What the hell?
Sep. 27th, 2010 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerI've been keeping an eye on Tablet computing for a while. I'd love to own a decent sized Tablet for usage around the flat, although I can't possibly justify spending the money this year.
Anyway, there's a bunch coming out for Christmas, but I was generally expecting them to cost about £400.
So can someone explain why the £$%£$% Next have a 10" one sitting on their website for £180?
Either they're selling a cheap knockoff with horribly inferior quality, or they've really mispriced it. Anyone?
Edit: Ok, so if £180 is a reasonable price, why is the Samsung Galaxy Tab going to be priced at £600? And why are mobile phones with similar specs going for £400? Are 3G modules that expensive?
Anyway, there's a bunch coming out for Christmas, but I was generally expecting them to cost about £400.
So can someone explain why the £$%£$% Next have a 10" one sitting on their website for £180?
Either they're selling a cheap knockoff with horribly inferior quality, or they've really mispriced it. Anyone?
Edit: Ok, so if £180 is a reasonable price, why is the Samsung Galaxy Tab going to be priced at £600? And why are mobile phones with similar specs going for £400? Are 3G modules that expensive?
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Date: 2010-09-27 02:12 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-09-27 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 02:20 pm (UTC)Or less tactfully: 'wanker tax'.
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Date: 2010-09-27 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 02:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 02:33 pm (UTC)-- Steve hardly ever uses the GPS and webcam, and doesn't use the 3G cellular modem at all, but is glad to have the capacity should he need it.
*Not Samsung, but Viliv. My first tablet was a Samsung, but their current models didn't strike my fancy for various reasons.
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Date: 2010-09-27 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 02:44 pm (UTC)Ha ha ha! Seriously, what? They are joking, surely?
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Date: 2010-09-27 02:47 pm (UTC)Because they're perceived as a premium product, and Apple collects the consumer surplus from people who are prepared to pay more for a PC, and happily leaves Other Manufacturers to fight it out at the tight-margins bulk-shifting end of the market.
No disrespect to Samsung: their stuff is perfectly decent. But they are not currently noted for occupying that sort of market niche. Maybe they'll make the jump with this one. But I wouldn't bet on it.
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Date: 2010-09-27 02:50 pm (UTC)What the hell are they doing selling electronics, let along MAKING them?
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Date: 2010-09-27 02:53 pm (UTC)I'm beflummoxed!
Also - there are Apple Haters in the threads. Go sort em out.
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Date: 2010-09-27 02:57 pm (UTC)Resistive touchscreens. If you've ever had the misfortune of using one of these on a phone, the versions on these cheap tablets is generally worse, requiring solid presses and having poor accuracy.
Minimal effort at optimising software. A cursory effort is made to port Android across, with no support for the Android Market and poor localisation. The additional cost for the Next version is probably because they've spent some time making sure it's all in English. This also accounts for a lot of the increased cost on more expensive models as they come with a lot of crapware from the manufacturers (Samsung seem to have really filled theirs with their 'wonderful' UI).
Limited onboard memory. 8Gb is generous, many of them only come with 1 or 2Gb. Even so it's an easy way to save on costs.
Cheaper chipset. They may only say ARM11, but odds are it's not got a decent video processor in whatever implementation they're using. Besides, the ARM11 architecture is ancient now and generally confined to budget offerings. Some of these tablets use even older processors.
No WWAN. This is a killer as some claim it's the clincher for Google letting your device be a Google Experience supported item.
Generally there's a certain degree of profiteering as well. Larger brands can easily sell their stuff for a ludicrous profit margin (the iPad being a distinct example) because there's no competition. Once there's a load of tablets out, expect the prices to nose dive.
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Date: 2010-09-27 03:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 03:05 pm (UTC)Memory shouldn't be an issue nowadays - so long as it's upgradeable. You can buy a 32GB card for £50.
I think the cheaper chipset probably plays a large part of it.
And yeah - the Tab is going to be connected to the phone system. Frankly, I can live without that, as I'd largely use one of these at home anyway. It'd do very nicely as a laptop replacement for the living room, but I wouldn't want to carry it around randomly.
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Date: 2010-09-27 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 03:24 pm (UTC)Capacitive is useless for sketching anything on your nice big screen.
Resistive is useless for browsing in this day and age of pinch and pull.
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Date: 2010-09-27 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 03:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 04:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 04:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 04:38 pm (UTC)-- Steve's not even certain it's practical to do, but who knows...
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Date: 2010-09-27 05:33 pm (UTC)If the Samsung Galaxy tab is being sold like a phone, then the price is really only there in order to persuade people to sign up for an x amount per month contract so they can get their "free" tablet. Or for people who don't want a contract but have bought into marketing and need to get it in the month after release when it's still sold at that price.
If the Samsung Galaxy tab is sold as a phone, then I imagine it might cost £30 a month for 18 months, plus a small amount because it's the latest new thing. People don't see the cost as (30*18)+small amount, they just see it as the small amount and "oh I've already got a contract and this one is only a bit more".
Look at all the phone contracts that come with a "free" tv, games console or whatever and imagine how many people thing that the contract is -good- because it comes with something that pricey free, and don't realise that the reverse is true. Phone contracts and the supposed list prices of new phones are pretty misleading at times.
If, of course, it's not sold on a phone contract then it's a bit crazy.
In a similar vein, are e-readers the same prices as a low end tablet that does a lot more things purely for the screen readability?
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Date: 2010-09-27 05:43 pm (UTC)Having come from a world of resistive devices (HTC Touch, Nintendo DS) and using the screen on the iPhone it's really obvious how important a capacitive screen paired with a touch OS can be.
As far as dual mode screens goes, they'll only really be useful for content creation devices running full OSs. As soon as I accepted that I was going to be using it for content consumption almost exclusivly I was ready to buy an iPad...well that and when they released VLC for it :)
Personally I'd avoid anything with a screen smaller than 10in. Oh and bonus points if someone can port an LCARS interface to it!
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Date: 2010-09-27 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 06:07 pm (UTC)Most of what I'd want to create is dependant on the OS more than the hardware. When I want to putter around on the web I use the netbook, when I want to produce stuff I use my desktop with its larger screen and faster parts. Short of a thin client tablet with expandable dimesions, I don't see anything dramatically changing that.
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Date: 2010-09-27 06:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-28 09:30 am (UTC)And yes, e-readers are more expensive because the screen technology costs more, because it's physical (or, at least, that's my understanding).