I’d (Rather Not) Buy That for a Dollar
February 28th, 2012 - 2:51 pm
If you’re looking for a tablet with two tiny screens instead of one usable one, that opens up like a laptop but doesn’t have a real keyboard, that would appear to wobble back and forth on any flat surface, and that costs more than an entry-level iPad — well, has Sony got just the thing for you! The Tablet P — derided here before — is going on sale soon in the US.
I just don’t get it. $549 for this thing — or $399 if you’re willing to subject yourself to a contract with AT&T. It runs an old version of Android, almost no on-board memory, and a form-factor pretty much nobody wants.
What the hell is Sony thinking?
I think you’ll find them on the shelf at Best Buy, right next to the unsold HP tablets.
Also today — hat tips to Gruber — Lenovo stopped selling netbooks online and Samsung admitted they’re “not doing very well” with tablets.
I’ve related this story before so I apologize for repeating it but here goes:
A week before Christmas 2011, I was in Fry’s, the Mecca of techie culture. In the back of the store are rows of Desktop PC’s in rows, Laptops in rows, and at the end, Tablets.
Again, week before Christmas – The rows with desktop PC’s, Laptops – empty. The row with tablets? You couldn’t walk down the row because it was jammed with people.
I looked at that scene of people clearly voting with their feet and dollars, and I said: “That right there? that’s the end of the PC”. I was there when it got started, I cut my teeth on an 8k TRS-80 with cassette drive back in 1978, I still have my 16k Macintosh from 1984 and I was there when it died in 2011. (and so it goes…)
So when Mike Dell pops up and says that “Dell is no longer a PC company”, you suddenly get what he means(http://www.technewsworld.com/story/74522.html)
Hee hee! TI-994a for me, in 1982. My dad was an early adopter and of the ilk of those who would build their own radios from kits, so he bought 3 of these deals so he’d have spare parts.
Ah, the cassette drive. And don’t forget the monochrome screen, and in the TI’s case, the fact that there was no difference between upper-case and lower-case except size…AND that files could be laboriously saved onto cassettes when named in either upper- or lower-case, but could only be retrieved by using upper-case letters in the filename. It took us WEEKS to figure that out. We kept saving files, had a growing stack of cassettes we dared not lose, but couldn’t retrieve a one of ‘em. I think I was the one who, by trial and error, eventually tumbled to the little detail of required upper-case filenames.
Wow. Such a nice walk down memory lane. Thank you! I tell my kids about the way things used to be and their eyes glaze over; they literally have no relevant experience through which to process my stories about those years.
Whoa! I forgot about the TRS-80. That was my first computer too, also with the cassette drive. I had no idea what to do with it. It quickly became a very large paperweight. I ended up selling it to my cousin for a few hundred bucks and he ended up becoming a big computer programmer. Shows what you can do if you’ve got the knowledge.
Rich
Oh, look. It’s the worst aspects of both a tablet and a laptop rolled into one. Sign me up.
Does it fold up into your back pocket?
That’s about the only reason I can think of why it might sell.
I think if they coat it in Nerf material it might make a satisfying “thunk” when you throw it.
It’s over an inch thick, and is curved the opposite direction from your bottom. Would anyone really want it back there?
You said “dont go there”. too late!:
http://www.asylum.com/2010/12/20/craziest-rectal-foreign-bodies/
A solution in search of problem.
“What the hell is Sony thinking?”
You’re assuming they were actually thinking.
I know what Sony is thinking:
“See this piece of crap? Go buy the Sony PSP Vita instead!”
It’s a straw man argument for the Vita! Or something like that.
Thanks for trying, Sony.
Sony’s been losing vast amounts of money consistently for the last few years. This product seems likely to help that trend continue.
I saw this device at the CES in January. It is amazing and would be useful for people that were performing one task that requires both information and data entry.
Like they would on a… laptop?
A laptop’s better for data entry with information retrieval, for the simple fact that a physical keyboard provides physical feedback on the position of your fingers on the keys. No need to look down to see that your fingers are positioned properly. This is integral to touch typing.
“Glass” keyboards, or even flat keyboards with microswitches, fail because there’s no physical feedback to keep fingers positioned over the proper keys.
Touchscreens work when the fingers are manipulating objects on the screen the user is looking at. I’ve seen people do fine with games controlled that way, but then fail with a different game that uses onscreen buttons, forcing player to constantly switch focus from the game to the buttons.