If picking a tablet of the right size for your needs sounds daunting, steel yourself: You face another layer of options when it comes to choosing an operating system. At least five OS platforms are competing for your attention in the marketplace.
Apple’s iOS, which powers the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch, currently leads the pack, thanks to its compatibility with a massive selection of more than 300,000 apps.
Google Android is on the march, however. The OS behind the majority of non-Apple tablet offerings, Android is available on more than a dozen major tablet releases of this year and it will continue to surface in multiple versions due to Google’s flexible open-source policies.
Microsoft continues to advance Windows 7 as an option on tablet such as the HP slate 500 and Archos 9 PC tablet. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has released a slate driven by the lesser-known QNX operating system (a Unix variant) in this year. And HP’s recent acquisition of Palm suggests that the company may be planning to move into the tablet arena with a WebOS slate of its own.
Amidst all this action from big-time manufacturers, a number of smaller companies such as Fusion Garage and Kno continue to develop their own Linux-based platforms that defy casual classification.
