The 4 Biggest Tablet Blunders Besides the HP Touchpad

[dxwarlock]

I did, $400for a $99 laptop with the bottom half ripped off, discreet video removed, and the sound quality of an alarm clock speaker..not sure how else I can express that "paying more for less" is a bad thing.
and for the argument "how much power do I need exactly" sure you don't need all that power, but if you can buy all that power for x amount, or spend that same amount of money for 1/10th of that power..how is the latter option a good call?
say Lowes had a 1/2 horse cordless drill for $99 bucks, and one that could barely screw in a drywall screw for $99 bucks. who in the right mind would go "I don't need the extra power, the less powerful one, is a better deal". just because its electronics doesn't mean the "value to power ratio" isn't applicable to it also.

not saying I wouldn't get one as a play toy...or that people FIND a use for them,but until the price comes into the "gadget toy' range of $100 bucks for one that doesn't slow to a crawl running more than 3 applications at once, its an overpriced, gimmicky gadget that has no real purpose other than "paying more money for the convenience of having less power on hand".

hell for 400 bucks I could hire a guy to hold a pdf and read it to me, or transcript whatever notes I want to take while I lay on the couch if that's all I needed a tablet for.

but to each their own, 400 bucks to save from walking 10 feet to the PC, or reaching for a smart phone to type something, or 400 bucks to do what a $50 portal DVD player can do seems a bit carefree on your purchasing ideas.

but as your said its thier own money, people still pay the extra cost at walmart for a crappy PC for the "convenience" of not having to put one together for the same price. doesn't mean I don't see them as wasting money also.

 

[dxwarlock]

[citation][nom]scuba dave[/nom]And as for this.. Try and convince me the experience of going horseback riding, is without value.. Or better yet, try to convince women to agree with you ;P Everything, absolutely, everything, has a place where it absolutely shines.. Tablets have theirs.. And Horses have that romance shit on lock-down, lol.[/citation]

depends, my wife hates horses, or the bumpy, random shitting while its walking, ride they give. a decent car with AC, good suspension, and a nice sounding stereo to play her craptastic 80's music is much more of a turn on to her than a horse.

so in that view, different strokes, different folks. you keep the horse and tablet, Ill drive my gas hog of a car with my PC at home. we will both be content with what we have is best for our own interests at hand

 

[ashburner]

As the owner of both the iPad and iPad 2, I just received my Fire sale Touchpad and I have applied the homebrew patches and such that have made this an awesome device - at least as fast as the iPads. HP just had it bloated with too much logging crap.

This is my first WebOS device and I am really enjoying it. The community have made it that much better.

For $100-$150, this is a no brainer. Even if you just wanted to use it as a digital photo frame, it's IPS screen is unmatched for that purpose alone. I may be selling the iPad depending on the next few days.

 

[scuba dave]

[citation][nom]dxwarlock[/nom]I did, $400for a $99 laptop with the bottom half ripped off, discreet video removed, and the sound quality of an alarm clock speaker..not sure how else I can express that "paying more for less" is a bad thing.and for the argument "how much power do I need exactly" sure you don't need all that power, but if you can buy all that power for x amount, or spend that same amount of money for 1/10th of that power..how is the latter option a good call? say Lowes had a 1/2 horse cordless drill for $99 bucks, and one that could barely screw in a drywall screw for $99 bucks. who in the right mind would go "I don't need the extra power, the less powerful one, is a better deal". just because its electronics doesn't mean the "value to power ratio" isn't applicable to it also.not saying I wouldn't get one as a play toy...or that people FIND a use for them,but until the price comes into the "gadget toy' range of $100 bucks for one that doesn't slow to a crawl running more than 3 applications at once, its an overpriced, gimmicky gadget that has no real purpose other than "paying more money for the convenience of having less power on hand".hell for 400 bucks I could hire a guy to hold a pdf and read it to me, or transcript whatever notes I want to take while I lay on the couch if that's all I needed a tablet for.but to each their own, 400 bucks to save from walking 10 feet to the PC, or reaching for a smart phone to type something, or 400 bucks to do what a $50 portal DVD player can do seems a bit carefree on your purchasing ideas.but as your said its thier own money, people still pay the extra cost at walmart for a crappy PC for the "convenience" of not having to put one together for the same price. doesn't mean I don't see them as wasting money also.[/citation]

The 1/2 horse cordless drill example would be better if you weren't comparing a drill, to another drill. Perhaps if you said a 1/2 horse drill, and one that was 1/6th horse, but it was finger mountable. The regular drill would work for most applications, but there are some scenarios where a tiny drill, would be amazing, as it could get into places where the normal drill wouldn't.. Like removing a screw from a crazy angle from inside an engine, or the like.

But I would agree with you on the walmart PC Who couldn't build something better for the same, or less.. AND it would do the exact same thing(obviously)

 

[scuba dave]

[citation][nom]dxwarlock[/nom]depends, my wife hates horses, or the bumpy, random shitting while its walking, ride they give. a decent car with AC, good suspension, and a nice sounding stereo to play her craptastic 80's music is much more of a turn on to her than a horse.so in that view, different strokes, different folks. you keep the horse and tablet, Ill drive my gas hog of a car with my PC at home. we will both be content with what we have is best for our own interests at hand[/citation]

Hahaha, random shitting everywhere.. Agreed agreed. Different strokes. That's all I was trying to say, but simpler.

 

[stingray71]

Warlock, pointless arguing with as I was in the same frame of mind as you. Complete waste of money imho. Now I own a Xoom, and wife has a Galaxy. My PC only gets used when I game and my wifes laptop site idle most of the time since she has gotten her Galaxy.

Not to mention the educational stuff we are doing with the kids.

Why did I get it if I thought they were a waste of time and money. I'm a gadgety guy and had to have one. Now I see the benefits and the potential.

Tablets are not ready to replace a PC/laptop just yet, but in two or three more generations they will. Don't forget you can hook these up to monitor/tv and use wireless keyboard/mouse. Add in an full featured office suite with a little more power/storage and these will be a force to be reckon with. They're just about there now.

Throw in EA or other gaming company to take full advantage of a unified gaming platform, and the sky is the limit with theses things. Could say more, but I think it's pointless with you.

OEM's do need to work on pricing though.

Later

 

[dxwarlock]

no not arguing that point sting. Im sure some people have found a use for them they didnt realize they had.
got one at work that other than booting it, seeing what it had on it, play with it a bit..I haven't found a real use for it (myself).

think its just a difference of what level a user needs a PC for.

none have a good dameware/rdp usage to use as a control for a real server, and most of what i do wont run on a tablet.
none of the game I like to play would even think about running on one above 1-2fps and if they did the screen size isn't viable for it. Photoshop on one isn't an option, cant use it to call people or talk on TS or such..other than reading mail, which I can do on my phone if I REALLY need to get an urgent mail that cant wait until I get to a PC. I really haven't had a reason to take the one we have at work out of the drawer after the "new gadget" smell wore off.

why I said 400 bucks for a device just to read mail and surf the web is a bit steep. they knock them down to around $100 or so, I might get 2 for my kids to pound around on to update their FB, or check their mail.

I see it as if you can replace your PC with a tablet, it wasn't that you need a tablet, its that you never need a PC really to start with

 

[applerocks]

[citation][nom]amk-aka-phantom[/nom]As we can see here, dear iSheep, Apple did NOT invent the tablet U mad?[/citation]

Not not mad, just perplexed by the iGnorant people like you that keep posting this crap because you can stand the iPad is the best seller that it is and would rather gnaw off your arm than admit that Apple got it right.

 

[mrmike_49]

AFAIK, the very first tablet was National semiconductors concept, the "WebPad", back in 1998

http://www.national.com/news/item/0,1735,333,00.html, they had the right idea,but the hardware wasn't ready yet - needed better integration (smaller ICs) for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Flash RAM

 

[mrmike_49]

AFAIK, Natiomal Semiconductor developed the concept of the tablet with their "WebPad" back in 1997/98
http://www.national.com/news/item/0,1735,333,00.html

Hardware wasn't ready yet - needed higher levels of integration to fit in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, enough FLASH RAM, etc.

ps - Apple was VERY interested, I suspect iPad is a direct descendent of the WebPad

 

[Jax69]

Apple also discovered the fire and the wheel and they made life on Earth possible.

 

[eddieroolz]

Reading this, it occurs to me that these failed predecessors to the iPad came at the wrong time. Technology just wasn't mature enough to produce something usable during the early 2000s.

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]pozaks[/nom]Of course Apple didn't invent tablets. They just stopped tablets from being useless.Also, the Touchpad was a good start, could have been great, and had a huge developer push from HP before they canned it. So what else was it missing? A rear camera for the 2 times you might every take a picture with your tablet (probably within the first hour of using it).This wolfgang idiot never ceases to amaze me.[/citation]

a decent os to support the tablets stoped them from being useless.
ios, android, and webos are all good, but i can imagine win8 connecting everything in a significant enough way to dethrone them all.

 

[swamprat]

...some members of the media speculated that the tablet's price could have been an issue. That argument was a bit silly since HP had already incurred an estimated bill of materials well above $200 per unit...

having costs well above $200 per unit would make it a silly argument indeed - if:
a) that's what HP's sale price actually was (this is maybe possible if HP went via distributors with huge retail margins), rather than being half of what HP's sales price was
b) there was no other way to make money from these (also possible).
Without giving more info on the supply chain, the put-down of the argument seems a little bit spurious. Also, if volumes had been higher, perhaps unit costs would have been lower / fallen as they went along - so again selling at or near cost to start with isn't always suicidal.

 

[beayn]

[citation][nom]pozaks[/nom]Of course Apple didn't invent tablets. They just stopped tablets from being useless.[/citation]

They didn't even do that. Technology did. It's advanced to a point where you can cram enough into a tablet sized object to do some basic things that a regular consumer would want. It just so happens that Apple had knew they could take a chance and develop one because their iFans would buy them no matter what. All the other companies might have tried it if there weren't so many failures in the past.