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Kmart Briefly Offers $149 Android Tablet
pickens writes in with word that Kmart put an Android tablet on sale for $149 — and quickly sold out. "A Kmart circular came out last week with an uber-geeky product that perked up a few ears in the gadget community. Augen's 7-inch Gen-78 Android tablet which runs Android 2.1 is on sale for $150 (normally $170). The tablet is as bare bones as it gets, but it does work and has some features which may interest those who can't reconcile the $500+ price of Apple's iPad. Features include Android 2.1 (no skinning), 7" 800x480 Display, WiFi 802.11G, 2GB of storage +SD card slot (up to 32GB), 256MB of RAM (same as iPad), HDMI out for 720P viewing on an external display, an eBook reader, YouTube app, and Maps. ... 'I'll be honest,' writes Seth Weintraub. 'I don't trust my toddler with an iPad but this thing will be great for watching Gumby (don't ask) at home and Sesame Street in the car.'" It seems that Kmart offered rainchecks to those who found the item sold out at their local store — up until July 31. It is not clear whether after the retailer restocks the pipeline, they will stop at fulfilling the rainchecks, or will offer the Augen tablet again to new buyers. An update to the article notes that Augen does not have a license for Android from Google, and therefore the Android Store is not supported on it.
Android is not truly open source. Most android phones are locked down and cannot be modified by the user thanks to tivo-ization. GPL 2? might as well be BSD or closed source as far as the end user is concerned. Only GPL v3 is truly open source. It's funny to see companies locking down linux and the slashtards thinking that's a "win" somehow.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Fanboys have to do everything they can do defend whatever it is they are a fanboy about, and that includes being incredibly nitpicky and pedantic about things like this. They want to find any point they can to be "right" on even if it is a minor technicality. That way they feel like they are promoting their device, countering your arguments, etc. It is aslo a saw to try and deflect things away from the main point, by concentrating on some minor issue.
So that's what's going on here. When you write out $499 and $500, anyone can see that they are just $1 off. What he's doing is trying to nitpick and say "No it isn't $500 and up! It starts at $499! You are wrong! WRONG!"
He's not interested in a realistic comparison, just in trying to find pedantic points to attempt to win on, and to spin things away from anything he perceives as bad about the iPad.
The best thing to do is simply ignore the argument, because there really isn't any winning. If you argue the point, well he'll just keep being pedantic and arguing it back, thus deflecting from the main argument. If you concede the point, he'll then harp on it and keep on bitching how you were "wrong" and so on.
I see this kind of shit happen with videocard fanboys all the time. nVidia/ATi produces the best card that beats anything the other has. Then the ATi/nVidia fans swoop in and try to find any little thing they can wrong. They'll latch on to tiny things, like a single benchmark from a single site. The nVidia/ATi fans will argue back about this and it'll all get derailed in to a flame war. This then repeats with the sides reversed when the other company has the card that is the best.
Fanboys aren't interested in facts or logic, they are interested in their stuff being showered with nothing but praise.