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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?
It still costs over $50/month for an internet connection in most households, and that's if you're lucky enough to have internet available at your house. People who are unable to purchase a $100-$200 tablet are going to be equally incapable of maintaining a mothly subscription.
Maybe someday we'll see "mobile" OS's that allow for greater disconnection, but the current trend with storage and content tranfer is totally against this customer empowered idea.
A $49.95 tablet.
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? Without him, people would have gotten confused and made computers more and more expensive!
And the difference between Kindle and other low cost devices: the Kindle isn't intended to be hackable. In fact, the $50 is really a subsidized price.
A Tablet is not a computer. It is some kind of restricted interface digital device, made for content consumption and based around pictogram interfaces. Computers, personal computers, were always envisaged as flexible, customisable, programmable general purpose devices, based around computer and natural language inputs. Up to the last few years, most were.
Tablets ape the general purpose functions of PCs by having glut of low quality, shocking single purpose apps, but no way to tie these together. Even the simplest of functionality, saving, copying, pasting, editing, is in most cases absent, locked down, or only partially available on these digital devices. Tablets are not computers in the traditional sense, and are far closer to devices like phones, TVs and video game consoles. Digital, but in general not user programmable.
So it is no surprise to see such a device reach full "functionality" at a $50 price point. That is the true worth of the usage they provide.
Come on. You can get a free connection at almost any McDonald's, coffee shop, etc. At least here in the US you can. Buying the tablet doesn't have to mean you must run out and buy an Internet connection.
Aside from that (which is probably a non-issue anyway, as Internet connections aren't exactly rare, tablet or no tablet), this isn't a bad tablet. We bought a couple for the grandspawn and one to use in the tub - far better to drop a $50 tablet in the drink than a more expensive device.
One (sort of) funny thing is that the Kindle app, Amazon's very own reading application, crashes now and then on this tablet. Probably just a bug, but it doesn't do it on my android phone, so... probably a tablet issue. They oughta get on that. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Bill Gate's dream is a world completely run by proprietary software, and a business model subsidized by government enforced statutory monopoly.
Artificial barriers to entry is exactly preventing technology from being available to the underprivileged.
The idea that Gates wants ANYBODY to have cheap computing technology is laughable. Water? Fine. Anything more advance than that? Tough luck. Pay your lords, serfs.
It's enough for Facebook, Angry Birds, reading books and streaming Amazon video. It's a cheap tablet to keep kids occupied.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I got one too. I installed Firefox on it with adblocker and ghostery and use it as my main couch reading gadget with readly, feedly, and all the flip-thingies.
I got Amazon, Aliexpress and eBay and for buying stuff it's just great. Also to stream movies from my server to the bathtub. :-) , the case cost half the price of the tablet, a bit steep IMO.
I always get the toddler cases, because they allow a much more relaxed grip but in this case
it inspires nothing. It's a device wholly build around consumption of existing content and not creation.
Now, a $50 general purpose computer? That'll inspire something.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The hardware's open? Really? Point me to the schematics for the Raspberry Pi 2. Point me to the specifications for the vector-processing unit that helps prepare the machine for boot before handing execution off to the ARM core (and which also processes GPU commands). Point me to the code for the firmware blobs; after all, I'd like to write some display drivers so that I can use my own screens over the DSI port, rather than relying on the Raspberry Pi Foundation's choice of screen.
Due to the use of Broadcom components, the hardware's about as open as it is in most tablets. We just happen to have proper binary blobs for use with a wider range of OSes.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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.
What Might a $50 Tablet Inspire?
Surely it would inspire the same thing that a fucking color TV in every home has already inspired:
complete and utter stupidity.
.Wuite=Quite, table=tablet, me=too much beer
A comupter in every home was not the dream of Bill Gates. It was the dream of guys like Woz, Ed Roberts, Les Solomon and the Homebrew Computer Club.
Bioll Gates dream was to have a Microsoft OS running on every computer on every desktop.
Yes. That's almost as bad as those 75Mhz, 100M or RAM computers that people used to use and not get any work done.
I have scads of money. I drive a BMW. One of my favorite vehicles is a 1982 Volvo 245. I don't dress in tailored suits. I eat food that's grown or hunted or fished by myself - often/most of the time. I wear clothing from L.L. Bean. I have long, kind of, scraggly hair and a big ol' bushy and kinda gray beard. You'd not even know that I've accumulated some wealth unless I told you. I listen to rock and roll, I smoke cigars, and do a few drugs. Do you think that people just magically change because they have more in their bank account?
Silly kids.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
And? None of those change the fact that he bought a cheap car just as they don't change the fact that other people with money will still buy cheap tablets.
I would say that people with money are almost more likely to buy a cheap tablet. Someone cash strapped might buy a $200 tablet as their primary computer device and share it among the family where a family with a little more money will still buy the $200 tablet but will also buy each kid their own personal $50 tablet.