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Tablet Makers Try To Beat iPad's $500 Pricetag
The iPad has sold extremely well at a starting price of $500 but "that kind of pricing doesn't work for many tablet vendors," says a story at CNET. And recent price drops reflect this. It's been a rough year for tablet makers, and it's not even Black Friday yet.
I think Amazon pulled it off with the $200 Fire.
There has never been an "tablet market". There is an "ipad market" now. It didn't exist when Apple initially launched the iPad, but they managed to "open the market" (clearly that legion of loyal fans had a role on that).
The rest of the vendors don't have that critical mass of early adopters, and/or their product isn't as good (or perceived as good) as the iPad.
The people who can afford them, pick iPads, or nothing at all. The rest of us have higher priorities than buying second-class tablets.
This is changing. Tablets are finding a place in business especially in places where portability has value and you don't want or need the power of a full laptop implementation.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
I'm never sure what to make of a statement like this. Are there people outside of insane asylums who think that Apple has some sort of a lock on any market?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Other vendors are pushing products that are feature complete, but not design complete. You can't sell high end stuff in the same way as you sell low end stuff. For end stuff you need attention to detail and a presentation that reassures people it is not some random cheap product sold at a higher margin.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Well, I wouldn't know, it's been so long since we've been outside the asylum, hasn't it, Bats? WAHOOOHOOOHAHAHAH!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Or, they could just apply absurd levels of marketing (especially product placement) to convince everyone that the cool people use your product...
Great Intellect...
Seriously? The iPhone 4S has presold better than any iPhone before it
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
Now they just seriously fumbled the iPhone ball by ...
... selling out the complete stock of the new device in only a couple days?
Nothing says failure like profit. Nothing says fumble like tripping over piles of gold.
I don't have a dog in the fight; I have no desire to own a smart phone. But I do like laughing at the android folks, those guys are hilarious. I hope they win, they have a cool idea, ethic, and philosophy, but that doesn't mean the rest of us aren't laughing at them.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Have you ever considered that there are jobs out there where you don't sit behind a desk?
That can't hurt. There is a reason marketers make big bucks. Still, if you want to maintain sales you have to deliver value.
Considered it? He probably can't even imagine it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Kindle-like devices are market-transforming for the eBook market, but from the standpoint of the computer market, they're basically a niche player. 10" tablets are big enough to replace many uses of a laptop or desktop computer and handle the equivalent of a full sheet of paper, so they're not just supporting niche applications like Angry Birds or phone-sized mini-browsers, they're enough to do full-sized web browsing. Maybe a 7" tablet can steal part of that market at half the price, but I'm skeptical.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm not amazed, at how out of touch we all are. I'm amazed at how some people think the entire world should think like them.
The list goes on and on, but all the people who ask the question don't care at all about any of that. Pity, they should.
Why should they? That's a serious question, I'm not trying to troll here or be flamebait.
The demographic for the iPad is completely divorced from the features you have listed as the main reasons you went for a non-iPad tablet, and given that you can get those other types of tablets, and the users getting iPads are also getting what they want, why should they care?
If they want to program on it, or run Python apps, or install custom firmwares and so on, then there's a market that already caters to that. If they want what the iPad does, then they have the iPad.
Just because the iPad doesn't fit your use case doesn't mean that anyone who doesn't want to do the things you do with computing equipment is somehow wrong, or that they should care about what you care about.
Don't get carried away. Desktops are not dead and aren't going away. Pads, Laptops and Desktops all serve different purposes. When you need the cpu power, massive ram and expansion capabilities of a tower a pad isn't going to cut it.
Sure, they've been around a while, and we had various attempts at getting the pen-based computing market going since at least the early 90s. But they're typically tied up into an integrated vertical business model of applications, and never get the economies of scale it takes to be a mass-market product, and typically cost significantly more than a notebook computer. That's ok if you're Fedex making your drivers more efficient, but it's still really a niche market.
On the other hand, taking an iPad or competitor and adding a "fill out the forms" app? Easy.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Not everyone is an enthusiast. Some people just want to play. I like open source but really how open is the Thrive? Can I install debian or even Meego on it? If I can't then it's a semi-open system at best. If I can wipe windows off my laptop and install linux on it then I should be able to on my tablet shouldn't I?
Sign me up right now to fail just as badly as Apple has here.
Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
I can program it without paying a fee.
You can program the iPad without paying a fee. There's a fee if you want to publish to the store, however.
To get the best tools for developing for iOS, it's true that you want a Mac with Xcode, but it's not your only option anymore.
It's open source.
Could you point me to the Honeycomb source? Last I heard, it's never going to be available.
It's Linux.
Why is this valuable? The kernel that runs the Thrive is Linux, but that's almost completely irrelevant. For underlying OS code, I'm going to prefer that which does the job best. That might be Linux, or it might be something else. "It's Linux," smacks of the same kind of kool-aid drinking of which Apple users are so often accused.
I can run Python apps.
Certainly a nifty feature. However why should "all the people who ask the question" care about that? How many of them are going to care? Almost every one of them will just use apps from the Market.
I'm not hating on the Thrive, which looks like a very decent tablet. I'm just sick of the FUD, and I'm really tired of hearing about how open Android is, when it really doesn't follow FOSS principles at all. Most Android phones have to be hacked just like iPhones in order to replace the ROM. On those which don't, you lose all claim to a warranty (absent consumer protections to the contrary, which you'd have to fight in court in order to keep.)
Android is open in the same way that TiVo is open. You might be able to see the source (not so on 3.1, apparently) but you likely won't be able to modify it and run it on your device.
All we have to go on is one analyst's guess at component cost, and that guess is 5% more than price. I've been involved with projects of significant scale and without being a party to the whole situation, you cannot accurately assess the negotiated prices of all the components. The figure I saw quoted was 209.63, and I would not be surprised to find that Amazon had shaved 5% to sell at cost and make profit off the advertising (199 is the ad-subsidized price).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Okay, so you(and [some of] your antecedents in this thread) admit that people want to be like other people. So I fail to see how an Apple product being popular is a bad thing in this scenario. What I see as the problem is a corporate mentality that thinks building a better widget is going to sell more than building a popular widget.
I think you''re saying something important here: It's *NOT* the price, it's a combination of the quality of the hardware design/execution, and the available apps.
For tablets to develop as a viable "market", hardware manufacturers will need to foster a more healthy app market.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Conversely, I'm skeptical on 10" tablets (actually, I'm skeptical about the whole market, but 10" in particular). After using an iPad2, that thing is monstrously heavy, and I could find no comfortable way to hold it. Sure, you can put it up on a stand, but once it's that awkward, a laptop would serve just as well. I could imagine 7" being a bit more manageable.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Are you going to talk about `post pc` now, or how the iPad will make PCs redundant?
Statisically, no-one uses tablets - more PCs are sold every minute than tablets sell in a month. Tablets are this year's netbook.
I agree the reality is the 4S *shouldn't* be doing well, but rabid fans have already bought them all out. The iPhone user at work openly mocks the rest of us for buying non-apple, even though my device has better * everything* than his iPhone4 which cost him more. Higher resolution, ,higher bandwidth, faster processors, more ram, more storage, microSD slot, all the apps I could ever want, but somehow I'm stupid for having a phone that doesn't 'just work' somehow. He assures me one day my phone won't work and I'll have to root it to get some weird debug interface to repair it, and his iPhone will never need that. This is what many Apple users actually believe. Inicdentally, if I *had* shown him a root shell whether I 'needed' it or not, he actually considers having that capability a weakness and proof that a platform doesn't "just work" becuase that entails never needing a shell prompt.
They aren't buying it as competition for other non-Apple devices, they are so brand-loyal that they think any non-Apple devices will kill their family and so they only compare specs within Apple's own line.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I specifically LOVE Starbuck coffee. I prefer a French roast, or cappuchino/espresso roast.
There are people who think Dunkin Donuts' coffee is great. I haven't been one of them for about 16 years. Maybe you prefer DD, eh?
ps - you're a coffee snob. How big is a standard cup of coffee?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
There is no universe in which Starbucks, the coffee of choice for soccer moms and middle-aged former yuppies, makes anyone look cool, or in which anyone actually imagines that starbucks makes them look cool.
The reason sbux succeeds despite having mediocre coffee is roughly the same as the reason mcdonalds succeeds: they're "good enough," "quick enough," "convenient enough" and "consistent enough."
Maybe when sbux first began showing up there was some small amount of cachet, but they're just another brand right now.
A much, much better example of marketing that succeeded at making doofuses feel cool would be American Apparel. The clothing that company offered was fantastically ugly, looked good on no one, and was ridiculously expensive. Yet the marketing played it up as so cool it doesn't even know it's cool/only for the super-sexy people, and a certain segment bought into it hardcore.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
I don't care if you like apple or not, is it too much to ask to keep it from becoming a personal slug-fest wit a bunch of derogatory remarks?
How about we stick to technology, or is that too difficult for you people now?
What the hell has happened to Slashdot?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Go to a university or place where the younger crowd hangs. Take a look around. Open your eyes. Then come back and tell me what you see *on average*, not under some one-off Linux nerd's desk."
Exactly, I went to a hipster cafe and I saw ZERO desktops being carried around. Oh, wait...
Or they could just release a good product so that cool people would use it on screen on their own. Apple has never done "product placement".
Your post makes no sense in relation to what I said.
Well, one, Honeycomb is not open source, so there's that. For another, believe it or not, Apple fans consider Apple's lock-in and outright *inability* to do a lot of things a feature. They feel that Apple has decided the most appropriate experience and to consider anything else would just make their lives too complicated. They don't buy the "you can ignore capability if you want" argument, they think if it is possible to do something, you *must* do it. So "you can write python apps" somehow transforms in their minds to "you must write python apps". When they see one single model of iPhone, they feel comfortable, when they see a sea of Android devices with varying price points and features, they get outright repulsed.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
AC, if they can save money on education in the form of books, they can spend that on toilets.
Android has already won. It's pretty much got the *rest* of the smartphone market, which is nontrivial.
I met the owner of a toothpaste company (there aren't many, so go and guess who) a ling time ago, and he shared with me that getting 2% of the toothpaste market in the U.S made for a good living. He didn't really need 5% to do well. Android doesn't really need 90% of the market, the Android device makers seem to be pretty happy with what they have. And remember, Android has generated a viable competitor to iOS. What was the competitor before Android?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Most people don't need and don't really want a tablet. It's as simple as that.
That is completely true. Most people don't want a tablet. Most people want an Ipad.
Most people have no idea what they want. Most of time they are bamboozled by family members, or aquaintances to buy an Imac/Ipod etc... BECAUSE IT JUST WORKS (except in the case when it obviously doesn't but nobody ever says this). Its as if the rest of the industry puts out products that don't work and that is not true at all. Listening to an apple user/fan is like listening to a priest doing proselytism.
I agree completely. The relationship between the fanboys and their products is creepy. I do like asking them questions about their computer, because the answers they give are awesome. I've found that many of the ones who claim to be power users don't even know what duel booting is, or even how to access their command line.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
You misunderstand how much more portable a tablet is compared to any traditional laptop, regardless of the format. The iPad goes from off to on in a few seconds. You can run presentations off of it for hours without a power source. For pure consumption of media or as a fancy drive that plugs into the projector, nothing beats the iPad. Nothing. And that's why businesses are adopting the iPad far faster than any iPhone.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I got a blackberry playbook a couple weeks back (a present, or I wouldn't have it). I have to say, I'm underwhelmed with the 3rd party applications. It could just be the playbook and maybe an Android tablet would have programs that are more mature, but I doubt it. The stuff I see on my playbook feels like throw backs to the old applications you could get for PDAs (remember those?) Yes, there's a way to do whatever you want to do on it, but you've got to 'manage expectations'...
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
I agree with your points but add that you can't run your own apps on the iPad without paying the $99 a year developer fee.
XCode and the simulator are free though.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I've found that many of the ones who claim to be power users don't even know what duel booting is
I don't consider myself a "power user", but I'm developing software for a living for many years, and _I_ don't know what "duel booting" is.
Thanks for the correction. I wasn't aware that you had to pay that just to get an app on your own device.
Ya think?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Many readers have submitted stories about a new $35 tablet computer released today in India. The Aakash (meaning sky) has been handed out to 500 students for an initial trial run
India has been trying to make this idea work for the past decade at least --- and nothing much ever seems to come of it. Simputer
It's when two operating systems fight to the death for the privilege of running on a piece of hardware.
I can support my laptop with my right arm from the front right to left back corners and type with my left hand. It is somewhat awkward, but doable.
Maybe, you're wrong?
Do you really think that if anyone could sell an iPad equivalent for $399 and still make a profit, they wouldn't?
Also, Apple's costs aren't other manufacturers costs....
1. Between iPhones, iPods, iPads, MacBook Airs, AppleTV's etc. Apple is the largest NAND buyer in the world. They get significant discounts from being able to pay cash for a ton on memory at once. It's been estimated that because of Apple's buying power, they get an average of a 15% discount on components over other manufacturers.
2. Speculation is that Apple is buying close to 80% of the current world's capacity of 10" capacity displays. Everyone else is having to fight over scraps at a higher cost.
3. Apple retail stores and online. Apple profits from both the wholesale and retail markups when your buy from Apple. No other manufacturer has 300+ retail stores that *only* sell their products. All of their profit comes from the wholesale markup.
I agree with your points but add that you can't run your own apps on the iPad without paying the $99 a year developer fee.
You can if you jailbreak. And you can still use the Apple tools for development.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's where two Operating Systems vie for control of the hardware using pistols at twenty paces. Obviously.
Also, GP sounds like a hoot at parties.
My laptop goes from sleep mode to on in a few seconds, and it uses only ~3% of its power in an hour of sleep.
Are you going to talk about `post pc` now, or how the iPad will make PCs redundant?
"Post PC" was never about the PC being redundant. Only that other platforms were equal to it, that the PC was no longer necessarily a primary device.
For some people, yes an iPad does replace a PC. For some uses (like travel) an iPad can replace a PC for quite a lot of people.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/29/apple-captured-two-thirds-of-available-mobile-phone-profits-in-q2/
"Winning" in business is making a profit. Apple + RIM makes 77% of all mobile profit.
Motorola -- loss money
LG - loss money
Sony Ericson -- loss money
HTC -- made about $565 million (not great)
Samsung -- who knows but some of their profit is coming from bada and dumb phones,,
Ditto! We have to give them a break. They are suffering from port envy. Thrive 32Gb w/ 32Gb Sd, spare battery, hdmi, usb mini and full built in. Why buy an iThing?
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
You know, you really could do some curls and work out with those little 1 pound, pink plastic weights that you see little girls using.
I have this gigantic, heavy, clunky iPad (1st gen) and if you can't smell my sarcasm and yes, disdain for your puny weak arms and hands from here you need to get your nose checked, as well as have your muscles looked at for signs of atrophy.
If you are severely handicapped, please forgive my rudeness. If not, you really, REALLY need to go outside and do some exercise.
How can anyone not do well when their product has pretty much been the only one around so far?
Why not ask Microsoft and the UMPC vendors?
Seems as though they have the answer down cold.
The iPad has already seen a LOT of competition. And it has seen a lot of competition die off...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Except that an ereader had better use eink and if you want to view movies an ereader is the wrong device.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
And so what ? Selling to same people (that are already apple users) over and over again is easy
They aren't, statistically around 50% of iPhone buyers of any vintage have been new to the platform.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I do like asking them questions about their computer, because the answers they give are awesome. I've found that many of the ones who claim to be power users don't even know what duel booting is, or even how to access their command line.
While I'm sure you can find such users on any platform, At this point it would seem the majority of technical users have switched to using Apple gear. Just look around ANY technical conference at the mix of laptops there... I personally come from many years of using UNIX and switched as soon as Apple produced OSX. I was just tired of trying to get Cygwin to work well in Windows and that was after a number of years of using Linux, but getting tired of administering my own system...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
True enough. The Apple's market has a large chunk of people who will buy anything that Apple makes, no matter what it is. The other tablet makers don't have this sort of customer base shouting "let us give you more money!" instead they tend to want to analyze the product first before buying.
After using an iPad2, that thing is monstrously heavy, and I could find no comfortable way to hold it.
What? It weighs much less than Hardcover Harry Potter books that I saw ten year old girls lugging around, when they just came out.
Are you weaker than a 10 year old girl?
What's a Thrive? I haven't ever heard of it before you mentioned it.
I did look it up, and it's not even in the Wikipedia. Finally found it on Toshiba's web site, though. Looks like it's an extra-thick iPad clone with a pathetic 4 hour battery life (looks like you're going to need to get a few battery packs!).
Why oh why, didn't you just get a proper iPad, jailbreak it, and then run your Python apps on there? And don't give me any hokum about Android being "open source" - just try to get that source from Google.
I mean, iOS is just as open source as Android - you can get OpenDarwin which is everything below the UI layer of the iPad / iPhone too.
I will hand it to you, though - yours is both thicker and larger than mine. But I can go all day and all night, and you're limp after 4 hours.
It can be open without being able to install some random OS on it. Existing operating systems need to be ported first, they don't just magically work on every new architecture that shows up.
when they see a sea of Android devices with varying price points and features, they get outright repulsed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More_Is_Less
They are required by law to not misrepresent facts in quarterly disclosures.
I don't understand why you so desperately need to believe that Apple loses money on hardware and makes it back on iTunes; just look at the total number of Apps/music sold on iTunes, multiply that by their percentage and if even they had absolutely no overhead costs at all to run the store (like, say, their gigantic data centers) then it still wouldn't come anywhere close to justifying why they have $70 Billion in cash *right now*.
My artist friend knew what it was, when he bought a Mac last year. I thought it was great that his big Dell monitor was incompatible with the Mac Mini he brought even though it was HDMI that he connected it with. His TV and other LCD monitor worked just fine with HDMI Apple's support line was any help either.
and I own an iPad.
Your move, Einstein.
kinda like how everyone else has a girlfriend or doesn't live in their Mom's basement--people are different.
Android is as 3.0 not open, but linux still is. Tablets running android of any sort will be more open for that reason. The kernel is exposed, and you can flash any kernel you want on it.
It's true most units need to be "jailbroken" is some device-specific fashion, just like the iDevices, but what about freedoms such as running unsigned code? Developing apps for the devices using a non-Apple OS? Developing apps in something that isn't objective c?
For every device I buy, that has the opportunity to run user installed code of some sort I ask following questions:
- Will I be able to program it using my current hardware and/or with the hardware shipped with the product?
- If not will I be able to break it so I can program it using my current hardware?
iPads just don't meet that criteria. I don't like OSX and don't wish to use it, too bad for Apple they lock me out of the rest of their lineup.
If you actually talk to people that have owned 7" tablets, you might have a different feeling.
10" tablets are like netbooks. They're inconvenient to carry around, and they're inconvenient to pull out on the go.
7" tablets slip easily into and out of a bag, or even a coat pocket.
Tellingly, review sites like Engadget that have access to every tablet under the sun are huge proponents of the 7" form factor. Engadget is always talking about what a great compromise it is beyond size and portability.
I think Amazon is going to blow this market wide open.
To be fair, I think the $99 entitles you to two developer tech support 'incidents' over the year. In other words, if you have trouble writing your app, or the frameworks are acting weird, you can get help from developers at Apple, which otherwise would cost additional money.
That's probably most useful if you're pushing the envelope and hitting edge cases, but it's nice to have.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Love your sig. Does that work on Honeycomb? Thought not.
It's funny how you often see Apple fans saying this. But then when someone suggests that Apple should be regulated as a monopoly for its abusive practices surrounding its walled-garden, the fans' tunes immediately change (and I'm not addressing you in particular), and they say nooo there's a thriving ecosystem full of competition.
Though frankly, I think that the latter might be true. A year ago, people were saying that there is no tablet market, only an iPad market, and Apple's market share was hovering around 95% in tablets. At the last keynote, Apple was trumpeting that they control 75% of the market share in tablets. Losing 20% market share in a single year is actually pretty startling.
Now of course they had nowhere to go but down from 95%, but at 75% I think there actually is a tablet market, and not an iPad market, and any heavy-handed government regulation is probably uncalled for.
That's pretty neat. I don't think $99 is a big deal--but it certainly is more than the cost to develop for Android.
I just double checked and 4.1.1 in the Mac App Store is free. And Xcode includes the simulator. So.... yeah....
If you're that clever, it wasn't meant for you.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Seriously. While I've seen some specialist uses suggested for tablets, they are all in areas where $500 is fine. For 99.99% of home users tablets are useless. They don't do anything a desktop, laptop, or smartphone doesn't already do as well or better which the people who buy them invariably own. As such they are nothing more than toys. People get them because they want the toy, not for any real reason. That's fine, toys are great, but that also means that they'll get the one they want, particularly the iPad. It is the fashionable toy to have so it is what people want.
Until someone rolls out a tablet that has a good reason to own it, that is more than a toy, that won't change. The Kindle Fire might end up being such a device, but I'll have to see it happen before I believe it.
But if your argument is "I won't buy Apple because they outsource their manufacturing to the third world" then using an Android tablet is hardly taking the high ground.
Your arguments were not based on moral issues though - you were purely talking about the function of the device (unless we go down the road that Free Software is a moral issue, but assuming it's one of a couple of choices for a moment), so conflating this with the issues of globalisation and worker and environmental exploitation seems disingenuous, since in that respect there's not much to choose between any electronics manufacturer (that's not to say it's ok, or that we shouldn't continue to push for a better situation).
Your initial argument essentially boiled down to "people who bought iPads should care that the iPad is not like the Thrive", but I have to wonder why, given that both products are available, serving very different demographics.
It's free if you're running OS X Lion (10.7). If you're running Snow Leopard (10.6), Lion is a $29 upgrade. It's also free if you're a member of the Developer program, and if you're not, it's $99 to become a member. So, it's somewhere between $0 and $99 depending upon what you already have.
Granted, the Android SDK is free (as long as you have a supported version Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X and suitable computer). And the Windows Phone 7 SDK is free if you already have a suitable computer running Windows 7 or Vista (not a starter edition) with a DX10 compatible video card.
Any way you look at it, cost of the development tools for any of those platforms is cheap. It can be more expensive if you don't already have suitable hardware and OS, but the SDKs are all somewhere between free and cheap.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Are you also upset that iPads don't come with a mouse?
Say hello to 1998 for me.
Clever has nothing to do with it. It's just propaganda from the fools who still believe Google and Android are open source. A bit hard to admit you got snookered, eh?
There was one point where I was going to give a laptop to my mother, so that she could check and write e-mails from home. But even the basics of walking her through setting up a wireless network from across the country was basically insurmountable.
Comparatively, an iPad with a 3G connection would just work. No Antivirus. Simple configuration. Easy to work with. I'd have a hard time explaining to my mother how to even send an e-mail with Outlook. With the iPad it's just tap and type.
Most of the android pads I've worked with are getting better, but it's not there yet.
The ______ Agenda
So, we are to determine that the other tab manufactures are turning out shit since few are buying them. Please let us know when the situation changes, I'd hate to miss the wave.
For pure consumption of media or as a fancy drive that plugs into the projector, nothing beats the iPad.
Except the playbook. While giving that same presentation, I can be doing other things on the tablet -- like checking my presentation notes or finding a video clip to reinforce a point. Oh, and I don't need an adapter, just an HDMI cable.
For watching HD video, the aspect ratio is actually correct, and it has a higher ppi, making the experience much better.
And that's why businesses are adopting the iPad far faster than any iPhone.
Presentations I can see, but media consumption? If you already have Blackberry's deployed, Nothing is simpler to deploy than the Playbook. Nothing.
Once bridged (takes just a couple seconds) their email, contacts, calendar, documents, etc. are all instantly available on the tablet. Oh, and no need to purchase a data plan for them -- just bridge to the phone (less power, and MUCH more secure than wifi). The playbook can also act as a shared resource -- whatever employee needs one can just take one off the stack and have instant access to all their resources.
Deployment is as simple as opening the box. No other tablet comes close.
Required reading for internet skeptics
err..just for the record, most people don't program so why should they care about what you care about?
Now, about this fixation you have with penis size, there's help for that, your local brain care specialist would love to see you.
Software and infrastructure costs money?
The tablet market is growing and changing faster than any I can ever remember. Almost every *day* there's an important announcement. It seems way faster than PCs in the 1970s-80s, for sure.
Because Apple has such a lead with the iPad, which is selling at such huge volumes for such a new device, the price to stay in this game has gone WAY up. Yet it's hard to understand how a company like HP could just give up on tablets - if they have. Can't help wondering if that decision will be reversed.
To compete, makers will have to produce huge volumes to get unit prices down enough to reach competitive price points, and STILL be willing to take a loss for an extended period. Since HP is so big, and tablets are such an important growth market, it seems like a reasonable bet for them, especially considering that WebOS is potentially a strong contender.
Jeff Bezos has obviously placed HIS bet with the Kindle Fire, and its successor, whatever that will be. It will be interesting to see who else stays in this business after this Christmas, and what acquisitions take place.
For fifteen years OEMs have been trying to stuff a Windows tablet into it, and it just wouldn't go. Some of the Android tablets will go in that market, but it took Apple's iPad to show the way.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I used the words Corporation X and Corporation Y specifically to avoid making those about Apple. I don't think Apple is worse than the others on sweatshop labor and the environment.
My last question is the one about Apple, about IP freedom and openness. Most people don't care about the issues of long-term innovation and IP.
That's because they have their own lives to live, and they view the issue as more marginal than it probably is. Translated, it's because people are selfish and because there is not an unlimited amount of time available to people to become educated.
It's not right or good, it's just true.
Try putting it on your lap, professor. If you are having trouble find a way to hold an iPad, or find it monstrously heavy, perhaps you should just keep playing with your barbie dolls.
Sorry, not quite. I can afford it and chose differently. My Asus T101 Transformer is a better device. I have an iPad2 at work, but I chose the Transformer when spending my own money and am happier with it than the iPad.
The ability to drop it into the keyboard and have the USB ports, full SDHC slot and extra battery is fantastic. I can actually type when I want to type. Then I can just pull it out and take the tablet with me when I head out. That is a major plus that a BlueTooth keyboard just doesn't match.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Some of the Android tablets are quite nice. Particularly the Asus Transformer, the Acer Iconia Tab, the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Any day now the Tegra 3 models will be out and they promise to be astounding. For myself I prefer the widescreen layout.
Yes, the iPad is doing very well. That doesn't mean there's no hope for others. Agree about HP, RIM, Cisco and some of the others looking to put their own proprietary spin on things.
There's also huge demand for the lower-end Android tablet in places where money is harder to get. There are places in this world where the $500 entry price for an iPad is just too much money. It's easy enough to say that if you can't get the good one, do without - but the lesser things can still be darned useful. It's nice that there are hundreds of alternatives for those folks to use.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Thank you.
When i go into geek circles, they go on and on about specs and junk when yammering about the iPad or iPhone. All I know is that my nearly 70 y/o dad who is absolutely allergic to computers in general can operate one without much fuss. Even normal macs are too much for him.
Perhaps it's different now, but when I looked into android phones last year I immediately noticed that they had 4 buttons on the bottom, and for many people that's 3 too many. I was looking at an android tablet a couple weeks ago and it's UI was similiar to one of those 2.5D linux UIs hat I used to play with for a day or two before going back to my plain jane 2D UI.
There'll always be power users but they are the minority. Places like /. and other tech sites can really skew reality. I remember before the first IPad was launched how every story here about it or Apple had many comments seething with impending doom and gloom about its prospects.
And there are still a myriad of people who still haven't learned feature lists with many checkmarks != all-encompassing reality. That said, the competition excites me.
the cost of shipping parts from supplies to factories, and cost of assembly, as well as retooling factory costs, costs or printing up of boxes, is taken into account in the "FOB" price. that's out of the *factory*: that's what "FOB" means.
so that leaves shipping of units to stores (in bulk, by sea, with a 2-3 month delivery time, this shouldn't be more than $4). the hardware development NREs should not be more than $250,000 (as a one-off cost): if you spend more than that on designing case-work, you're doing something seriously wrong.
that just leaves the Operating System development costs, which i really don't think should be more than 10 man-years, especially as the ippad software's "fundamentals" are from MacOSX anyway. 10 man-years... average programmer $50k.... that's $500k NREs in software development. ok, call it 100 man-years, that's $USD 5 million.... that's a *one-off* cost, then you can ramp down or deploy those programmers elsewhere. how many ipads sold? that $5 million gets amortised pretty quickly...
warehouses _surely_ don't cost that much to rent. ... you see where this is leading?
I spend a lot of time in a university and pretty much every desk I see has a desktop on or under it and there are roomfuls of desktops for use by the undergrads (and they do get pretty damn busy sometimes). Yes there are laptops too but they are in addition to desktops not instead of them.
The number of people buying desktops for personal use may well be going down but as long as there are jobs that involve spending all or most of ones working day sitting in front of a computer in a fixed location there will be a market for non-portable computers (which may be either traditional desktops or thin clients but afaict thin client deployments have a nasty habbit of ending in failure) as they are harder to steal, more ergonomic and cheaper for a given set of capabilities than laptops.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Jailbreaking just forces you to violate the EULA, and you simply encourage Apple's behavior.
Asus seems to be doing well with their Android Transformer TF101. They haven't dropped the price at all from $399 and sales reports are 400,000 units a month. That's not iPad numbers, but it's not bad.
Apparently they feel confident. The next version is up $100 at $499 due Christmas with quad-core.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
How much does it use for an hour awake?
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
I was objecting to the idea that there's a "tablet market" when there really isn't. You could add up the yearly sales of all the other tablets in the world, and they wouldn't equal the weekly sales of the iPad.
Yes, I understand the demand for a tablet that can be handed out to children and others in third world countries, and I understand that the iPad just won't cut the mustard there when it represents several months or even over a year's income.
But the Android iPad clones I have played with, they feel cheap. They are plasticy, they are too bendy (yeah try to bend the iPad, that thing could double as a martial arts weapon) and they are generally pretty thick and clunky. Even many of the 7" models are greater in volume than the iPad 1, let alone the iPad 2.
I would like to see something come out that blew the iPad away, if only to force Apple to innovate even more and drop the price as well. However, there is no pretending that this is anybody's game right now. Apple owns it.
what you do if you boot your computer with a rapier.
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That's nice, the kids play with tablets and laptops. So what? You may not know this but young people aren't the only market. There are corporations, stores, small businesses, all kinds of people from all walks of life have computers. I've got 3 laptops, 1 tablet (that I don't use), and 2 tower systems actually up and running. I'm not counting all the old stuff I've got mothballed here like my Amiga 3000. I use my D630 primarily and my wife uses her iBook mostly but my tower does the heavy lifting when I do video work. It's got the bad ass quad core and 8 gigs of ram that cost me almost 600 dollars to build. I could buy a laptop that has all the same stuff for 1800 dollars but why? If I want a new video card I pop one in. I'm considering a second card so I can add more capability and another monitor. It's trivial to upgrade and repair. I don't need or want that power in a laptop. I want cool running and long battery life in a laptop. If I spent nearly 2 grand on a laptop I'd live in terror if I took it anywhere. My old D630 on the other hand, while I love it, is nearly worthless to steal. I have a tablet I picked up to play with it, it's a gentouch piece of junk so maybe a poor representative of the class but while it's kind of neat I'd hate to be stuck with that instead of a laptop.
I think that's the one thing I don't like about the iPhone, they need a screen for us old farts. I can't see shit on a screen smaller that 4 inches.
Roughly 35%. But if I use it that much, I have an outlet.
The same thing will happen to the iPad that happened with the mac and is currently happening with the iPhone: Apple pioneers an electronic device that is simple to use, but is far too locked down and far too expensive for what it does. The Apple pioneer device starts out way ahead of the competition as other companies scramble to produce a similar product for the same cost. Over time marketshare in the Apple device steadily erodes as the competition produce similar devices that are far less locked down and offer more functionality at a cheaper cost. Eventually the competition completely drawfs the Apple product in terms of marketshare, functionality and price, yet there are always a small minority of people who continue to clutch onto their beloved locked-down expensive Apple device. It's like a broken record.
Cue the Apple evangelist group members claiming that it will be different this time ...
I don't disagree with your points, but part of the challenge Android makers have is consumer attention. "Hundreds of alternatives" can be good for consumers but bad for manufacturers... I follow tech closely, and I'd only heard of one of the three Android tablets you mentioned.
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
I just bought an asus transformer with keyboard for my partner. she thinks it's great, compared to the ipad we borrowed for a couple of weeks. It's flexible enough to use as a laptop, while still feeling minimally like a fully featured laptop, which the ipad did not. Then when we get in the car the screen pops off and we can give it to our kid to watch an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine.
The android marketplace is a bit crap compared the the apple store, but the hardware is better.
The iPad is moving about 2 million units a month, or 500,000 units a week roughly. The Asus Transformer is moving, by itself, 400,000 units a month. It's very nice - you should check it out. I have one, and prefer it to the iPad 2. But it's not an iPad clone, it's an Android tablet.
The iPad is doing well, but it's not doing "more in a week than all the others in a year" type well.
But my point was very much the use case of the third world. Price is an important feature. There's also the other use cases that are served by different features the iPad doesn't and won't ever offer. This game appears to be playing out the same way as the iPhone/Android phone thing - as I said it would here when it was launched. The iPad is very nice. But there's only one.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'm sure the sales data shows 'we're selling to 30's and 40's year-olds'; but all I see are their kids playing with them .. on something like angry birds. The only adult's I hear from using them are pulling them out during some tv show to look up 'wasn't that actress in some movie a few years ago?.." or to distract themselves during TV commercials...
Awkward to write a book on a tablet too. 'Real work' vs 'consuming content'. If you're a 'content maker' then you use a laptop or (hard-core) a desktop. If you just watch tv shows or read a book, then certainly a tablet is less awkward. I like to type fast on a real keyboard and not have to prop up my monitor/lcd screen.
It's Linux.
Why is this valuable? The kernel that runs the Thrive is Linux, but that's almost completely irrelevant. For underlying OS code, I'm going to prefer that which does the job best. That might be Linux, or it might be something else. "It's Linux," smacks of the same kind of kool-aid drinking of which Apple users are so often accused.
It's valuable because the kernel hacking skills from my day job are directly transferrable, I can recompile a kernel to add new functionality, tweak the I/O scheduler, adjust the cpu frequency, enable support for nonstandard input devices, start up ssh daemons allowing me to "scp" stuff from my laptop to my tablet, get a shell prompt on the tablet itself, mount my flash card reader and back up images from my camera, etc. Generally it's valuable because it lets me do things the manufacturer never intended or didn't think was worth the hassle to support.
I'm skeptical across the board...
The web browser on those tablets isn't any better than the web browser on your smart phone... Meaning a LOT of pages won't render correctly, you don't have the Add-Ons you have on the desktop, many files won't download, you don't have the plugins to view, well, just about anything, and the touch-screen model still breaks the semantics of many javascript, CSS, and Flash powered web sites.
What's more, whether 10" or 7", tablets are far, far too big to comfortably hold and use with one-hand, and sliding your finger across a 10" screen is extremely tiresome quite quickly, making current tablets across the board a DOWNGRADE from simple ($150) top-tier smart phones. This sentiment was echoed by many reviews of Dell's 5" tablet, which had the advantage of nice big screen, but was still small and light enough to be operated one-handed.
In addition, I'd throw in input. Plenty of Android smart phones have slide-out qwerty keyboards, allowing halfway decent input (I type-up many a /. post on one) but tablets never do, and a bluetooth or detachable (transformer) keyboard is an extra item to be lugged around.
And with all of these issues, I've only just started covering the downside of web browsing with a tablet. The more I think about and try to use them for even basic tasks, the less desirable they become.
I would be happy with an Android tablet as a mere thin client, but alas, that's not even workable. While the SSH apps (and many apps, for that matter) are passable for brief usage, their feature-bareness really comes out quickly when you try to really use it. The same is true for RDP and VNC apps, and the utter lack of an NX app for either Android or iOS.
Considering just these issues, it very, VERY quickly becomes clear that a cheap Linux Netbook (ala, EEE) is a vastly superior choice for just about any usage case you can come up with (that doesn't involve Angry Birds). And even if you find a need for a few mobile apps, Android emulators run on Linux just fine, and Canonical has been working to integrate them even more.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Jailbreaking just forces you to violate the EULA
Nope, it was found to be perfectly legal. *IF* Apple support would hassle you about it (they do not always) then you can simply restore to factory default non-jailbroken state.
You simply encourage Apple's behavior.
Encouraging companies to make excellent hardware and software is rather something I LIKE to encourage in the computer industry.
Why do you buy substandard hardware and allow companies to get away with shoddy design? That seems to me to be a far worse sin in the long run.
The Amazon tablet is the first non-Apple tablet I'll be purchasing as a result of this philosophy. At least they are TRYING.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I hold and type on my laptop all the time the same way, and even though I have a tablet, I still prefer setting my laptop on my lap, and not having to hold anything! Especially in bed, or anywhere lying down!
I've been waiting for the tablet sider with built-in keyboard...
Pretty much, yes. They made a product good enough to create its own demand. They could do it because very specific circumstances. The other vendors don't have those circumstances.
Some words I have to look up over and over again, like tautology. You are correct though. my statements where circular on the face. Companies seem to me to be saying(advertising), "Ours is the best!" Then they seem to build the worst experience instead.
I will assume your use of, "lock-in," in your response is a allusion to any of, iTunes, iTunes Music Store, iOS App store, or any number of other products created by Apple(maybe you aren't even being that specific, maybe you really meant in general). This is not an inaccurate assessment of these products, but lock-in implies that they are there to prevent a cutomer from switching away from the crappy service or product they already own, such as a low-interest/high-fee bank account, or an ETF for shitty wireless service. In the case of Apple, the services I mention above seem to create the very reason why going with Apple products and services are a good thing. Leave aside your hang-ups about not being able to run any app you want or loading your own OS on the iOS hardware(I would wager that less than 1% of people who own or can afford to own the devices care about the standard slashdot arguments against iOS devices). The fact is that the hardware is well made and backed by a warranty that is reported to be fairly well executed. Even if you do have objections about the hardware, too slow, not as many cores as you would like, not enough ram, camera or whatever else. All of the tablets on the market today have roughly similar hardware specs. The thing that differentiates each companiys' offerings is the software behind it and, as many have aregued here, the advertising.
So what I was saying is that companies see Apple produce a $600 tablet and say, "Hey, we can do that." So they make $600 of hardware and ship it to Best Buy and then wonder why it doesn't sell. Which is your point. What I was saying is that a company has to do every aspect of creating a tablet well-enough. They cannot just make the best hardware. If we say that Apple makes middling Hardware and software, and advertises reasonably well. Then a competitor cannot make amazing hardware and shit software with crappy advertising and expect to do better. They must do as well as Apple in all categories and better in at least one.
Anyway, I don't think that Apple's products and services are lock-in for the sake of keeping customers so much as a set of things that are worth more together than the sum of their individual parts(but let us not trot THAT word out).
Tablets are this year's netbook.
Hey, don't knock netbooks -- they're are awesome things to travel with, small and lightand cheaper than a tablet to boot. Even better, they can run a real OS and you can actually do work on them, with nary an angry bird in sight. I managed to write a couple of academic papers (complete with complicated figures) on my netbook whilst backpacking around the world for five months.
Much, much more useful than a tablet!
I could afford a $500 tablet but I'm still tempted by the cheaper ones. ~$150 for an Android tablet that lets me browse and do email, run a few apps etc. looks like a very good deal.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You misunderstand how much more portable a tablet is compared to any traditional laptop, regardless of the format. The iPad goes from off to on in a few seconds. You can run presentations off of it for hours without a power source. For pure consumption of media or as a fancy drive that plugs into the projector, nothing beats the iPad. Nothing. And that's why businesses are adopting the iPad far faster than any iPhone.
Hmmm ... my netbook wakes from sleep in two seconds; I can leave it sleeping for days without draining the battery; and I get six hours of battery life from it. It's great for watching films on when traveling, and it even stands up by itself on a table. It's light enough to use one-handed.
Not quite as convenient as an iPad, perhaps, and a touchscreen would be useful at times ... but on the other hand, it's got a real keyboard, runs linux and all my work software, has a huge HDD and was cheaper to buy. Oh, and I can run Powerpoint presentations from it too, of course.
With my EeePC I could hold the laptop comfortably with my left hand and type with my right hand. The keyboard was to small for two hands so one hand typing was my standard for it (untill I crashed it by shorting a 5V line when attempting to increase the hdd space with a 64G USB stick internally. The stick didn't survive either.)
I assume the MBA is usable with one hand (given sufficiently large hands).
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
You're "friend" should have returned the Dell. The Mini supports Apple's Cinema Display, which is as large as anything Dell puts out.
I use both quite frequently, and no, they don't work remotely as well as a desktop browser, and mobile pages have nothing to do with it (setting the user agent equivalent to a desktop is easy enough). It's impressive for tiny embedded browsers that they handle as many sites as well as they do, but there's endless cases where you still have to resort to walking over and using a real computer, which I run into all the damn time. In fact the reason I have 3 different browsers installed is on the off chance one of the 3 will work a bit better on a given page, but they rarely ever do.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Dunkin' Donuts coffee is fairly good. They occasionally will have a 'special' coffee for about a month. A while back they had a very good Kona.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
As an owner of the Acer Iconia A100, I can say safely that this is a good contender for a 7" tablet. It's Tegra 2 dual core with 1gb of DDR2. It screams with android. One of the problems I've had with the knock-off tablets is that nothing was as responsive as the touchscreen on ipads. The Iconia definitely fixes this. The transformer and the new transformer due out soon look really interesting, but they've priced themselves out of the market in my opinion.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Amazon is selling a vendor-locked ebook reader. No camera, no bluetooth, no sim slot, no GPS, no ability to read ePub, no google apps, no google android market, and so on.
The A1 is already on sale, and has all that stuff that the Fire lacks.
http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/tablet/ideapad/a1?AID=10383968&PID=4485850&SID=u0t3389034f9fp0dd0c0s590&CJURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lenovo.com%2Fproducts%2Fus%2Ftablet%2Fideapad%2Fa1
What if I, as a hypothetical user of an iPad (I don't own one), don't need an HDMI port or a full sized USB? I mean, the iPad has those ports using adapters if you really want them.
You seem to be basing the worth of your own tablet on the things that it does relative to the iPad, but why? Is your tablet not good enough to stand on its own? Why should you care that it "does everything an iPad does" if the iPad doesn't meet your criteria?
Interesting that you already identified one of the things the Thrive does not do, but you have forbidden me from mentioning that (some people like the one-stop-shop syncing and management, some people hate it).
So, in the absence of being allowed to respond accurately, I'll say "one thing the iPad can do that the Thrive can't is run iOS".
Monstrously heavy? Please tell me you're joking. My 8-year-old daughter has been using one for at least 2 years, and she prefers to hold it / use it while she stands or walks around.
I'm right there with you, and I would add that typing on an actual keyboard is infinitely easier than trying to type on a touchscreen that is constantly second-guessing my intent and requires me to choose several keyboard modifiers to achieve any non-alphanumeric character.
I own an iPad for one purpose - development. Many of my clients demand that the sites I build will look good on an iPad and the only way to reliably test it is to have an iPad.
Personally, I hate the thing. I would much rather use a laptop.
"Lame" - Galaxar
I agree completely. The relationship between the fanboys and their products is creepy. I do like asking them questions about their computer, because the answers they give are awesome. I've found that many of the ones who claim to be power users don't even know what duel booting is, or even how to access their command line.
And that is different from, say, many people who claim to be Windows "power users" in what way?
My artist friend knew what it was, when he bought a Mac last year. I thought it was great that his big Dell monitor was incompatible with the Mac Mini he brought even though it was HDMI that he connected it with. His TV and other LCD monitor worked just fine with HDMI Apple's support line was any help either.
You do realize, of course, that there are like 4 different HDMI "standards". HDMI is a minefield of incompatibilities and semi-compatibilities. And since two out of three HDMI devices he had worked fine, the issue is clearly with the Dell monitor, not the Mac.
So, what's your point, again?
Awkward to write a book on a tablet too. 'Real work' vs 'consuming content'. If you're a 'content maker' then you use a laptop or (hard-core) a desktop. If you just watch tv shows or read a book, then certainly a tablet is less awkward. I like to type fast on a real keyboard and not have to prop up my monitor/lcd screen.
Why is it that there are only TWO general use-cases that tablet-haters seem to recognize?
1. Writing War and Peace or the Linux Kernel from scratch.
2. Watching a movie or playing Angry Birds.
Nothing else seems to count. Why?
You DO realize, of course, that there are a whole bevy of use-cases for an information appliance like the iPad that don't fall into those two categories, e.g., Review and approval of documents, form-completion, correspondence review and creation, process monitoring/control, media creation and editing, etc.
Yes, you CAN do those with a laptop, but for some, the concept of an "electronic clipboard", that can be interacted with directly, rather than through the actions of mouse and keyboard, is an appealing one.
Roughly 35%. But if I use it that much, I have an outlet.
Wow. Shitty battery life. Sucks to be you, I guess.
Of course, the iPad can be used for about 10 hours without an outlet; and while YOU may have an outlet [nearby], not everyone likes having to turn their laptop into a desktop (by tying it to an AC outlet) all the time.
WTF good in REAL life is a "portable" computing device that you can only use for a few hours before it MUST have an AC outlet, or else?
No question the Fire is a little more friendly as an e-reader than the iPad. It would be interesting to see a well done poll that revealed the competitive overlap between smartphones, 7" functionally limited tablets, more capable 7" tablets (full normal android), and capable 10" tablets.
I know a couple people with ipads who will probably also buy Fires. I know some people who have ipads and won't buy Fires or Nooks, some who don't have ipads and have Nooks or will buy Fires. So far, don't know anyone with a non-nook non-ipad tablet.
So there is no question there is some competition for users between these things. But probably we won't see meaningful numbers on that until surveys in a year or so.
Too expensive for the dock. I was somewhat interested in that tablet until I saw you had to buy the dock separately for $150 (really guys?). So their stand-out feature for the tablet is obnoxiously expensive and that pretty much makes me not interested. I'm not made of money. Quite frankly I hate Apple but if I was going to spend $500 or so, I'd probably just get a damn iPad. Right now I'm looking at the Samsung Thrive. 16gb version is ~$400 and I can definitely get on board with that with a full sized USB and SDXC port. I'm really hoping they go on sale for Black Friday...that would make me very happy. Might even get me out of the house with all those crazy fucks...but I'm not sure. I don't think any deal is worth standing in line waiting for a store to open for like an hour or more. :p
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
So compare the Samsung Thrive ($399 for 16 Gb) and the Asus Transformer ($399 for 16 Gb) and go from there. You can always buy the dock later, if you think you want it. With the Samsung, you don't have that option.
As a plain tablet the Transformer is as good as they get, quality-wise, for Android tablets. I don't know about the Samsung, not having held it in my hand.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
And how is interacting directly with a tablet more appealing than using a mouse and keyboard? I'm not writing War and Peace, but I do type stuff. How is review and approval of documents easier on a tablet? How is corresponce review and creation easier on a tablet? What kinds of media are easier to deal with on a tablet?
It has enough battery life to take to work, or to a wifi cafe. I live in a city, so I don't have to worry that much about an AC outlet. WTF good to me is a tablet that makes it difficult to type?
Apparently there's a reason for our reputation for being atrophied basement dwellers.
I didn't mean to imply that you didn't exist as a person - but as a market. People in your circumstances are too few to be considered a market.
I've got a Kindle, and I like it for reading, though unlike paperback books, I'm not going to read it it in the bathtub. It's light-weight, thin, arguably pocket-sized (depending on what shirt I'm wearing), ergonomics are really good for most things. For reading while travelling, it's stunningly nice.
But it's not big enough for web browsing; my 1280x1024 19" screen is just barely big enough for that. For a 7" screen to be useful, I'd need more pixels and stronger reading glasses, especially since I'd probably be wasting part of the screen space on a keypad (either physical or touchscreen.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks