Heh, well you've got me there. Though I'd argue that regular computers are at least capable of so much more than a tablet of any kind.

Oh well, at least we're in agreement that that commercial was awful

I'm not sure that comparison is good. In my experience all those who use a PC in its most basic way, will use it to print a word document, for example. Most basic users I know really conceive a PC as an advanced typewriter. I don't think the same happens with a Pad of sorts (which does not mean it is not capable of doing such basic tasks).

I am considering getting some Pad for my parents, both quite computer-phobic :), just to allow them to at least check their email more often than once a month. I am quite confident that the more basic and immediate GUI, and its portability, would make such basic tasks so much easier for them.
But, I am personally still not interested in a Pad. I'd be if they costed 1/5th of what they cost now, or if they were 5 times more powerful.

Umm, most people do nothing but use Facebook on their personal computers. Seriously.

There's probably an age factor, there. I had my parents in mind (and a very large number of similar user type), and they all want to print documents, often to store them in paper rather than electronically.

Again in my experience, no stats or solid data to support anythink here, younger basic users will indeed print less, but still use their laptops to create documents of sorts, collect thousands of pics, di basic editing to them, create presentations, etc. So, even there, compared to PCs (laptops), Pads are still presenting some signficant limits in terms of software available, cpu power, storage space, and users seem to me to behave accordingly.

Yet, I may be biased, as I am mostly (only?) familiar with basic users in academic environment.

Also, I think that as Pads get more powerful and increase their storage capacity, things will change to some degree.

If you do go this route, I have some advice based on trying this with my grandmother:

1. Print out some sort of help. I tried giving her a DVD with all the videos off Apple.com, and I'm pretty certain she has never looked at it.

2. Make sure the help includes information about what icons do. With iOS at least, there are lots of buttons that simply have icons, with no text. Even though my grandmother has been using a Mac for a while, it seems she never made the association with the icons above the text and their actions. Even basic play/pause/fast forward icons were pretty new to her.

3. Try to buy the same device for yourself. Since there are no remote assistance options with tablets running iOS, Android, QNX, or WebOS, remote troubleshooting gets a little harder.

Since they have little computer experience now, the transition might be easier. I found with my grandmother, she was still trying to apply too many Mac usage patterns to the iPad. For example, she gets frustrated when she opens Safari and the same page she was last on comes right back. On her Mac, she has been in the habit of quitting programs when she is done, and expecting a clean slate when she returns. Nearly a year later, my grandmother is still using the laptop far more often then the iPad. Next time I visit in person, I'm going to attempt to help her transition more over, with a printed guide in hand.

If the most accessed site stats are anything to go by on the work proxy then last time I generated a report it was Facebook and personal email both top, auction sites like eBay, news and then everything else. I expect the Facebook and email percentages to vary based on the age range of the people however.

Thanks for the advices, Tom.

They would not have a problem to understand the GUI paradigm of a Pad, I think. It's that they're totally unattracted by a PC and they only use it if the HAVE to get in touch with somebody via email, or check some website.

Probably, a Pad would be more accessible, and add a fun factor due to the simpler and more immediate gui. And probably, it would make them check their email more often, which would be already great.

But, I am still uncertain whether that would instead be wasted money...

The other day, I saw a news article about a start-up company that's a collecting point for a person/company's snail-mail. They open it, scan it, send it on in e-format, and archive/shred/forward the original as necessary.

This makes me think maybe someone should do the opposite... have a company that takes an email, prints it on a postcard, and sends it via snail mail. Extra fees apply if you'd like it hand-written, or in an envelope for more privacy.

Of course, I can't think there'd be too many clients after the current crop of computer-phobic (or just dis-interested) old folks die off.

Who knows. Maybe when you and I get old we'll make current old folks look hi-tech in comparison.

Not to nit-pick, but you're talking about the amount of time spent on these sites of all the time spent on the internet, not out of total time spent on the computer. If you could tell that, I'd say you've over-reached your boundaries as a sysadmin

From the HP thread:

That HAS to be a mistake. There's no question it's a mistake at some level, whether it's a typo or just the dumbest pricing I've seen in years.

Look, technically the Xoom is a little better than the iPad, at least on specs. But they can't possibly thing it's $470 better! I have to think that's going to change. They will sell a couple hundred devices at that price.

I still don't think that Motorola realizes that they don't have a choice when it comes to pricing. The iPad is in such a dominant position that they've set the market price and anything higher is going to have to be significantly better to justify it. And the Xoom might have better internals, but it's also coming out almost a year after the iPad so we would expect it to, and the iPad 2 might beat it just a month or two later.

I really hate you right now, Motorola.

I eagerly await the pricing on the G-Slate. T-Mobile is actually pricing their tablets pretty well, even if they're still no match for the iPad and they're only contract prices...

That last post was in response to the Xoom item I mentioned in the HP Web OS Event thread:



Everyone is also screaming about the apparent WiFi lock-out on the Xoom, but I think that's likely a misrepresented Verizon spec. At first glance it seems that you don't get WiFi ability on the product unless you subscribe to a Verizon 3G contract. What I think they mean is that by subscribing to 3G you get access to Verizon WiFi hot-spots, not that it's required to enable the WiFi hardware.



There are already iPad 3 rumors - for September launch.

$1200? Isn't it a bit early for April Fools? o.O

Who on earth is going to pay that much for a Xoom tablet? Depending on the model, you could get 2 iPads for the price of a single Xoom. Even the $800 price point is kind of high...

I heard about that, but what wasn't clear was what would happen in the meantime. It seems odd to me that they'd announce something in March, release it in April or something, then release the next version in September. If they didn't do that and just released it in September, why call it #3?

I understand the move to September, and the iPod event isn't going to be as sexy in the future as it once was, and it makes more sense to position for the holidays, but I just don't know what they'd do in the meantime.

Besides, my point is still the same. Just because the Xoom has better internals than the iPad 1 doesn't mean they can charge almost twice as much (or even the same) as a product that came out a year ago, especially when that product dominates the market at one price.

I was really hoping for the Android tablets to come out and be at least $50 cheaper than the iPad. At the very least I just don't see how they can charge more.

I wonder if Motorola is just so used to the "real price" of cell phones (off contract) that they're pricing it at sort of an off-contract level and not even looking at the competition. If an $800 cell phone sells for $200 on contract, I could see a $1200 tablet sell for something like $500-600 on a contract. Perhaps they might come out with a two-year contract...


*edit*
Engadget is reporting that the listing is down and that the price was supposedly a place-holder. That happens often with these unreleased products. For instance, Bruno scoffed at me when I said those early reports of the AU$999 Galaxy Tab were probably off like many devices are before official release. I'm hoping the same applies to all the price rumors on the Xoom.

Regardless, I have low, low expectations for the Xoom. Motorola have not handled this well at all. It baffles me that, regardless of how [in-]effective their Superbowl ad was, they still don't have an official release date or price announced. How could they possibly do that?

This shows how dumb an idea that ad was. Particularly with how poor the message was. Everyone who understood the add already knew about the Xoom. Anyone who didn't know about it already, even if they understood the ad, has already forgotten about the product because Motorola didn't even have their friggin' official Xoom site up at the time the ad ran! How f***ing stupid do you have to be to not put up a website for the product you just spent $3 million advertising!

Sorry, I'm getting on a rant here I'm getting pissed off because we're talking about a product I'm actively looking to purchase, but these companies keep screwing it up in at least one major way...

Motorola might as well pack up and go home. I don't give their mobile division even a 5 year lease on life. They're going to get clobbered and the more money they spend developing tablets, the faster they'll dig their own grave.

Even with a free OS these companies have no room to move on Apple's pricing. And it's not because they're trying to take a huge slice of profit either. They just don't have even close to the supply chain management prowess as Apple. They don't have the buying power and frankly, they just don't have the demand. And there's nothing they can do, no amount of commercials, no amount of features that is going to get them on top.

There's still plenty of market to be had and plenty of money to be made. And while the android OS may be more prevalent than iOS, I don't think any single manufacturer is going to catch Apple for a long long time.

Can we just change "Off Topic" to "Market Research" and be done with it?

Yeah, it's a little out of control, isn't it? Sometimes it's fun, though. And in this case, I had to jump in and rant about Motorola and how dumb they've been.

To bring the whole thread back around and take a different, surprising spin, it actually looks like Samsung's 10" tablet is promising! It's plastic, but apparently feels good in the hand, and is noticeably lighter (than the Xoom and iPad) because of it (it's 1.23lbs).

But, most importantly, it has something beautiful on the back: "With GOOGLE" Hallelujah!

TUAW.com reports the following



How many Galaxy products would Samsung have to sell to make that kind of coin?



When Apple's bottom line is at stake, I guess they don't mind when their supplier outright copies elements of their designs.

WSJ requires subscription so I haven't yet gotten the full article. In Safari I don't even get a login prompt under the article (it shows up in Firefox):
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110213-704284.html

I wonder how long that will last. It seems this is a move about "oh crap, we need a Honeycomb tablet out soon, to compete with Motorola, LG and whoever is also pushing out tablets. We don't have time to muck it up, yet." Some article I read this morning was already talking about Samsung's next modifications to the Android experience, and I'm sure in time it will creep into Honeycomb too. After my Captivate experience, and watching Samsung still want to push forward with their crap, I can't find any ability to trust them. I could easily see them pushing out a post 3.0 update with their stuff, or delaying 3.1 long enough to add their modifications in.

A lot of this reminds me of the Microsoft and OEM market. The best time to buy a crap free PC is right when Microsoft releases an OS, as the OEM has had less time to roll their own stuff in. Some will be there due to the release candidates that OEMs have access to, but it gets worse the older the OS is.

I wonder if Google is going to do a Nexus tablet of some sort, or if the Xoom and others are intended to be it for this first round. The Nexus S came out well after the Galaxy S it was derived from, so it's hard to say.

I thought the "with Google" branding meant that it had to be the stock Android experience?

I thought so too, but the HTC Hero had a "with Google" mark on the back, and shipped with HTC Sense. Things may have changed since then though.

Eww. Okay. Dignan had better be careful then! I guess that goes for me as well because I thought the Google branding meant the stock Android experience!

Yikes! It's supposed to mean that, but I don't know how they got away with mucking it up! It's possible that at the time, Sense didn't replace or mess with the proprietary Google apps, so they got away with just putting their own launcher and widgets on there. That was a pretty long time ago, after all. But the whole "with Google" does seem to be a bit murky...

Also, that's the only instance I've heard of it happening. Unfortunately there haven't been many stock Android devices, so we don't have many examples: G1, Droid, Droid 2 (I think), Nexus One, Nexus S. None of these have had the bait and switch.

I suspect that most of these tablet manufacturers are just racing to get their products out the door, so they'll go this round without their "amazing" additions to the OS, which is a big overhaul of Android already, and maybe put their own spin on the next rev.

The irony is that there actually seems to be less variation in the tablets these guys are producing than their phones. I never understood their approach with the phones because they all seemed different enough to me, but they felt the need to differentiate with these horrible interfaces.

Samy's new 10.1" tablet - aka The Plastic iPad that runs Lindows.

The good:



More good...



Weird...



From the front, then, the Tab 10.1 is easily the equal of the iPad.

And now for some bad...

People are really comparing 2.5mm in thickness?

Absolutely! Think about it: if you have a slate form factor, which dimension can you take 2.5mm off and lose the most volume? It's a noticeable difference in thickness.

Bruno, thanks for the link. As usual, I never expect anyone to come out with a device that's the build quality of Apple's equivalent product. That's why I'm hoping that some of these might come out for cheaper:


The only problem with that statement is that we don't know what the price will be. For all we know, one of them might be a little cheaper! Just because Motorola is being so freaking stupid, some other companies might actually want to compete.

Given that 10" netbooks retail for under $200, it shouldn't be that unexpected for a 10" netpad to appear on the market for under $500. Sure the touch layer for the screen adds cost, but probably no more than is saved by turfing the keyboard.

These things should really be closer to $200 than $500.

Cheers

Key to lower costs - Poison filled child labor factories.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/feb/15/apple-report-reveals-child-labour

The costs associated with tablets also include the intangibles, like research and development budgets for both the device and many of the new specialized components. Netbooks were just a result of the race to the bottom in the notebook space, so not much R&D had to be spent to figure out how to make the cheapest (both in price and quality) systems. Tablets also are in the new patent minefield, so likely licensing costs are being passed on to the consumer currently.

As far as the horrible working conditions, it's definitely a shame to see, and is a result of the overall race to the bottom in the industry. Computing devices seem to be that rare exception where people expect newer more powerful devices for cheaper over time. Corners have to be cut somewhere if people expect tablets to be $200, a price point that modern smartphones also sit well above when you ignore the subsidy.

Though, given that pretty much every product from every vendor comes from china, what would you prefer? A company that is actively seeking out bad practices and working to remedy them, or ones that don't audit and have no idea what may or may not be going on in their factories?

I've been to many factories in china, and believe me, the ones used by my current employer are a damn sight nicer than the second and third tier ones used by Rio and a lot of other companies (though I've never been to anything that could even slightly be described as a "sweatshop" as it's rather hard to make complex electronic goods in a shed)