Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
Not exactly. The nook color does not have the same technical capabilities as the Xoom and neither does the iPad2. The early adopters pay a dear price for that. Xoom is no different....price has already dropped a bit ($200) with the wi-fi only release this past weekend. Am I bitter. No not really. Do I enjoy paying $35/mo for a 3GB data plan? No. But I also think of it as insurance for those few times I'm no where near a wi-fi provider but have cell coverage.
Oh and btw I'm considering getting a nook as an additional device since it is definitely a great device for the price, particularly when it can be rooted and possibly "upgraded" to Honeycomb/Android 3.
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First I want to say I worded my observation on the Xoom a bit too dismissive in tone. I did not mean to imply it wasn't something that could be useful or, heck, just fun. Any of these device can be fun. But there is the rub, what overhead to the user does that fun cost.
As for the technical abilities of the NC vs. the other devices, no doubt it's not equipped with the same under-the-hood horsepower of the others but the cost for the components needed to get on par is near to trivial on a per device basis. You know the cost of these CPU's, RAM and other components are near to nothing and not even close to what their retail, if you could even buy them, brethren. I see the primary difference is the NC does not use an SSD drive but doesn't it have two SD card slots, one internal and one external...or is that one of the other slates? Anyway, the reason I threw out the $350-$400 price point was that is approximately in line with top of the line netbooks. Also while the various marketing wonks like to baffle the masses with the buzzwords and 3g this, 4g that, those parts of the system are among the least costly and don't do anything more than those in the $10 throw away phones. Plus while some lucky few will get the promised speeds, the data caps are so ludicrously low that people blow though them in 20mins in many cases and a couple hours for the "heavy user" plans for all of 5GB. Meaning I would be better off using that cash to hit a movie a couple times a month along with a fun dinner as well.
Of course a lot of R&D is in the firmware and batteries just are not inexpensive but these things can also be part of the price differential.
I guess I am simply disappointed that every time I look at these so-called revolutionary devices I am let down. I keep looking back at them figuring I had to miss something because everyone is gushing over them. but I look and cripes we are being asked to pay 2x-4x MORE than the lowest end smart phone and as much as 2x the price of a netbooks which has pretty much the same components save a touch screen. Couple this with the demand I pay for yet another subscription to something I begin to again tune out my interest in the devices. I find them under performing, over-hyped, and feature lacking leaving what amounts to nothing but a device companies can use to try and sell me more of the stuff I already have for free.
I think it's time I simply give up on everything and be done with it all for good because it is no longer any fun. Even the much hyped Android is nothing more than a constantly revised OS that is going to lead to dozens of previous generation models which will either be unable to run the newest version of Android or the device re-brander will never spend the money to actually port over all the components needed to run under the new versions. I find this especially true with hardware changes in the devices.
And tonight where I was nearly pondering the idea of rooting a NC, I started to remember the fiasco of the Nokia N800 with each iteration of their OS eventually leading to the last OS actually breaking, permanently the camera feature of the device. And we got NO acceptance of responsibility from Nokia. I just began reading to see the apps for a rooted NC are going to be the same twitchy things as for the N800. OS changes will mean everyone must wait until the phreak out there who ported the app has the time to fix whatever the OS update borked. And to the developers credit most try and hang in there but even they get burnt out. I even am suspect of playing streaming video without having to transcode it on the fly or transcode any ripped video I already have.
But really don't take my comments to be negatives, I am just old and burnt out on this stuff and the black-hole the whole thing has become. If the HP or Eee 121 fail to deliver a real slate PC the whole idea is dead to me and even ebook readers will be of little interest. It's been far too long and far too many failed promises for me to keep interested.
I guess I just give up on them as they seem to be evolving into nothing but money pits. Even more costly than gaming consoles which might be the true target consumer segment anyway.
so have fun, I think you have a neat device grouping but I have talked myself out of any of them after reading enough over the night. It's just none of them actually do anything useful, for me.