Yesterday, I spent a fun 4 hours at Skylon restaurant on London’s South Bank, after travelling a not so fun 3 hours by car. A long car journey is made a lot longer when your only companion is determined to do impressions of Herbert the Pervert the entire way.

As I mentioned last week, I was one of 10 competition winners to win an all expenses paid trip to Skylon (courtesy of Macworld and PC Advisor), with food and drinks available as we tested out the new Samsung Galaxy Tab. Other than the unfortunate Family Guy impressions, the trip there was pretty straight forward, until my chauffeur/husband missed a turning, got horrendously stuck in traffic 4 minutes before I was due at Skylon, and I was turfed out of the car and forced to power walk to my destination. True to form, I relied solely on my iPhone to guide me (granted not very far) through what I consider to be a rather overwhelming city. It did mean a bit of sightseeing though.

When I made my flustered entrance I met the other winners (only one of which was female, strangely), and was swiftly handed my prize and ushered outside. The South Bank was then treated to a rather awkward marketing exercise as 10 strangers were filmed sitting on the steps, squinting in the uncharacteristic sun and trying to set up our Tabs, which were doing rather amazing impressions of mirrors in the glare. This was the only uncomfortable part of the day for me, but luckily it was short-lived and it soon became apparent that, outside of the Wi-Fi range, there wasn’t a great amount of testing we could do.

Back inside the champagne, beer and wine began to flow, as well as some lovely mini-portions of food (which I’m sure was very expensive) and everyone began to relax and mingle.

After a quick interview on camera to tell them my thoughts on the Tab after my very brief play with it, I was free to ‘sip’ my champagne and make new friends.

Ironically, conversation consistently drifted back to Apple; whether Macs are getting worse, why they’re better/worse than PCs, iOS vs Android… and the inevitable comparison between the Galaxy Tab and iPad. I reserved judgement on the last point, marking any difficulties I had with the interface up to my Apple ‘upbringing’, but having used it almost constantly over the past 24 hours I’m not convinced that it’s just me being slow.

To me it seems clunkier than the iPad, and not always as responsive. Having said that, I think the Android App store is probably simpler than than Apple’s, and being able to customise the homescreens with widgets as well as Apps is a nice change. And, of course, Samsung don’t have Steve Jobs’ aversion to Flash, so I’ll be able to play Farmville to my heart’s content.

I may be an Apple addict, but I hope I’ll get a lot of use out of my new Galaxy Tab (I’m using it to write this post!) I had a great day yesterday, despite the 4 hour drive home, and am very thankful to have won.

EDIT 19/9/11: The virtual RSPCA would be after me if I were to rely solely on my Galaxy Tab for tending my Farmville farm. If I dare attempt to load FV, the tab has a bit of a strop at me and either freezes up or gets utterly confused. And this doesn’t seem to be limited to FV (which admittedly is a bit graphic-heavy); I’m struggling to get anything but the most basic of games to function properly (I’m talking in-browser here, not apps). This may be because I have the most basic 16gb Wi-Fi only model, maybe it’s just me, or maybe I’m expecting too much from it. But, at the moment I’m desperately trying to find my Tab useful, and mostly failing. Other than for writing these posts, of course! I don’t for a second want to appear ungrateful for my uncharacteristic good luck in winning the tab in the first place, and I’m sure that there are plenty of people who will disagree with me; I’m just reporting on my own experience with it so far. I’m still hopeful, though…