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Are Tablets Just Too Expensive?
An anonymous reader writes "Over at PCWorld they're asking a simple but valid question: Are tablets just too expensive? They point out that, weight-for-weight, pure silver is cheaper than most tablets, and that, like jewelery, tablets are highly thievable. The worst thing might be that the nascent tablet platform gets written-off as a high-priced niche for people with more money than sense."
silver is going up in price. Your new tablet will be worth it's weight in base metal in a year or two.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
No.
I don't think they are "too" expensive. I just don't see why I would buy a tablet that does the same thing my HTC Evo already does...
They point out that, weight-for-weight, pure silver is cheaper than most tablets,
I've also noticed that compared to a microwave oven, tablets are mediocre at thawing frozen dinners.
Why pick silver? Because it's less money. You could say it's a great deal if you use platinum.
Of course you can take a lump of silver and bash someone in the head with it for making such a comparison without causing damage to the silver. An iPad would probably be needing a trip to the Geniuzz Bar.
Trolling is a art,
The worst thing might be that the nascent tablet platform gets written-off as a high-priced niche for people with more money than sense.
I wrote off the IPad precisely as described as soon as it was announced!
A gallon of gasoline is much cheaper than a tablet, and will actually get you someplace if you have a vehicle to put it in. That doesn't mean that gas is too cheap.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It should also be noted that owning a hunk of silver doesn't cost you an additional $30/month data plan.
Yes, tablets are too expensive. But it's early days for them yet. Blame Apple's marketing department for making a bleeding-edge gadget into a mainstream must-have item. They'll stabilize in price eventually.
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pure silver is cheaper than most tablets
What is the point of that argument? It is a worthless apples to Volkswagens comparison.
.
It looks like PCWorld may be trying to get page hits by jumping on the tablet bandwagon, and they are just trying to say something different, anything so long as it is different. Unfortunately for PCWorld, they forgot to make their article relevant.
Film at 11.
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Obviously tablets are too expensive if you don't have a real need for one; my i5 laptop with a GPU that's capable of playing modern games and a 640GB hard drive cost less than some of the tablets in TFA.
OTOH if you really must have the tablet format, then they're no more expensive than a laptop.
I work with baseball players and it's extremely helpful to be able to put some clips and pictures on a tablet and take that out to the field to show them what I want to do. I used to do that with my iTouch, but an iPad is better because of the bigger screen. An iPad is also lighter and cheaper than a laptop.
Maybe a tablet is overkill for some applications, but it's not for the ones I use it.
This is the general problem with cost-based thinking rather than value-based thinking.
I'm not sure what the motivation to ask the question "are they too expensive" comes from, when tablets (in generalities) are one of the hottest selling segments of the computing market right now. Can you imagine how long a marketing guy at Apple would have a job if he stood up in a board meeting and suggested that the iPad was too expensive...all while they're selling them by the millions.
Now if the question were different, like "is tablet 'x' too expensive", then it might be an interesting conversation. I've seen several new tablets poised for sale at costs HIGHER than the ipad...which seems like a ridiculously short sighted move. You don't enter a market with a "me too" product priced higher than the established leader (unless you're Apple), unless you have something markedly better to offer. And frankly, "it's android" doesn't rise to that level.
I say yes but the market may say otherwise.
I don't like how some (iPads) are offered as Wifi only or for 100 more you get 3G. I was under the impression you need to sign up for a plan.
I want both WiFi and cell data for later short-term use like a vacation. Price the one model in the middle of the two and be done with it.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Supply.
Demand.
Unfortunately right now we have to kinds of tablets in the market - those which are useful and those which aren't. Most Android based tablets currently being sold are absolutely worthless due to poor software, poor screens, and extremely poor battery life. Then on the other side you have things like the iPad and a very small selection of "premium" Android devices.
In the future you might see tablets come down in price but just like everything else they will be held back by batteries and or components which draw less power. Ultimately cheap manufacturers cannot cut corners when cutting power consumption since good modern batteries are expensive to make and good efficient components use rare earth metals.
It should also be noted that owning a hunk of silver doesn't cost you an additional $30/month data plan.
Tablet's don't have to require that data plan. The iPad has a wifi-only version, and there's been a wifi-only version of the Galaxy Tab about to be released "any day now" (for the last 6-8 months).
#DeleteChrome
I think another element is that tablets are primarily oriented at content consumption, which places them into the same category as standalone DVD players, MP3 players, handheld game consoles, etc. And within those categories, yes, a tablet is at least double the cost of other devices. At least with a notebook the possibility of productivity exists, whether or not it is always utilized in that manner.
As a comparison, you can purchase a rather nice and large LCD television with built-in internet connectivity such as Netflix, Youtube, Facebook, etc for the same price as a premium tablet. It would certainly seem that tablets should be in the realm of netbook pricing giving computing power, storage, display size, etc (especially when considering how much less mass and mechanical parts are involved with a tablet compared to a netbook).
Better known as 318230.
I guess to be fair, there are a lot of people who ought to be paying off their high interest credit cards instead of buying a tablet. On the other hand, they're adults; they make the lifestyle choices and they accept the consequences.
The other critique I think is valid is that a tablet is likely to be worthless in just a few years due to the cruelly crossed streams of obsolescence and failing electronics. So it will boil down to how much of a gadget lover you are. I myself am pretty much of a gadget lover, but haven't sprung for one just yet.
... because I haven't bought one yet, lol.
It's hard to justify hundreds of dollars spent to replace a great piece of hardware I already have (epic 4g / newish laptop) simply because it has a touch screen and that it's been advertised/astroturfed/pop-culture-driven into us.
And so I say "meh."
That has to be one of the more ridiculous metrics I've seen. Most personal electronics are worth much more than their weight in a base metal. Its the nature of miniaturizing technology; value goes up with complexity and inverse to size. If anything, tablets are a slight step back, if compared to the iPhone etc. Silver is currently at about $315 a pound (converted from the Troy Ounces used for bullion). Most electronics considered portable would fall well above that curve. Certainly any smart phone you could name...
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
I keep seeing Archos tablets in the 200 to 300CAD range, but I've never tried one. If it's anything like my iPad, that seems very reasonable to me.
P.S. I didn't buy the iPad. It was a bonus from work.
Nice, my $299-$350 archos 101 tablet (480 grams) costs less than silver per gram! Not feeling so bad about avoiding the pricey alternatives.
When Android tablets can be had for less than $100, I'm curious as to which market they are too expensive for. I suppose there are cheaper net-enabled feature phones, which may offer the added bonus of cellular network access, but they're probably not significantly more performant or otherwise functional than said tablets.
I don't think the manufacturing costs of a tablet in itself are a factor in the inflated prices being asked, but rather the fashion aspect. Being fashionable is always going to be a highly profitable commodity.
Manufacturers can justify why tablets are so expensive. Large capacitive-sensor touchscreens are not cheap. Nor at the (relatively) high-powered processors tablet computers demand, or high quantities of computing-grade flash storage.
No, the screens and flash storage are not cheap - yet. It took 25 or 30 years for computers to go from being more expensive then a car to being at the point now where people will buy laptops on impulse. With the expanding markets being squarely aimed at mobile computing, the quality will improve across the board and the price will lower drastically. Cutting edge adopters always pay more for less.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
"a high-priced niche for people with more money than sense"
Except this article is largely about how new technology is expensive, but prices are *rising*.
I've been working with several ARM tablets that work well. They don't seem to be available at overpriced -Buy stores with poor service, but I have found them here:
http://www.eletroworld.cn/
http://www.allpmp.com/index.php
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Yes, if you want mass penetration. No, if you're trying to create an elite super-class.
L M F A O. Good point.
Great call, the things are selling like hotcakes. Gartner says sales will quadruple in 2011.
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Here's what I want:
I want an electronic device approximately 8.5 x 11 inches in size that I can write on with a stylus just like writing on paper.
I need to be able to store some PDF versions of textbooks on it also.
This device would give me one single thing to carry all my college text books and notebooks on.
I want this device to cost no more than $300.
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early adopters paying higher prices, that's what we're seeing right now. In a few years the price for a functional tablet will come down by 20% or 30% due to competition and cost reductions. There's already a fair spread in price and capability, between the extremes represented by the Kindle (starts at $139) and the iPad (up to $829). Smart phones are in the same category. Right now the market is concentrating on making them feature rich. Once they have reached the point of being "good enough" you will see the prices drop from their current $400-600.
I say yes but the market may say otherwise.
It may be that many people have uses for computing devices that don't fit into the desktop or laptop or smartphone models. For example, the iPad can be used to review pictures taken on a digital camera, without the need for a heavy laptop. I've seen them used for task training in industrial plants, and as a handy portable process monitor in a similar plant. Something the size and weight of a clipboard is a lot easier to deal with than a laptop. A thin tablet is easy to handle - particularly if you're not sitting at a desk while you're working.
I don't like how some (iPads) are offered as Wifi only or for 100 more you get 3G. I was under the impression you need to sign up for a plan.
I want both WiFi and cell data for later short-term use like a vacation. Price the one model in the middle of the two and be done with it.
I'm not sure what you don't like about giving the customer the choice of not paying for a 3G radio if they don't want one. For example, a company can save a fair amount of money if they buy the Wifi-only model for use in an industrial plant.
The Wifi-only models don't have a 3G radio in them. The 3G radio costs something. Most likely not $100, but certainly not $0. At some point, there has to be a price difference.
The 3G model can be used without 3G service. You don't have to sign up for anything if you want to use a 3G iPad only over wifi.
It sounds like you're not the target market for this type of product, or you simply don't know much about them.
Putting moderation advice in your
Shit these things are just laying around coffee tables at starbucks.
I thought they were free.
Yes, but they're first gen tech. The first gen is always too expensive, because it covers the R&D costs. Look at Blu-Ray Players circa 2005, which cost $400+ for the cheap ones. Fast forward 5 years, and we've got Blu-Ray players available at grocery stores for $100 a pop. Ultimately, people are paying for the "Ooh Shiny" factor now, but in a few years we'll see the price drop, and you'll be able to pick up a capacitive touch screen 7 inch tablet with 1024x600 resolution and an LTE modem for $150 bucks.
Tablets are a total ripoff right now and, although I'd like one, I refuse to pay more than $200 for one. Plus, I'm not getting anything that doesn't have dual-cores, at least 1 gig of RAM, at least 16 gigs of storage, which should be easy to do for $200. Until then, it's netbook city for me.
You can get Android tablets at $100...I would hardly call that expensive. However, like anything else, you get what you pay for too. This article only focuses on high end tablets...which just like any other product, will always be more expensive than their low end counterparts.
The iPad has been worth every penny so far. $50 a month (500+tax)/12 is less than my smartphone bill, and it's well worth not having to lug around the laptop most of the time. I've saved a ton of money on magazines and books which are now always available in one 'book'. And it's a great little gaming device so I've saved a lot of money I would have spent on much more expensive DS games instead.
Now I'd like to escape the Apple ecosystem, so a ~$500-600 10 inch tablet with Honeycomb would be extremely attractive. And certainly justifiable, especially with the sale of the iPad which is still worth quite a bit used.
The ones without any sense here are the people who can't even imagine the huge number of ways you can use a tablet to improve your life. Unless you're one of the people who really needs a full laptop with you constantly - then it's arguably too much for too little gain.
In a surprise turn of events, Apple is able to undercut most other tablets in price due to the enormous volumes in which they buy components. We are talking billions at a time (almost $8B from Samsung alone), giving Apple volume pricing, and allowing them to come close to cornering the market on 9" LCDs, and get a good chuck of flash at great prices as well. Apple's vlume-pricing power makes Wal-Mart look like a mom-n-pop.
All that cash (over $50B) that Apple has sitting around, losing money on T-Bills, which some shareholders have bitched about, has actually come in handy. Don't question the Jobs.
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Really? Since when does the threat of something being stolen make it too expensive? Your car, your watch, etc are all easy to steal but that doesn't stop many people from spending hundreds or thousands on watches or $50k+ on cars. And since when is a tablet easier to steal than a laptop?
Missing from the article's analysis for the most part was the value proposition -- why do people spend more for an iPad than they might on a laptop which can do more? Simplicity of operation, form-factor, applications aren't massable against silver but have value to the people who buy tablets.
My sense is that they might cost too much to become disposably ubiquitous now, but arguing their current popularity and mindshare won't lead to more models, cheaper parts and the usual march toward lower cost just seems naive.
Right now they are somewhat more expensive because the technology isn't free (flash, capacitive touch screens) and the R&D that goes into their usefulness isn't either.
Why not a future poor man's tablet based on networked storage and remote program execution? Figure the innards at 1/3 of current prices based on reduced parts count, manufacturing improvements and economies of scale and they may be the new $19.99 cell phone.
And even with the 3G one you don't have to pay data service every month (or ever. I haven't paid for a month yet).
Have you ever tried surfing the web with an ingot of silver? Besides whenever I look at photos on my silver tablet, they always seem to look like me! Seriously, this is a silly comparison. I also love the comment about how businesses will never invest in tablets because they are too expensive. My experience is that businesses will invest in whatever computing device will help them do business especially. I see plenty people who travel with tablets because they are easier to carry around than a laptop.
Well, that's not very surprising, since tablets are made to be light. Duh! And I don't think tablets are any more theft-prone that laptops. This whole article retarded.
Someone explain to me why I should pick one over a similarly specced Notion Ink Adam.( $375-549). The comparison to silver is ridiculous; most of the cost of devices is the R&D, manufacturing (not to mention the slick marketing). None of these are components of the cost of silver ingots.
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For what they offer, tablets are too expensive. Part of this is probably NRE, most, I believe, is because they're the next cool gadget and marketeers know that gadgeteers will pay a premium to have one first.
For the purposes of this conversation, I am excluding the sub-$200 tablets that are still running Android 1.X, can't use the market, and have no upgrade path. (waves hand...) Those aren't the tablets you're looking for.
I'm actually looking forward to Microsoft getting into the tablet market and diluting it a bit. I wouldn't buy a Windows 7 tablet on a very large bet, but I suspect that Windows tablet offerings will help drag the price down when millions of people read the reviews, decide to stick with their PC, and leave a glut on the market.
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the fact that for the same weight of silver it's just that, the same weight of silver. There is no development cost, no machining, building, distributing, packaging, etc. I'm not saying that tablets aren't too expensive, but comparing it to a metal that's value is dependent on current market conditions seems kind of silly.
Archos 70 is the answer
A year before the iPad came out, a friend of mine spent well over $2,500 on a MacBook. She saved money from her $10/hr job to buy it. A year later, asked for help writing a resume to try to find a better job -- and it turns out that she didn't even know if she had a word processor installed on it. Literally all she had ever done with it was use iTunes to play music and use Safari to check her mail, look at web pages, and watch music videos.
My friend really wanted an Apple product. She lives in Brooklyn, and she sees all of the other people her age covet those Apple products, and she wanted the status of being able to take out an Apple product in a coffee shop. If the iPad had been around at the time, she would have been able to save almost two thousand dollars, and she'd still end up with a device that serves exactly the same purpose: basic web browsing and video playing, with a big Apple logo that other hip Brooklyn people will use to recognize that she fits in.
I'm not sure if this can be generalized to all tablets in general, but I think it speaks to exactly the right price point for the iPad. It was a brilliant move for Apple to introduce the iPad at a time when people were starting to have less money to spend on computers. People who hesitated about buying, say, a MacBook Air could still buy the cachet of having the latest Apple product. And it hasn't seemed to cannibalize Apple sales at all.
(Disclaimer: I've used a MacBook Pro as my main computer for years, and I really like it. That may or may not have colored my opinion.)
Building Better Software
Archos very nice gen8 Android 2.2.1 tablets are $100 to $349, depending on screen size and features. That seems pretty reasonable to me. I have the 101, and I know four other people that own them as well. At the top end, they cost less than I paid for a Palm PDA seven years ago.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
yes
Right, like the iPhone and iPod. As a shareholder, I can live with these 10-year "fads."
I'm sure you are putting your money where your mouth is and shorting Apple r buying puts, right Nostradamus?
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there's been a wifi-only version of the Galaxy Tab about to be released "any day now" (for the last 6-8 months).
They're just waiting until they've sold the first 100 3G models...
*rimshot*
It's not just the price, it's that there's not enough reasons to get a tablet over a laptop other than the "new shiny thing" reasons. Laptops are just about as portable and can do more. Yes, there's things that tablets are better at (content consumption like books and movies, touch screen applications), but not enough to justify the price. It's out of "impulse buy" range, and it's hard to think of enough use cases that wouldn't be served adequately by a laptop to excuse the expense. At least, that's my opinion. I'll ignore the "weight of silver" comment, because I have no idea where that came from.
Silver's battery doesn't die out in 3 years, its warranty doesn't expire, doesn't require repairs, additional software, or upgrades, and doesn't need a complex manufacturing process. What's your point again?
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For the price of a tablet, you could get an arguably more powerful desktop machine. And on that desktop, you could easily produce any content you wanted, including spreadsheets, CAD/CAM, code... and not be limited by the primitive touch UI paradigm with its clunky virtual keyboard and mouse. Then you could take a break and consume some content, like /., or Half Life.
Tablets are primarily consumption devices because of the one-user-input-fits-all quasi-miracle of the touch screen. When a tablet can run and let me use Blender just as easily as a form factor with discrete user inputs, I might consider one.
One of the basic truths I learned as an economic major was that things are worth what people will pay for them. So, by definition, tablets are certainly not "too expensive", at least not to millions of people. The tired line about 'people with more money than sense' is really just an attempt for the writer to prop up his or her own insecurities. After all, who among us has not spent money on something others would deem frivolous? Amounts of money are relative anyway. What may seem like an outlandish sum to the writer may be an impulse purchase to others. This doesn't mean they have no 'sense', they're just able to focus on other things than money, or at least the amounts of money the writer is focusing on.
Telling people how to spend their money. A computing device even grandmothers can use, but you know better! You'd make a great liberal, telling people how to spend their money.
you're somehow equating tablets to a computing platform which currently they are not. Tablets have been nothing more as of recent than another vector by which marketers collect information about you, cellular companies provide service to you, and software companies ensure a perpetual consumption model is maintained. The price is the entire point.
Good people go to bed earlier.
There is something wrong when Apple is less expensive then other brands. And yes I am aware that for a couple of hundred euros you could buy a cheap android tablet but at which cost sometimes ?
It is really funny when you see the cheap chinese stuff re-branded at an extremely higher price... .
I wanted to dive in into android but to be honest Apple doesn't have anything to worry about if these trends stays... I bought an ZTE blade smartphone (also a lot less expensive then the bigger brands with better specs, better resolution, more ram, gps , capacitive screen,... ) because the same trend seems to occur in the smartphone segment.
Except this article is largely about how new technology is expensive, but prices are *rising*.
OMG. Amazing isn't it? It's called inflation and the devaluation of the US dollar. When both happen, Americans end up paying more for imported goods.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Lenovo Ideapad tablet Still technically an tablet but more of an x86 netbook)
Apple iPad
Considering that their roughly the same price (at the low end) and the Lenovo is going to do just about everything a PC can do (minus heavy duty gaming) vs the iPad, which will do what an iphone can do. I'd stick with the Lenovo. It's just a more open and capable platform. And if you're asking why the Xoom isn't in this comparison? at $600 it's not even in the same league. The Lenovo wins hands down on price alone.
The only things the tablets bring to the table is size and battery life, and I think I'll put up with a power cord and a little heftier weight from both my netbook and my fatter wallet.
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tablets should be priced around $200 or less. the only reason they are so expensive is as a price premium for early adopters. just wait two years and an adequate (as in totally usable with minor issues) android tablet will be dirt cheap.
Some people spend thousands of dollars for their car, or hundreds for fancy clothes, etc... and who tells them that they are throwing money away ?
Yes, nearly nobody actually needs a tablet, but I won't feel guilty for buying a nice piece of technology.
The TFA says
These are early days for the tablet computing field and what's on offer at the moment really does push the boundaries of current technology, so I can forgive high prices to a limit.
Early days? What is he talking about? Apparently he hasn't done his homework and doesn't know anything about what Go Corp did 20+ years ago. Sure they developed an interesting technology in search of a problem, but to say that tablet computing is in its early days is naive. There have been numerous attempts over the decades to make tablets and the fact they are selling so well nowadays shows that they have finally become an acceptable product at an acceptable price.
A tablet is a laptop without a keyboard, with half the case of a laptop, without a hard drive, etc.
It's basically a motherboard and a screen in a case.
A more capable laptop, with all that other hardware, costs $300.
Do the numbers.
[kind of like an SUV for a car mfg: $10k profit in each of those]
Considering that my 46" LED 1600x1080 flatscreen TV, which also has built in media player, internet connection etc costs about the same as a tablet, I would say yes.
They are insanely priced. I could install android on a small computer and make my own bloody 46" tablet... and use it as a coffee table.
Max M - IT's Mad Science
At least my iPad does. I use it for reading and email almost exclusively, and if a half-pound Kindle had email, I'd toss my iPad off a building. Weight and battery life are what matter to me.
Your absolutely right about cost vs. value. I like a bargain as well as the next guy, but even $49 is too much for a product you don't use. And a $1,095 is not too much if, like a laptop, you use it every day of your life for three years or so. A dollar a day--that's the price point I'm looking for.
I'm as ardent an Apple fanboy as ever drew breath, but the iPad is a boat anchor.
As with most such threads on Slashdot, there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding as to why tablets (really the ipad) are bought and loved. It is a fallacy to think that base functionality is the only desirable trait in a product, even assuming a perfectly rational being. A tablet will never have the same quantity of base functionality as a PC, but the way that it implements the tasks that it can perform is so thoroughly enjoyable that people are more likely to do them. A good analogy here would be gyms. It has long been known that sheer volume and diversity in exercise equipment is not as important as creating an environment that is not intimidating. Long time gym fanatics find this ridiculous, yet if you look at actual marketshare the friendly style gyms are dominant. At a certain point raw functionality takes a back seat to experience, because even a purely rational being will recognize the value in enjoying their own time. Similarly, people who really love PCs often have trouble understanding why a tablet could be desirable, because they already thoroughly enjoy their PC. But most people don't. Most people are either indifferent or outright hostile towards their computers. And for them tablets will become the rational choice.
A tablet is a laptop without a keyboard, with half the case of a laptop, without a hard drive, etc.
It's basically a motherboard and a screen in a case.
A more capable laptop, with all that other hardware, costs $300.
Do the numbers.
Wow. So those $300 dollar laptops have 10 hours of battery life when watching video, are powered by ARM processors, have IPS LCD panels with high quality capacitance touch digitizers and SSD flash storage? Do tell.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Neither does a WiFi iPad tethered to my phone.
Who appointed you King of Purchase Prudence? You get to decide what devices people should use when sitting on their couch surfing the Web (and don't want to fry their groins with a laptop), or when selling a car and want to show customers a video while sitting in it? Because you know best?
You anti-Apple types used to call Mac users a small little cult of fanboyism. Now that Apple products are dominant, now their users are sheeple. Apple uses can't win, at least with the haters.
And yes, I have been long AAPL 20 years, and loving it. And no, I don't own an IPad, almighty arbiter of what people should do with their money.
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Oh my God. The silicon die in my microprocessor weighs only 4 grams but cost me hundreds of dollars. Forget silver. CPUs cost more than gold. What's worse is that since buying it, the resale market value of my 2.6GHz 4-core CPU has dropped to almost zero, while gold has appreciated. I feel so foolish. If only I had bought gold instead of this stupid workstation I could be rich instead of online.
Gold is of little practical use. If people didn't use it for jewelry it would have no attractiveness at all. It is hardly ever used in dentistry any more. Only very small amounts are used in electronics, and only for it's conductivity and anti-oxidation attributes. And as an actual currency (as in coins) people used to file small amounts of gold off large numbers gold coins, effectively stealing money from the money itself!
The only reason gold is valuable is because there are enough people out there that have been convinced that it is valuable. The expense of extracting it from the earth doesn't mean it has any value. Fossilized dinosaur shit is rare, very inert, and easy to identify, but you don't see people using it for money. Maybe if Steve Jobs hyped it as the new currency for Mac users it might gain some traction....
Not to mention that, like diamonds, slave labor is used to extract most gold and the market is controlled by cartels with ties to all sorts of human rights abuses all over the world.
Gold isn't money.
Gold is simply a marketable commodity.
The value of gold as real money is a myth perpetuated by people who have a lot of it to sell, while paying maybe 1/10th of the worth of it when they go to buy it back.
LOL..what does the price of silver have to do with the worth of a computer??
Here's all the stuff my tablet (rooted nook color) can do:
Check TV schedules if I wish (although I don't really watch tv..), even watch episodes. ...pretty much anything an Android App can do (there are a few things that still don't work..)
Watch Videos, both over the net and by importing files onto it's SD card.
Listen to music, both streaming and by importing my files onto it's SD card.
Play some casual games
Write notes, stories..
Manage my email/calendar
Find what I want to eat, find restaurants, and make reservations at restaurants
Watch Movie trailers, check local theater schedules, book tickets.
Read books, magazines..
Can a block of silver do all that?
Is a tablet as "good" as a normal desktop? no. A Laptop? No. A Netbook? yes, yes they are.
I'm not sure there's anything I'd want to do on a netbook that I cannot do on my Nook Color. Which also, by the way, happens to be cheaper then MOST netbooks. Sure I don't have a physical keyboard..but the virtual keyboard is perfectly fine. I find it hard to believe anyone is doing any coding on netbooks, and RDP isn't too bad on the nook.
Honestly, after owning my nook color for a while, I really think this is the best piece of tech to come out since the old Rio's. (which really kickstarted the whole portable mp3 craze) Of course, everyone thinks ipad when they think of tablets..but really the best thing out there is the nook. It's a must have for every geek, techie or gadget enthusiast. I imagine the newer and more expensive tablets are "better" in terms of hardware, but the price for what you get..
My AAPL stock is up like 40 fold in the last 20 years. So yeah, I'll go with Steve Jobs' vision instead of yours, if it's all the same to you, Nostradamus.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Because for that price, I can build my own rig that can do everything I want and more. Throw in another $10 and I can put some office chair wheels on it, and BAM, it's mobile.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
its electrical properties in electronics! and even those are being supplanted by better materials
yes.
I thought the iPad was far too expensive for what it is, so I didn't buy one. Then, 6 months ago a drawing contest (that I didn't even consciously enter) gave me one - the $739 model. I can say for sure that the iPad is "worth" income tax on $739. It's a nicely executed package, with enough good software and media available to keep you amused.
Diamonds are too expensive for what they are, as are Rolls Royces, and Kopi Luwak, but if you really want it and can afford it, life is short, make your choices and enjoy them.
In the tablet space, I'm waiting for a 10" MeeGo tablet on Nokia hardware with Verizon network coverage, T-Mobile pricing, and more and better apps than are found in today's Apple App store. That can also play Crysis on max settings at 60fps. According to Ray Kurzweil's extension of Moore's law, that gadget singularity nirvana should arrive in this decade.
Please reply with a clever Kurzweil-Kopi Luwak joke.
What's hilarious is all of the people who forgot the expected base price of the iPad would be $999. Everyone was shocked when it was half of that. And now tablets are expensive?
Yeah, tablets are too expensive. Like the $800 Motorola Xoom. The iPad isn't too expensive, obviously.
Honestly, if I'm going to drop $500 or more on a computer I'd be best off getting a laptop. For the slight inconvenience of the laptop I get (i) the same or larger size screen, (ii) a normal keyboard with tactile feedback, (iii) a larger hard drive, more RAM, faster processor, etc. Comparatively, a tablet only has to offer the lower weight and size, and potentially a built-in cell modem, if you pay the extra $100USD for it and the get a monthly plan as well.
So yeah, as much as I'd like the weight & size of a tablet, it's just not convenient enough to make it worth it. It'd have to be probably 50%-75 of the laptop to make it worth it.
Now, I did get a Nexus One; however, it fails to compare their since the Nexus One phone is far easier to talk to and have at least a semi-private conversation on compared to a tablet, which more likely than not has a data-only cell plan.
That said, volume prices will certainly help. Tablets are now where PCs were 20-30 years ago in that respect.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
The Nook Color is only $250ish, no? Seems to me that it offers a tremendous potential value for a pretty reasonable price, especially if you do the "Honeycomb on an SD card" thing to make it a full-fledged Android-designed-for-tablets device. I'm seriously thinking about trying that myself.
One thing that's been driving up the cost of tablets is the inclusion of all sorts of hardware in 'em. Lots have 3G radios. Why? Who exactly is it that needs 3G in their tablet but doesn't carry a 3G-enabled phone? Why not just let the tablet use the phone's data connection? Likewise camera. I have no problem taking my pictures and videos on another device that I'm going to be carrying anyway, as long as it's very easy to connect 'em.
Web use and media consumption and some other activities are really really pleasant on a well-designed tablet. I think it may be time to find out of the Nook Color is well-designed enough...
I have no clue why tablets are so much more expensive than netbooks. Netbooks have the same or better guts (RAM, CPU, GPU, HD, battery...), richer interfaces (keyboard, touchpad, ports). I don't think the tablet's touchscreen can account for $300-$500 extra, ie 2x to 3x a netbook's price ? I get that tablets fulfill different needs than netbooks, but the materials bill for them is lower... I'd feel screwed if I paid more for a tablet than a netbook, especially several times, and several hundred bucks, more.
I get that R&D and scarcity add to the tablets' price, but still... Anything more expensive than an iPad or Netbook is too expensive for me, and I want to avoid Apple's walled playpen. So I'm biding my time until sanity returns.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
maybe you have darn near a grand to piss away on a fad toy, I dont.
What an astounding conclusion - tablets are more expensive than silver!
What is that trying to tell us? Tablets aren't silver - the two things aren't even remotely comparable. One's a complicated computing device, the other is a simple chemical element.
You can buy data a month at a time, no contract. It's month to month. Plus you can sign up for it or turn it off right on the iPad.
I bought Apple at $16 and $21 in 1991. Today it is around $1400, split-adjusted.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
If his effete, non-threatening musical style excites pre-teen girls, good for them. Would you be happier if they were listening to Skynyrd?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
From the summary
The worst thing might be that the nascent tablet platform gets written-off as a high-priced niche for people with more money than sense.
Why does the editor think that's a bad thing? Does he have tablets to sell?
Just because tablets are presented as a new and popular thing doesn't give them an intrinsic value.
Yes a portable touch-device is useful, but they have been predicted for so long, and never realized before now, it should have given us an inkling there might be some problems...
I've held off buying a tablet in part because of their "lose-ability" and I suspect I'm not the only one.
The worst thing might be that the nascent tablet platform gets written-off as a high-priced niche for people with more money than sense.
You mean, again?
I mean, the whole reason the iPad revitalized (yes, revitalized, not created) the tablet market was that it cost less than $1k at launch, something previously unheard of in a market where $2k computers were the norm.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Just because I am not poor like people who say stupid shit like "he has more money than sense" doesn't mean I'm stupid for buying something that is expensive and that I like.
Geting out of mom's basement is the first step.
..if I put a couple of kgs of steel in my PC and wheel it around on a sack-truck I have the best-mobile-device-evar!!!
How about the ability to use VLC or other GPL programs (banned on iOS, OSX, and Microsoft "app stores")? How about applications implementing functionality that goes beyond what the OS developer thought of? Your comment about APIs is framed badly; no API is perfect, and so rather than being denied access to the functionality of a broken or buggy method call, being able to work around it is better. How about being able to use programs written in more than one language? How about not needing asinine "jailbreaks" to get full hardware access?
End users care about VLC and Firefox. End users care about tethering. End users don't want to wait for a program to get translated completely into another language before it's ported (or wait for any reason, really). End users want to pick their own applications for certain tasks, just like on their desktop operating systems.
Tablets are great for those long shopping trips with the GF/wife... just not sure how applicable this is to the /. crowd.
I have no clue...
You could have stopped right there. You geek tech spec fetishists will are so wrapped up in your own bullshit it's amazing you survive from day to day.
An entry-level iPad is the same price ($500) as a decent smartphone. While they don't replace a smartphone, they certainly are better at some thing.
Now some people compare it to an entry-level laptop, which can be cheaper and have more computing power. Well that's might be a valid comparison if you have to pick one or the other, except that you won't find a laptop below 1kg and with 10h battery life — the last spec being the only one that made me buy an iPad. I used it for a whole transatlantic flight, including shuttling to and from the airport.
>richer interfaces (keyboard, touchpad, ports).
Have you tried the iPad's touchscreen? It's just ten times better than a crummy netbook touchpad.
without 4 extra packs.
Yes, blame apple for creating a device that people like and that you (or your favorite company) didn't manage to design first.
Its no wonder this industry is so myopic, nerds can't manage to see the world outside their cubicle.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
You can frame almost anything in "...is it to expensive?" Are smart phones too expensive? Smart phones probably are too fancy and expensive for most people's usage but they sell to a certain segment anyway.
Its fine if a hardware platform is "expensive" if they can find a market that has users that are satisfied and producers that can make a profit. This question of expensive is navel gazing that serves little purpose beyond click rates.
I paid €600 for my Wifi 32G iPad. I use it every day for, in order: reading books and PDFs, browsing the web, mail reading, notetaking and mindmapping, watching videos. I could do that, and used to do that, on a netbook. But I had to buy a new one anyway, and what I can't do with the iPad I can do better than on a laptop on my workstation.
€600 for something you use all the time is not expensive.
At this point, anything that has no recurring subscription costs sounds like a good deal to me. The wifi-only iPad is $500, which seems like a lot compared to a $149 smart phone, but the phone may have a 2-year contract that brings it closer to $2000.
What part of, "And no, I don't own an IPad" can't you comprehend? You've just undermined your claim that you aren't an Apple hater, being so quick to disparage me as an Apple-owning hipster, when I clearly said I don't own an iPad. I'm typing this on a shitty Dell, which would be a paperweight if I hadn't replaced the motherboard, and if I didn't force my CPU fan to run at max RPM so it wouldn't overheat again due to poor engineering, wishing I had bought a highly-rated Macbook.
I realize reading comp is not your strong suit, but I'd suggest you go read the original post. He was suggesting the iPad was some sort of niche or fad. I told him why he was wrong based on sales and Apple's iabbility to meet demand. You're the one - who apparently didn't do to well on the "the main point of this article was" SAT questions - who somehow extrapolated that I said good sales means good product. In this case, it's just a correlation.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I'm not sure how this is a surprise to anyone, the latest toys are always expensive until manufacturers get economies of scale. I still remember when flat screen TVs were $15,000 roughly 12 years ago and now it seems like you can almost find them for free in a box of cracker jacks.
and look up the word "officious."
Then you can tell me why a device running a different operating system is somehow "better quality," LOL.
Your preferences != better.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
APK == OFF TOPIC TROLL!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
1 Check the price of an average netbook. 2 Compare its features to the ones of a tablet. 3 Answer yourself.
Something to consider is that most answers here will be "it's not too much" because most people here are privileged when it comes to both salary and technology.
Tiger Blooded Bi-Winning Machine
Tablets are too expensive. I have the money, now, to buy one, but I'm not doing so because of price is higher than I want to pay.
Why are they too expensive?
There are unavoidable costs like R&D and the cost of the newest/lightest/thinest hardware.
There are avoidable costs, also, like massive marketing campaigns and the cost of the most powerful new/thin/light hardware.
I mention *power* in particular because it seems as though the tablet-interested industry seems to believe that potential tablet buyers want a hand-held desktop PC. But to the best of my understanding, we don't. We really just want a netbook made into a tablet that has sufficient power to burden streaming Flash movies and Google Maps. Those are obviously not the only things a tablet will be used for, but they are the benchmarks.
The ability to watch 1080p movies full screen without lag is not a priority for many. Most people have televisions, desktop computers, projectors, and/or laptops to fill that entertainment need. And an incredible number just don't give a damn about 1080p video! I sure don't!
What a tablet PC needs:
--A moddable UI (I want thin wire frames and text... no iGraphics)
--A MicroSD slot
--2-3 USB slots
--8-30GB SSD (user-replaceable)
--2x RAM slots with max 4GB RAM (user-replaceable)
--3-hour intense-usage battery life, 5 hours just web-surfing without video/HQ Graphics, 10+ hours in e-book mode. (battery must be user-replaceable)
--9-12" diagonal screen
--A decent touchscreen keyboard program
--A processor that plays flash video and displays zooming functions in Google Maps sufficiently, but not one that will break the bank.
--Wireless Networking (WiFi)
--Foresightful cooling (like optional screw-in external heatsinks)
--No contracts
--3.5mm Microphone-in, 3.5mm sound-out
--External, manual volume control (not software-controlled)
--External, manual brightness control (not software-controlled)
Those things are needed... here are the extras that drive up the cost and should be offered away from the base model:
--3/4G Connectivity
--Larger stock SSD
--More stock RAM
--More-powerful processor
--Front-facing Camera
--Rear-facing Camera
In a perfect world, my tablet would also run Ubuntu with a tablet-specific UI flawlessly, but the world's not perfect.
The weight.
After reading with that thing for an hour, it feels as if I just got back from the gym! So if you include the gym membership you could give up, the iPad actually pays for itself in less than a year!
This has been another installment of simple answers to stupid questions.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
We've a few faculty that have purchased iPads. For all of them it is just a toy. They all continue to keep and use their desktop and laptop computers, one of them even has a netbook in addition to his laptop that he still keeps and uses. I've never seen them do any work with them, never even use them for a presentation which seems to be where they'd be most useful. They always travel with their laptops since they need them.
So the tablets are just tech gadgets, just toys. None of them have presented a convincing case as to what they want it for, what they'd use it for.
Nothing wrong with toys, but call it what it is. I've heard lots of hype about how amazingly useful they are in terms of productivity and so on but I've never met anyone who replaced their laptop with one for doing work. In actuality they all just get used for noodling around with, and often set aside.
Our student is the funniest. He's a big time Apple zealot and of course got one as soon as it came out. Talked up a storm about how awesome it was and how it would revolutionize so many things, including gaming because "You can use all 10 fingers!" (apparently I don't on my keyboard according to him). He'd bring it to work all the time and usually use it to do e-mail, it was amusing watching him use the on screen keyboard at about 10-20wpm when he can type 80+ on a real keyboard.
However these days, the iPad is not seen at work. He doesn't bother to bring it in anymore. Apparently as "revolutionary" as it may be, a normal computer is still what is called for here. The reality is, of course, he got it as a toy and it isn't useful to carry it in and now that the shiny new factor has worn off it just sits around his house.
Many tablets today are netbooks with no keyboard but a tactile display. But their price is about 300 dollars more. Guess what, I just bought a netbook! The other thing is those tablets are way more closed than the netbooks. So yes, tablets today are basically clumsy phones. Wake me up when a good open Linux tablet is available.
This is how you make your brilliant points? By flaming? Here's a clue: Write to people as if you were in a room with them, and you will be more persuasive. If what you are writing would get your ass kicked in person, perhaps you aren't maximizing your rhetorical skills.
I quoted the stock performance because the guy was calling the iPad a fad, and he made a crack about a fool being parted from his money. Quite the contrary, Apple has made me quite a bit. I heard this fad nonsense about iPods and iPhones, and I'm glad I didn't listen. Listening is a good rhetorical device as well. I never said stock performance makes the iPad a good product. It's just that the iPad is a good product, so it sells, so the stock does well.
Now go take a chill pill, Internet tough guy.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I really love tablets, and iPads, Xooms... are not expensive, at least they are not as expensive as they were.
I remember going to a shop looking for a tablet and only having TabletPCs that were $2000, weighted too much(several KILOGRAMS!!), clunky, moving parts as the first tablets did not sold enough they made them laptop conversions. No lasting battery, no touchscreens, no accelerometer, no gyros, no GPS,no 3G, no cameras, no compass, no microphones. THAT WAS EXPENSIVE.
The most expensive iPad is $700 , this man says this is almost $1000, GIVE ME A BREAK!! It remembers me a guy that was whining in the airport because his plane from London to LA was getting 15min late because of fog. While I was praising how human ingenuity has made a plane going off without visibility possible, this man believed he had a divine rights over the weather. What the hell had done this man to advance tech so he feel so entitled to have it all. Ten years ago it was impossible to fly it those conditions!(only expensive military aircraft could do it)
Nevermind, PCWorld is just Microsoft advertising company, they want you to buy laptops with Windows on it.
You know what else is "too" expensive? Fancy clothes, fancy cars, fancy food... basically, anything you don't want to pay that much for is, by definition, too expensive.
And the comparison to silver is just plain dumb. OK, so silver is cheaper, and you know what else? It does FUCKING NOTHING but sit there, displacing its volume in air, and reacting passively to Earth's gravity. Can it show you pictures? Send messages? Play movies and music? Can it do anything at all other than hurt your foot when dropped?
Saying that printer ink costs more than gold is interesting because printing is such a mundane task and ink has been around for centuries. (In fact, homo sapiens were using ink before they ever placed a value on gold.) Saying a ridiculously complex device, packed full of the finest microscopic circuits China can produce in volume, costs roughly the same as the least valuable "precious metal" by weight, isn't quite as interesting.
The one interesting thing is that you can indeed trade twenty pre-1964 silver dollars for a base iPad. :-)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I use a Dell Streak, (NOT 1.6, but 2.2!) and it's a great device. I don't have to dig out my laptop just to find something on my companies website, I can read my service manuals, stored on the SD card. It's a great "little" device. Yes I think they are overpriced, but, laptops were in the 2,000.00 (US) range not that long ago also.
If your work computer (laptop) can really be replaced by a tablet, then you don't do much real work with it.
I hardly think this is true for everyone who uses a laptop for their work. With the exception of typing, tablets can do a large chunk of work - especially pretty basic stuff like email, scheduling, word processing, excel files, anything else people did with computers 5 years ago, etc. For many people who currently lug around a laptop, it might be better just to buy a dock for your tablet with a keyboard at work. Then you would only need to carry around the much smaller, lighter, and generally more carry-around-friendly tablet.
Most of the work I do on my computer is using LaTeX or the web. As neither of these is very processor hungry or niche, that could potentially be just about any tablet. My hope is to buy one, use it mostly for fun and portability, (like as an e-reader, gaming device, etc.), and then dock it at work and type. Definitely easier than a notebook.
Silver may be less expensive than a Tablet, but next year (or next week in the case of Android Tablets), it will still have that value.
An iPad will only hold it's value for 1 year; and Android tablet will only hold it's value until the next Android tablet is released.
It is the price of gold that changes, not the value.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You are very intimidating from behind the safety of your keyboard.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Not only that but the silver will more or less retain it's value, while that tablet will be worth almost nothing in 3 years.
Long MSFT then?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
They still cost much less than a similar weight of inkjet toner, so it's not as bad as it could be.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
It should also be noted that owning a hunk of silver doesn't cost you an additional $30/month data plan.
Yes, tablets are too expensive. But it's early days for them yet. Blame Apple's marketing department for making a bleeding-edge gadget into a mainstream must-have item. They'll stabilize in price eventually.
Do not confuse the price of something with its value. I'm sure you can say similar things for other items as well (cars, (sale/power) boats, etc.), many of which also depreciate with time. You do not buy gadgets for an ROI: you purchase them to either (a) solve a problem, or (b) for entertainment purposes (which is solving the problem of boredom in a way).
Apple's marketing is simply telling people about a new electronic device that has a simple interface, with minimal maintenance/patching/malware concerns. Honestly, I don't think a lot of people need a "real" computer: e-mail, surfing, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter (i.e. "social networks"). Those four activity groups probably cover the majority of people out there. With the Apple App Store you can then add things like games as well.
Is there any reason why /really/ need a full computer? Or if you already have one, in a multi-person household, why bother getting a second instead of just getting a tablet/iPad or two?
A product that's selling faster than it can be made, and consuming the majority of the world's supply of its ingredients can be considered neither overpriced nor a failure.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I asked you to find me a laptop (implied, today) with 10h battery life, to point how much it costs if it exists at all.
Except tablets aren't exactly new technology. They're mostly just an amalgam of already existing technology in a somewhat novel form factor. That being said, their prices aren't particularly unreasonable right now. It's just, they won't be practical until they're about the price of a Kindle.
I bought an Archos 70 on release day for $250. Capacitive screen, stereo, microsd support, hardware acceleration for every popular video codec. Same price as a netbook but slower, smaller, lighter, and thinner. I use it for all the things I used to use my netbook for. The only concession I have had to make is that although flash video works its a pain. There is supposed to be hardware support for flash playback on the way though. Do I think other tablets are a waste? yes. I'm not trying to be an infomercial, I just bought one of the only sane tablet on the market. The only other sane tablet IMO is a hacked nook color. If I had to do it over again it would be a hard choice. Better hardware on the nook but software side its much weaker. No hardware video support and you have to count on users for operating system work.
By thinking of gold as a 'standard' many people seem to imbue gold with magical economy mending powers.
There is nothing standard about the price or value of gold. Look at how wildly it has fluctuated in the last decade. If the dollar were tied to an ounce of gold, how many hours would you have to work to earn 1 dollar? If the US were on a gold standard right now the dollar would be so expensive that no-one would be able to afford our food products or industrial output. The economy would be in shatters.
The country that issues the paper money controls that money supply and the value of that money is set in world markets based largely on the strength of that countries' economy. If the US were to go to a gold 'standard' it would be giving up that control.
The US is not the largest gold producing nation. South Africa and China would have more control of the value of the dollar.
The gold 'standard' is in no way, shape, or form standard. It should be called the gold 'Variable'.
"You could take all the gold that's ever been mined, and it would fill a cube 67 feet in each direction.
For what that's worth at current gold prices, you could buy all -- not some -- all of the farmland in the United States. Plus, you could buy 10 Exxon Mobils, plus have $1 trillion of walking-around money.
Or you could have a big cube of metal. Which would you take? Which is going to produce more value?"
Taking that for what it is (and as far as I've googled around, its a reasonably accurate statement of values of the various entities), despite the what the libertarian echo chamber says, gold is way OVER valued, not under...
In the future they should make them heavier. That should fix things.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Tablet computers are cheap for the hardware you get. It's the services that are expensive. Data service is $12.50/GB, minimum of $25, for iPhones. (AT&T is in trouble for overbilling on iPhone traffic) And you can't even run an ad blocker. Then there's Apple's own "store" system. Over the life of the product, those charges will dwarf the hardware cost.
"Creates a direct connection between your wallet and and our bank account".
Like the next generation of iThing being made of silver or gold. Target demographic would probably eat that right up.
As an added bonus, silver one could be marketed as "color-changing" - from silver to black.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Most of the comments here and elsewhere say something to the effect of, "I already have a smartphone and a laptop, so why do I need it?". The thing is, a lot of people have neither, or one or the other. Much as crossover vehicles are neither car nor SUV, people who could benefit from either but only want one find them a reasonable compromise. I have a powerful desktop computer. I also have an iPad. My laptop died, and I haven't bothered to replace it. For couch surfing, emailing, web browsing, and playing an occasional game, the iPad is awesome. I won't suggest that it will replace your laptop that you use for Office documents, but honestly, I never, ever write Office documents at work or at home, and the things I would use a laptop for (enumerated previously) the iPad does very well.
- Vincit qui patitur.
You can get a fully functional notebook for $399 where you can have a full keyboard and do PRODUCTIVE work. You can get a 4G card and you're in business. Why bother with $800 tablet.
I'm not really a big proponent either way. But, a friend of mine who is very pro-gold likes to point out that the price of a lot of staples (bread, milk, that sort of thing) has been *very* stable against the price of gold over the long-term. That is if a loaf of bread cost XXX grams of gold in YYYY year, it most likely costs very close to XXX grams of gold today.
He also talks about inflation (driven strongly by fiat currency he says) as a hidden tax.
It seems to me that tablets are being priced as bigger and more expensive phones.
Phones have a high price because they are putting a lot of technology into a small package. Also they are often subsidised by telephone companies, so a phone that "costs" £400 is actually bought for £50 or less. A tablet is just putting the phone technology into a larger package, with a larger screen, so the phone companies charge £500 or more.
Except the tablets aren't being subsidised by the phone companies, so the whole cost is being passed direct to the consumer (indeed you have to pay a premium on your data package to use the tablet's functionality).
Instead, tablets could more properly seen as cut-down netbooks. They have slower processors, less storage, don't have a keyboard, aren't much more portable, can't run a normal operating system and therefore can only run a limited set of applications. Netbooks can be bought for £200 (and some can be had for free with a data plan, like phones).
So tablets are less useful than netbooks but are much more expensive. They are also less portable than phones, with a similar level of functionality, yet cost more.
I honestly cannot understand why anybody would spend their own money on one. The successful marketing of these products is second only in breathtaking scope and astonishing success to the scam of shipping bottled water around the globe from countries which have excellent quality tap water to other countries which also have excellent quality tap water.
take the silver and the tablet, put them in a hot oven for an hour, then see which one retains it's value. I can use a silver nib for a pen and then write, draw and calculate, so why buy a tablet when the silver will last sooooo much longer.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
With a bit of hacks I can hookup an external monitor and a keyboard + mouse on my phone, and run linux off it. I imagine the new more powerfull tablets coming out now (with hdmi) will be able to do this a hell of a lot better.
Once I get this, I don't see any reason to bring my laptop around. I don't need that much power for 99.9% of the stuff I do.
For executives who spend most of their work-day running from meeting to meeting, the boons of constant connectivity, super-portability, and a large screen for reviewing metrics are a huge win.
I work at a major tech company. While the vast majority of the employees have no business using an iPad for anything other than iPad development, it's a staple among execs. It slips in a brief-case, can display large pretty charts/email/calendars, provides a better interface than a blackberry or iphone for answering emails, is pretty much instant-on, has 3G so they can use it on the road, and it can be passed around at a formal or informal meeting in a way that a laptop really can't.
I don't own one, but I understand why these people do. I also understand why other non-execs at my work have them; it pays to resemble the boss.
The other killer app that I don't think is fully realized is medical services. Nurses/doctors spend large chunks of the day going from patient to patient, reviewing files, and looking up symptoms. The last four doctor's offices I've visited have all had computers in the room for the practitioner to look stuff up on, and every single one of them does so. None of what they do couldn't be handled just as easily on an iPad, and the aforementioned portability/constant connectivity would be super-useful.
Being expensive just makes them a luxury item, which increases their demand.
Table-ized A.I.
I find it funny that all people can talk about is the Ipad. We used tablet computers in our industrial plant over 8 years ago... A laptop style computer with a touch screen... Its nothing new... We had touch screens in the 90s.
Groan. We've been hearing "they're too expensive!" since 5 seconds after the iPad was announced.
Depends on your application.
If a smartphone's ~4" screen is good enough for you, great.
If a notebook's weight, origami, and ~4hr battery life is good enough for you, great.
If a desktop's raging horsepower and screen size, tethered to the wall and weighing lots, is good enough for you, great.
Those are not sarcastic comments.
Some of us want a usably large screen of the sub-notebook variety (~10"), ultralight weight (~1.5lbs), right-now setup (no unfolding & balancing, instant on), always-on power (~11 hours), and always-connected (3G). Ergo the tablet, iPad in particular, fulfills some people's needs.
Mine paid for itself in about a month. That's not "too expensive", that's cheap.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Why? The numbers are pointless.
Does the laptop have a touch screen? No. It is thus incapable. Not more capable, just simply incapable.
Hard drive? Really? You count that as a plus? Compared to flash memory/SSD?
Yes, it is hard for the old timers to understand how tablets fit a need that a laptop doesn't. Just like it was hard to understand why someone would want one of those expensive laptops back when they were new.
You can get Android tablets at $100...I would hardly call that expensive
Tablets without cellular data lack access to Android Market without legally questionable hacks. How is one supposed to find applications for one of these tablets if the publisher of an application provides only Market URLs, not direct APK downloads? No, switching to a workalike application is not always possible; only Chase's app lets you fax checks to your Chase checking account. Compare the $250 Archos 43 to the $230 iPod touch: the limited selection of Archos' included AppsLib pales in comparison to that of Apple's App Store.
My netbook runs for about 8 hours
My Inspiron Mini 10 runs for 3. Which make and model should I have bought instead?
Pffffttttt... Of course, if you are lazy and refused to shop around and look for tablets other than those you can read about in an article summary you would think that they are expensive. Archos who have been making mp3 players since slightly before apple started have some great budget tablets. I have an Archos 70 Internet Tablet and after having it for 2 months I do not regret the purchase. Now don't get me wrong, android tablets are not for the faint of heart. Android 2.2 is not made for tablets, that is for sure. I had to load the regular android market on my tablet before I could download any useful apps. Some apps don't work at all and others will not display properly. All of the problems I have with the device are OS related, I am surprised how well the hardware works. So grandma would still need to shell out $500+ to get something useful, but if you are into computers and don't mind hacking around budget tablets are easy to find.
Better materials such as copper, if you look at the electrical properties. Silver is a better conductor than copper, but only marginally so, and rarely worth the improvement. AFAIK, gold (plating) is used in electronics because it is inert. Silver contacts would be electrically nice, but they tarnish eventually.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I imagine that there are significant numbers of businesspeople whose support staff sit around screaming at articles like this while they print off hundreds of pages of emails and documents each day: *Why, why will you not make us one that will show a whole piece of letter-sized paper??*
Until somebody makes a tablet that will show an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper natively, there will be a niche market which remains unfulfilled. This niche market won't accept crappy hardware but it will absofuckinglutely tolerate high prices and support subscription fees.
It's a cash cow waiting to be milked and right now the guys over at Kno are falling all over themselves in order to go after broke-ass students - to help them avoid carrying textbooks to class. In my day, we had a better solution: don't buy the textbook unless you have to and even then at the very last possible moment, and don't think for a second that any teacher expects you to bring it to class even if you do bother.
meh.
Are laptops just too expensive?
Are cell phones just too expensive?
Are tablets just too expensive?
Oh, they are? Well, hold your horses. Prices will go down eventually. In the meantime, get some more use our of your laptop.
Fucking whiners.
I read Slashdot on the bus too! Not sure I'd want an iPad though. It's a 2 handed device. With a phone I can sip coffee in one hand and peruse websites in the other. Or squish up when a portly passenger sits beside.
The iPhone4's 326ppi may be excessive but the more common 480x800 would seem a nice balance for one-handed operation.
Next story.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The iPad is definitely one of my favourite products of all time, and thats without it fitting into my daily schedule.
For reading, for showing photos, video to people, its INCREDIBLE. When speaking with people about Veganism, I have photos and video on my iPad, ready to be shown to anyone who brings up the subject. Its a simple matter of having the photos in folders in one place on my computer, and then as I plug in an iOS device, BOOM, they are synced over nicely. Very, very useful, worth buying a tablet, in this scenario, for showing information alone. Bugger having some kind of laptop in public, perhaps on the street, "oh, the screen is at the wrong angle, I'll just tilt it like this, oh, the hinge is loose now, oh, its big, hey, whats all that fan noise...", blergh!
A friend suffered a serious accident, and was in hospital for several weeks. I lent his father my iPad to give him, he had a great time, with his music, photos, video, apps... all on this incredibly thin metal and glass device, that he could sit upright with, lie beside it etc. For someone in hospital, its the perfect device. A laptop could in no way compete.
To hear people bad mouth "tablets" as some kind of snobby fad, its rather like hearing those who bashed the original Macintosh, "oh, who needs a GUI, what, you're too good for a dos prompt?!? SNOB!", or those who just WOULDNT get what made the original iPod so incredible. "but I'd rather sit in my favourite chair and listen to my B&O system running from extra thick vinyl...whats the point of a small device that you can take everywhere, and listen to your 100GB+ of unabridged audiobooks read by Stephen Fry etc....as well as every song you've ever loved..."
My breathless review of the iPad excluded Fieldrunners HD, the most fun you can have in bed!
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Yes, a more accurate comparison would be the forthcoming Eee Pad Slider. It's like an iPad but slides out to a physical keyboard - with a similar price tag due to the constraints you mentioned.
Netbooks are evolving. Capacitive touchscreens will become standard within a year or so. Some will have optional keyboards. Some will run Android. Some will run Windows 8 for ARM or even x86. Some will dual boot into 'desktop' Linux.
Is the rent just too damn high?
So, basically it is a device that serves two purposes. First, it allows you to annoy people more efficiently. Second, it is a wonderful entertainment device. /s
All that for only $500+, color me impressed.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
First, it allows you to annoy people more efficiently.
Yeah, people really get annoyed when I leave 16GB iPads loaded up with Vegan Apps, movies, documentaries and podcasts under their windscreen wiper, but I as a "self important" Vegan, it must be done, regardless of time spent, or my personal expenses. ;-)
Awful huh?
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It is very uncommon to find Xeons buried in the ground. I don't know where Intel mines, but I have never seen a fully functional CPU in its pure, natural state.
Expensive compared to what? netbooks are about $100 less, are bulkly, do less, and like a tablet (so far) are not a replacement for a laptop. The price justification is all in that huge TOUCH screen you get. I remember when a few years ago 40 inch flatscreen TV's were $1500-2000 now they are less then $850. Yet even at the double price point you saw them in homes everywhere. Convertible/tablet laptops a year ago generally served a $1000 premium for the privilege of a touch screen Vs a comparable non touchscreen laptob.
You can't look at this as that ~20% (made up number) of the population that actually NEEDS a laptop for work, and or work travel. You have to look at all the OTHER uses it has.
a 360 cost $300+ at release after accessories. I am temped to blacklist TFA's author from ever reading again because this is soo far off base, just news filler dribble really. Tablets are selling well for there place right now, and forgoing company's fucking up the market, it will only get better. I am not a apple fan, put if all those people I know that have bought a smart phone at least one a year can afford that, they cam afford t his
If you're allowed to average over a long enough time for "the long term" stats, or if you're allowed to cherry pick years to compare with (without showing the data for the other years), then yes, any X can look stable compared to any Y, since you're smoothing out and/or ignoring the bumps in the graph.
But it's not rocket surgery to see the flaw in that reasoning. Basic algebra, for example: if a = b and b = c, then a = c. Gold's dollar price has gone ridiculously high lately, but the price of other staples in dollars hasn't changed much. Therefore we can say that the price of gold in [other staples] has, indeed, gone ridiculously high lately. You can do the same math for the previous gold spike (and the gold *crash* that happened in between), and you can repeat this for other the other periods that people say gold prices were in flux.
I bought a Thinkpad X41 Convertible Tablet 6 years ago with Emperor Linux on it. It's quite light, and has all the virtues of a tablet and all the advantages of a laptop. It's the first computer I've ever had that I feel emotional about.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
compete with netbooks or small laptops. Yes they are light and trendy and fine for consumption of media or entertainment. But thats about it. They are currently too pricey and issues around ebooks + DRM + copy rights are to limited or messy.
At our high school we have put 80 netbooks (on rolling locked carts) into classrooms and are already seeing results in remedial math and reading classes (coupled with online learning programs). We picked up 20 iPads on a grant ... I'm still working on getting them kitted out for student use. We just dropped our Win 7 image on the netbooks and in they went.
I don't have a tablet yet, but I can see clearly how I would use one:
- reading news/books on the train. I can do this with my android phone now. The comparison of phone to tablet for this is a bit of a wash. However, netbooks/notebooks don't suffice. You need to be sitting down, and the keyboard is a useless, awkward mass. On a crowded train, I can't even get a notebook out of my bag.
- watching videos/playing games on the train. I do this less often, but a tablet would be marginally better than a phone. Again, the notebook form-factor is useless and awkward.
- Showing videos to my classes on the in-room monitors/projectors. The tablet has more possibilities than does the phone (USB host, external memory, more video connectors). Again, the keyboard is unneeded.
- Light document editing at my desk -- using a USB keyboard I leave at the school. Here the notebook has an advantage in terms of software available, but if google docs suffices for lessons plans, then the tablet is just as good.
- Email from my desk. Same as notebook as long as I have the aforementioned USB keyboard.
- Web browsing from desk.
So, for me, the tablet does double duty -- PVR/notebook and transit eReader/PVR/game/email/web device.
The price, though. It seems to me that the touchscreen and the novelty are the big differences between netbooks and tablets (that, and the missing keyboard). So I'd expect a USD 100 or so premium for the tablet. Notion Ink's Adam is looking like the ideal device at the moment, though they need to demonstrate long-term viability and service and support (like offering an upgrade to honeycomb soon with the ability to forego their Eden UI entirely.)
Tablets are expensive by the pound?
Check out iPod Nanos: $3,866.33 per pound -- that's ten times more expensive than an iPad. By the pound, anyway.
It's a ridiculous comparison, but I did it anyway ...
http://peat.org/abtp/
It's not new technology.
It's a small laptop without a keyboard. Or a large smart-phone (where smaller = more expensive).
Touchscreen technology has been around for ages.
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You might be surprised to learn that weight is an important factor for most users of *mobile* devices.