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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."
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 agree. I was beginning to doubt that until a particular friend of mine went out and bought one. When it first came out he was excited by it, but he said that he was going to wait for the "killer ap" to come out for it. Six months later he went out and bought one. I asked him what the "killer ap" was and he said, "Well, it does this and it does that." All things that fell into one of three classes. Either his laptop or his Iphone already did them in ways that totally suited his needs or it was a functionality that was purely for play. He bought one because his sense of "cool" could not stand being without one any longer.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I don't understand gold either.
There are many reasons for it. NPR's "Planet Money" did a podcast asking the question "Why Gold?", and came to the conclusion that even if they had it to do all over again, gold is pretty much the best metal for using as a currency. It is rare, but not too rare, it is very inert, and it is easy to identify.
Podcast: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/07/131363098/the-tuesday-podcast-why-gold
I didn't get it before until I listened to that.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Gold allows money-based trade, rather than barter. Unlike fiat currencies, it is very hard to counterfeit, and thus devalue, therefore it can hold its value predictably for long periods of time.
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.
That's why fiat currency is so great. It's exactly as rare as we decide it should be.
You mean the government can do so; it's called currency/market manipulation, and it tends to not work out so well for the little people.
It can be made easy to identify and hard to forge.
Money is historically very, very easy to forge. Gold, on the other hand, can't be in a fashion that some simple tests can verify.
It's not exactly inert, but in a paper currency, that's a benefit, as the supply can be reduced through attrition.
How is that a benefit? It then takes value out of the economy (again) to print more. You've absolutely no way to get a positive ledger simply through the operation of the system, without stealing/pulling from someone else's ledger.
If you view "currency" as something to trade for goods, fiat currency is bad. IF you view it as a tool for manipulating markets, fiat is great.
The only problem comes in when people can't agree how rare the currency should be. Some people think we have too much, some think there's too little, others think there should be no choice in the matter and it should be set based on a pile of gold bars stashed away being unhelpful to anyone.
And this is pretty much the exact reason we (and other countries) are having economic issues right now. Governments have been manipulating the economy through fiat currencies for the better part of the past 100 years, and it's starting to hurt due to how accurately it represents reality.
And who said gold bars stashed away was the way to do it? Gold itself, as currency, seems to make sense to me. If you need a smaller denomination, break it up or encapsulate it in stamped epoxy, or something. Prices and denominations could be in fractions of an ounce (or whatever metric you want to use).
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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.