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What Might a $50 Tablet Inspire? (arstechnica.com)
theodp writes: Surprisingly, says Ars Technica's review of Amazon's $50 Fire tablet, it doesn't suck. "There's simply very little reason to spend more when you can get 90 percent of the functionality for a fraction of the price," writes Mark Walton. "The only real niggle right now with the Fire Tablet is the display (and the camera, if you really want to take photos with your tablet). Once budget tabs start coming with 1080p displays as standard, the writing really will be on wall. For now, the Amazon Fire Tablet is the budget tablet to beat." How does cheap technology like this mesh with Bill Gates's dream of putting a computer in every home, and projects like OLPC? Beyond that, any thoughts on what a $50 tablet price point might inspire in education, gaming, and other areas?
Sorry, but 1024x600 is a terrible resolution. The small screen may be acceptable at this price, but the resolution is not. 1GB of RAM and the MTK CPU also make for a painful experience. So it does suck, even now, and certainly even more so next year.
That being said you can get some decent tablets for $100. But somehow everybody is already on the internet, and these cheap tablets have not caused any of the predicted revolutions.
What would we do without visionaries like Bill Gates imagining cheaper computers?
He never imagined cheap technology for anybody. He wants everybody to pay up, always has.
How could he get as rich as he did w/o government subsidy in the form of statutory monopoly?
If it's not locked to Amazon's walled garden, it's fine.
If it's like about any other Amazon device, then it's an expensive paperweight.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
In the UK the new budget Fire tablet has gone out of stock twice now since it's launch, and is currently out of stock till the 6th November, and has been for a bit. I think that fairly clearly answers the question of whether it is selling.
Here is the thing about the Fire tablet, at least based of my experience of the original Fire 7 HD tablet I have had for three years now.
First it still gets updates, mine updated fairly recently (last month I think). Not bad for a three year old tablet. Also the build quality seems pretty good on the older models at least, the three year old plain Kindle Fire model is still in constant daily use by my 8 year niece.
Second the combination of parental controls and Freetime for children is second to none, and is only getting better with the new models.
Thirdly applicable to the new models is they come with a microSD slot, which is super useful. It means that for not much extra you can get a 64GB card and stick a significant amount of movies/TV shows on the tablet. The idea that you would in 2015 have a in car DVD player is laughable. Handbrake the DVD and stick it on the tablet, which also works on air-planes, airports, and anywhere there is no internet.
Finally because they are so dam cheap a lot more people can afford to provide one to all their children. My brothers two girls are getting replacement ones for Christmas, £50 is great value for money and more importantly the microSD slot solves the capacity issue for video content.