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Dear HP: Please Keep Making Those TouchPads

techcrunch.com

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Re: Dear HP: Please Keep Making Those TouchPads

#21

Post by nl »

7" Capacitive (Android) tablets are already under $200: http://s.dealextreme.com/search/capacitive+android+tablet

These aren't crappy, low powered devices, either. Take this one: http://www.dealextreme.com/p/7-capacitive-screen-android-2-3.... It is Android 2.3, 1.2Ghz processor, HDMI out, etc etc. The only weakness is it is WiFi only, but it is only $166.

There are still supply constraints around larger 9" & 10" capacitive screens, but 7" screens are getting cheap enough now that it's possible 7" capacitive tablets will drop below $100 by the end of the year (depending on the exchange rate though..)

Re: Dear HP: Please Keep Making Those TouchPads

#22

Post by Macha »

zmmmmm wrote: post #16

Dear Techcrunch, Android tablets will soon be sub-$200 and will come in any number of form factors, styles and configurations using an OS that actually has a chance of long term support. In fact if all you want is a web browsing device they are there already and have been for a while.

Dear zmmmmm,

But they are using an OS that is competing directly with Apple and are therefore bad. Even if they do everything we just said we wanted for the price we said we want.

Yours, Techcrunch (especially MG Siegler).

Re: Dear HP: Please Keep Making Those TouchPads

#23

Post by randomdata »

yardie wrote: post #17
AndrewDucker wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they put WebOS on the iPad it ran twice as fast: http://news.techeye.net/hardware/webos-did-better-on-an-ipad The problem with the ToughPad was that the hardware was appallingly slow.

They didn't put WebOS on an iPad and no one has been able to verify this claim, ever. Now the apps, mostly, are javascript and css. Most apps you could run through the browser on an iPad and that is how WebOS development is done. In fact you could start the WebOS emulator, designate a port to connect over and open your favorite browser to the IP and port of the emulator. This is how actual development is done as defi…

The original article I read reported that the webOS userland was loaded in MobileSafari and it ran at more than twice the speed. Screenshots of it in action were also given. Granted, that is easy to fake.

I'm not familiar enough with webOS to know how much of the userland is written in HTML/JS/CSS, but it doesn't seem completely inconceivable. Even if it was just benchmarking of apps running standalone at more than twice the speed, that alone is pretty significant.

Re: Dear HP: Please Keep Making Those TouchPads

#24

Post by kloncks »

It seems I'm in the minority here, but I really like what Arrington is saying.

People will pay $100-$200 for a dedicated eBook reader. As much as I love my iPad, it does come with a few extra things that one doesn't necessarily need. There's room in the market for a $200 tablet from a consumer point. I have no idea if it makes sense from the manufacturer's point of view, though.

That said, this recently created space [cheaper tablets] has started to be dominated by Android tablets. Can webOS find a place there? I don't know. But I think it will have a greater chance of taking on this market than the $500 range overwhelmingly handled by Apple's iPad.

edit: if they go as cheap as chips and hardware + a little more, they can also have a huge impact on basic tablets used for education, etc. in my dream world, techcrunch somehow licenses webOS and makes the CrunchPad once and for all.

double edit: in the comments someone suggested subsidizing the tablet device to lower its cost and making it up using app sales or a subscription. think game consoles. that would be interesting.

Re: Dear HP: Please Keep Making Those TouchPads

#25

Post by mitchty »

kloncks wrote: post #24

It seems I'm in the minority here, but I really like what Arrington is saying. People will pay $100-$200 for a dedicated eBook reader. As much as I love my iPad, it does come with a few extra things that one doesn't necessarily need. There's room in the market for a $200 tablet from a consumer point. I have no idea if it makes sense from the manufacturer's point of view, though. That said, this recently created space…

People may pay $100-200 for a device like that, the manufacturing reality may not allow for such a device at the moment.

Re: Dear HP: Please Keep Making Those TouchPads

#26

Post by kloncks »

mitchty wrote: post #25
kloncks wrote: post #24

It seems I'm in the minority here, but I really like what Arrington is saying. People will pay $100-$200 for a dedicated eBook reader. As much as I love my iPad, it does come with a few extra things that one doesn't necessarily need. There's room in the market for a $200 tablet from a consumer point. I have no idea if it makes sense from the manufacturer's point of view, though. That said, this recently created space…

People may pay $100-200 for a device like that, the manufacturing reality may not allow for such a device at the moment.

I'd like to know exactly where Arrington is coming from with the prices he has mentioned.

Without providing evidence, he did say that there is a strong possibility of these devices being made at the prices he has mentioned.

It would be a lower-quality product for sure and terms like a "good enough capacitive touch screen" bother me.

Re: Dear HP: Please Keep Making Those TouchPads

#27

Post by yardie »

randomdata wrote: post #23
yardie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't put WebOS on an iPad and no one has been able to verify this claim, ever. Now the apps, mostly, are javascript and css. Most apps you could run through the browser on an iPad and that is how WebOS development is done. In fact you could start the WebOS emulator, designate a port to connect over and open your favorite browser to the IP and port of the emulator. This is how actual development is done as defi…

The original article I read reported that the webOS userland was loaded in MobileSafari and it ran at more than twice the speed. Screenshots of it in action were also given. Granted, that is easy to fake. I'm not familiar enough with webOS to know how much of the userland is written in HTML/JS/CSS, but it doesn't seem completely inconceivable. Even if it was just benchmarking of apps running standalone at more than t…

WebOS gui is written in javascript with hooks into the hardware. In fact its so easy to modify you can download the ipks from preware and see that they are shellscripts of patchdiffs to different parts of the system. Want to turn on the flashlight from the menubar? There is a JS function call in the system library for that.

My first exposure to it was disabling the CDMA radio, from javascript, and enabling wifi. I was using a Sprint Pre for development in a country where only GSM exists. To get past the initial setup screen I configured the system to use wifi instead of GPRS.

The great thing about WebOS was it was open in the literal sense (unfortunately, not the license) you could modify every aspect of the system using javascript and CSS. There is nothing else like it in the world. Not Android, not WP7 and definitely not iOS

Re: Dear HP: Please Keep Making Those TouchPads

#28

Post by andrem »

kloncks wrote: post #24

It seems I'm in the minority here, but I really like what Arrington is saying. People will pay $100-$200 for a dedicated eBook reader. As much as I love my iPad, it does come with a few extra things that one doesn't necessarily need. There's room in the market for a $200 tablet from a consumer point. I have no idea if it makes sense from the manufacturer's point of view, though. That said, this recently created space…

Why will "people" pay that? I know it's cheaper than the kindle. Apart from the novelty factor though, why would anyone pay that much for a device to read books?

I have a 2003 version of an actual ebook reader with a passive screen. If all you are after is an ebook reader I am sure these things would sell for $20 at the most and you could make a happy profit. What a bargain eh?

The problem is that the market is not driven by people's desires, but rather by moneymakers' profits. If we can't make 25%+ on each sale, why bother?

Re: Dear HP: Please Keep Making Those TouchPads

#29

Post by dataminer »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #6
foobarbazetc wrote: post #4

WebOS is a terrible, flawed, slow as molasses OS. WebOS will never gain traction because apps on it will always be much slower than native compiled apps on iOS or even JITed apps on Android. It's that simple. No amount of buzzword compliance is going to change that. Just look at this benchmark: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4658/40733.png The device/OS which relies on JavaScript performance for everything i…

When they put WebOS on the iPad it ran twice as fast: http://news.techeye.net/hardware/webos-did-better-on-an-ipad The problem with the ToughPad was that the hardware was appallingly slow.

WebOS is slow on TouchPad due to large amount of logging done in the background. There are patches available for WebOS which decrease / disable logging making the whole user experience quite snappy. The main culprit for slow performance are the logs not the hardware.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/how-to-improve-the-per...

Re: Dear HP: Please Keep Making Those TouchPads

#30

Post by smoody »

"But one thing I was very right on is the huge demand for a less expensive tablet computer"

Arrington should be a futurist/ecomonist, not a op/ed writer -- after all, he was "very right" with this prediction! :-)

But, IMHO, I think he was very wrong that Crunchpads would have flown off the shelves. Brand names matter to consumers when it comes to consumer electronics (do you hear anyone talk about the notionink Adam anymore?). You can find a $200 tablet out there if you want to, but I don't see a lot of people looking beyond the brands they already trust for a solution.

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