, no one even thought about a minimum working age. The pay was $1 an hour plus tips.

The next fall, I got a job in a packing house, grading tomatoes — whether they were too ripe or too green — to earn money for holiday gifts. I was soon promoted to boxing tomatoes. I had other after-school jobs, working in a men’s clothing store, in billing at a water plant and at the local bank, which had an elevator — now that was something for our one-stoplight town.

After I started college in 1972, first at the University of South Florida then at the University of Florida in Gainesville, I worked at the bank in the summers, mostly filing checks. At the end of the second summer, I was promoted to teller, which was a bigger deal then because the whole town ran on cash. On Fridays, tellers were handling as much as $250,000 in cash to employers to meet their payrolls.

I majored in education and after graduation moved to Orlando. But I couldn’t find a full-time job, so I briefly worked as a substitute teacher. A local bank called and offered me a full-time job. I worked there 19 years, starting in Orlando. Over the decades, the bank would merge and become part of a larger network, Southeast Bank, and I was able to realize my passion for coaching others when I joined the bank’s training department.

I met my husband, David, who is a C.P.A., when we were working in Orlando. We married in 1980 and had three children: two girls and a boy. Seven years later, we moved when David took a job in Tampa.

In 1991, I joined Kaset International, which marketed customer service training. In 1998, Kaset merged with Learning International and Zenger Miller to become AchieveGlobal, to help companies with leadership development, sales effectiveness and customer service. The next year, 1999, I headed sales for the new company in the Eastern states.

After a year, I took a job as president and chief executive of Communispond, a communications training company in New York. Four years later, in 2004, I returned to AchieveGlobal. The business was rocky after the 2008 recession began, but we are now in more than 40 countries, with a staff of 600 people. Our parent company is the training and events organizer Informa, which is traded on the London Stock Exchange.

We still supply 50 percent of our training in the classroom, but companies are increasingly seeking flexible solutions, like combining learning in class with videos or mobile and tablet applications so employees can learn at their own pace.

Over the years, I’ve been able to use my skills for volunteer work in crisis counseling and pregnancy counseling. And my coaching and mentoring skills have come in handy in raising our children. I made a list of tasks they should master by age 18, including making their own doctor appointments and mending their own clothes. They seem pretty self-sufficient now, so I guess it worked.

As told to Elizabeth Olson.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/jobs/sharon-daniels-of-achieveglobal-on-her-love-of-coaching.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,