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Datawind Not Blowing Smoke: $38 Tablet Coming To the US
BigVig209 writes "In a follow-up to a story we discussed in May, the Chicago Tribune is reporting that London-based Datawind it will begin selling its $38 UbiSlate tablet computer in the U.S. early next year. 'The $38 7-inch touchscreen UbiSlate 7Ci tablet runs on Google's Android 4.0 and features a 1-gigahertz, single-core processor. It has 4 gigabytes of storage with microSD card slots for additional storage. The 7-inch display offers a resolution of 800x480 pixels.' The specs aren't the greatest, fastest, or most powerful, but, for under $50, they're still pretty decent."
It has a capacitive display.
http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/review-datawind-ubislate-7ci/1/190518.html
Which will of course be FAR more expensive than the textbooks were.
I don't get the impression that e-textbooks ever actually save anybody money as the publishers just jack up the prices.
I knew someone who worked in a library, and they got all excited about e-books, only to realize they spent about 50% or more of the annual book buying budget to get it set up and get just a half a dozen e-books. They ended up with far far less than if they'd bought traditional books, because they'd have been able to buy hundreds of books for what they spent.
At the end of the day, it makes more money for the publisher, but a small community library got absolutely burned in the process, and only ended up with a handful of books, and limited benefit
I can't imagine school boards would fare any better.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The last ebook I purchased for school was $20, compared to the print copy that was $210, then again that was 5 years ago
Almost never except these apps including the one GP mentions. Seriously, did you not google?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Microsoft+Corporation&hl=en_GB
Has no one here shopped online?
Here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA3DC17C8972
It's $44. Granted, that's $6 more, but that's certainly in the same ballpark, and it has (arguably) better specs (dual core, dual cameras, android 4.2, etc).
Or here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=0EJ-0019-00005
This one is just $34.99. It's only 4.3", but it has a 1.2GHz A8, and Android 4.2.
I don't know why this is making slashdot... 'el cheap-o tablets are already here in every form you could ask for. Most of the cheap ones sacrifice battery life first, which sucks, but corners must be cut if you're going to be the cheapest thing with a touchscreen... and in some cases, a short battery life is not a deal breaker (ex. car computer; kitchen wall mounted touch display; media controller; etc).
That "$44" tablet has a shipping price of $23.
Granted, shipping usually isn't free (even when listed as such it's built into the price of the item), but a $20+ shipping price is just a lie. They're building most of the item price into the shipping price to make it look cheaper.
Yes the 4.3" device is actually $35 shipped but at that size I consider that a touch screen media player rather than a "tablet".
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Yes, because of course people will do hundreds of hours of work for free.
It would be deliciously ironic if you used a free software web browser such as Firefox to type the above comment.
Graduate students and professors need to "publish or perish". I'm hoping that at least some of them will use at least some of their publishing time to write free textbooks.
And, anyway, people are already writing books and giving them away. Take a look at BookBoon:
http://bookboon.com/en/textbooks-ebooks
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely