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Comment by maudineormsby | Hacker News Reader

Ultimately, I think $499 is too much for a device that essentially browses the web, and that's it.

My netbook will do the web and lots of other things. Like let me play Civ II.

Many people said the same thing about netbooks, when they first came into the picture. In any case there might be a market for it, and it might be too early to decide the usefulness of the device.

Yes, but now netbooks exist. I got mine for $279 and I can comfortably run Visual Studio on it. This device is significantly less powerful, not particularly more portable, and costs more. For the right price, I'd buy one -- this is not the right price.

The real technical question is whether you'd be willing to pay a premium for the touchscreen.

Try using a netbook standing up on the metro on your way to/from work.

Tablets work fine for that though. (I have an Archos 5 I do exactly that with.)

So you're saying that single convenience is worth purchasing a significantly less powerful device for significantly more money? For what I can do standing on the metro, I have a smartphone and it still does more and is cheaper than this device.

My Archos may be much less relevant when the Xperia X10 comes out (which I plan to get) but until then I have a dumb phone and want something to do on my 40 min ride to work. The Archos right now is my only good option.

Even when the X10 comes out, depending on the screen, I may keep using the Archos anyway. The screen size is nice enough to watch a tv show and the resolution is great. The cell phone screen may be too small.

> So you're saying that single convenience is worth purchasing a significantly less powerful device for significantly more money?

Yes. Especially when the more powerful, cheaper device is really bad at whatever this single convenience is, whereas the new product is very good at it, and the single convenience is important to the user.

See: Kindle vs. iPhone e-book reading.

The Kindle has unique attributes, Internet connectivity, and is relatively affordable. I'm not saying an Internet tablet is a poor product -- it's only poor at this price point. It might even be just this tablet that isn't worth it.

I'd say it's this tablet - if I'm buying a tablet I want note-taking ability, drawing ability, and various features that really leverage the power of touch sensitivity. So far all they've shown us is a friggin web browser.

I'm guessing that your smartphone probably comes cheap but locks you into an expensive service contract. Not that this obviates your point, but it modifies it. For that matter, the iPhone was very expensive at launch compared to now; I thought that would kill it straight out of the gate, and boy was I wrong. Similarly, I doubt your smartphone has such a large screen - perhaps an advantage when you're on the move (this tablet won't fit in your pocket) but more desirable when sitting down.

I'm a little perplexed at how this device seems to generate such strong opinions and armchair quarterbacking. It seems to me that there is a lot of pent-up demand for a decent-sized tablet but people have been disappointed so many times they're a bit paranoid about it.

My smartphone contract isn't ridiculously expensive -- and lets face it, if you've got an Internet tablet you're still going to need that service contract to get connectivity.

The small screen is an advantage when on the move. The small footprint as well -- it's pretty hard to even remove a large device from your bag while standing on transit. If I can sit, I can use my netbook.

I work an web startup that provides business software for users who are typically not at their desks. An affordable tablet would be a huge boon for us -- we could distribute them to our users (or just recommend them) and they would love it. But at this price it won't work for us. I fully expect that Chrome OS is built entirely for this market and we'll see a lot of tablets from netbook manufacturers next year.

Yes there are a lot of tablets these days.

Why haven't they been successful?

For example: http://www.amazon.com/Nokia-N800-Portable-Internet-Tablet/si...

Because it's ugly and requires a stylus. (You asked.)

Things like the Archos tablets are much more realistic. My Archos 5 is great for web browsing, and I am sure the Archos 9 is a fine computer replacement. It hasn't caught on yet because it's not for sale yet.

That's a bit of an edge case isn't it?

Try cradling a 10"+ tablet standing up on the metro on your way to/from work.

Tablets that aren't pocket-sized have failed over and over again for very good reasons, gorilla-arm chief among them.

That's a good point, but you can buy a legit laptop for $500 these days. I bet I could pick up a previous generation Thinkpad tablet for somewhere around there.

I wonder how things will evolve once Chrome OS hits the scene.

To be fair here, a more accurate comparison would be people saying the same thing about the $500 Palm Foleo, a similarly limited device which was crushed by negative press and relative limitations compared to its launch rival the Eee PC.

I'm sure there's a market for Tablets but this thing is $50 more expensive than Dell's top netbook which comes with a built in TV Tuner or GPS. In addition to the 160Gb hard drive, full copy of Windows, WiFi, keyboard and a screen just slightly smaller than this tablet (12.1 vs 10.1).

For a device offering so little it's overpriced.

Agreed, but wow, this thing really gets style points from me. :)

The thing has a USB port that could (presumably) be used for a keyboard if you required one. Wish I could get one with a full-fledged OS on it. In that case, I'd consider it.

It is a bit pricey, but it's a nice size. I see Youtube in the photos so presumably it does Flash. If it handles HTML5 as well then the lack of local storage may not matter a whole lot. Much depends on the quality of the touch sensitivity.

Meantime, Chandra is certainly being assertive about his side of the TechCrunch saga. If his claims are true then Michael Arrington's business cred is going to take a major hit.

They would have probably been better served by giving a simple "no comment".

I think I agree, though you never know. My instinctive reaction is they should have pushed on the price. Smaller screen, whatever.

While this may prove to be an incredibly useful device in the future, it hasn't yet. At the moment it's in the toy category, like the ipod touch. It's almost twice the acceptable price for a toy.

Amazingly people don't say the same thing about Apple's ridiculous pricing.

Absolutely.

I'm really confused as to why they decided to roll their own OS rather than put a customized Android system on it.

AFAIK Fusion Garage was originally founded as an OS company prior to their involvement in the crunchpad.

Just because something is available doesn't mean it should be used.

Android actually kinda sucks (second post on page): http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2009/11/04/

Good points, I suppose. Personally, I'd rather have a tablet computer that had an android-like OS on it, instead of just a web browser. Being able to use apps that aren't necessarily suited to a web page would be nice.

So would a 3G connection.

It's the same price as the iPhone when it first came out, but it does radically less on a larger screen. Maybe if it were $100 it might be worth it - but at this price point it's fairly worthless, IMHO. That, of course, would be different if it had the kind of app capability droid does.

As it is, it's overpriced backpack webtv. With a touchscreen.

Oh man. Say goodbye to productivity with Civ II on a tablet...

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