Last night at the Mashable Social Media Day in Detroit I had a chance to sit down with Adonis (wutwutman) and compare my Archos 7 HT and his iPad to see if I could confirm my thoughts on these two pieces of amazing technology.  As suspected the iPad is a very slick device with smooth screen transitions and a beautiful display.  The applications were very polished and pretty but much like my Archos many of them suffer from the “I’m running on a phone” assumption, making for some interesting issues now and then.  I attribute the polish of the iPad to the fact that they have a closed marketplace and a small fee to even get started, where-as on the Android platform all it takes to release an app is the Android dev kit and a little programming knowledge.  This gives the iPad a distinct advantage with its application marketplace making jumping in for newbies that much eaiser.  I could see where new users picking up an Archos for the first time would be totally lost since it wasn’t until I loaded the Operation Unbrickable firmware and got access to the full Android Marketplace that I really started to see the power of the Archos 7.

For someone like myself, a developer, hacker, and all around techo geek I will be sticking with my Archos for now.  While the iPad is a perfect fit for someone who plans to download applications and use the device as intended, for me my main concern is the ability to rapidly develop and deploy applications.  Since I’ve developed in Java on and off for the past 12 years, programming for the Archos was a no brainer for me.  (I had pushed my first application to the device 20 minutes after opening the box.)  Add the fact that iPad/iPhone development requires me to learn a new language that has no professional use to me, and that was that.  (ObjectiveC — really Apple?  Why not just use standard ANSI C w/ custom libraries?)

Once a large screen Android tablet with a more powerful processor is released I will be upgrading, that much is for sure.  When that happens I will use the Archos as the primary remote control for my home automation and audio/video systems, so it will never sit idle in my house.