Pocket Edge on Woot, 4 April only

[ZombieEatsYou]

http://www.woot.com/

$149.

[Filark]

Er, May 4 only! Good price, IMHO good product, go get em!

[Mark Rehorst]

I ordered one. I saw some comments in woot! that said Froyo was available in beta- any idea where to get it?

Thanks!


update: just found it- they call it Ermine. Now all I gotta do is wait for delivery.
Cheers!

[ZombieEatsYou]

Originally Posted by Filark

Er, May 4 only! Good price, IMHO good product, go get em!

oops. I'm sure everyone knew what I meant.

[Last_of_the_PEs]

Woot sold 2473 of them yesterday. I've been looking for a tablet, but I also need to read outdoors, so finding the PE at such a low price was like a gift.
From reading the Entourage.com Forum it seems prices have been a LOT higher very recently, and vendors have been scrounging for stock. I wonder where Woot got so many? They didn't sell out, so anyone wanting one should be watchful for the next Woot-Off. I just hope the last few thousand aren't "hanger queens".

[Filark]

Zombie, did you get a PE to go with your EE? Are you still liking the EE??
Thanks for the heads-up on the Woot! sale.

Mark, you are a man with a lotta "hand"! (ala Seinfeld)

Last_of, what are "hanger queens"? I'm guessing something not good.


(I have an inquiring mind. )

[Dumas]

Originally Posted by Filark

Last_of, what are "hanger queens"? I'm guessing something not good.

(I have an inquiring mind. )

"Hanger Queens" are typically aircraft that are non-mission capable (not flight worthy) and don't ever seem to make it to the flight line (and out of the hanger.)

I think Last might be suggesting that perhaps the large quantity Woot had to sell were not first runs, but potentially refurbs or returns (think returns from the HSN sale). However, they were sold as new and I think Woot would have described them as refurbs if that were the case.

[rvcullen]

You can get them from a few other sites new for about $180 now also.

[Last_of_the_PEs]

I'm sure the PEs Woot sold were NEW. They are very scrupulous about that. When they sold the Augen 7", they contacted all buyers when they discovered the CPU was not clocked as spec. and offered to refund them. That was lucky because the Augen was HORRIBLE for a dozen reasons not related to the CPU!

It's just that the parts used to build the PEs may have been leftovers from odd lots. Or maybe all the parts were uniform and just fine, and the odd parts were left on the production line. It just seemed odd that some vendors seemed to be scrounging to fill orders, while Woot obviously got hold of more than 2,500 of the things, at a blowout price. It could be that other vendors didn't want to hold more than a few at a time lest they be stuck with them. Obviously I'm hoping the Woot PEs are the best they ever built since I bought one.

[ZombieEatsYou]

Originally Posted by Filark

Zombie, did you get a PE to go with your EE? Are you still liking the EE??
Thanks for the heads-up on the Woot! sale.

Mark, you are a man with a lotta "hand"! (ala Seinfeld)

Last_of, what are "hanger queens"? I'm guessing something not good.


(I have an inquiring mind. )

No, I didn't get one of the woot deals. the large screen of EE has spoiled me. I just got an Acer A500 too, so I'm gadgeted out for now!

[sarah11918]

Originally Posted by ZombieEatsYou

No, I didn't get one of the woot deals. the large screen of EE has spoiled me.

I don't think I could go pocket, either. I LOVE the screen size of my EE.

I will consider the Asus Eee Note EA 800, which is smaller than EE but larger than PE, simply for the slim form factor at a low price and since it's a journal/annotator I mostly want on the road anyway.

The EE sure does spoil you as a journal screen!

[Dumas]

Originally Posted by Last_of_the_PEs

It's just that the parts used to build the PEs may have been leftovers from odd lots. Or maybe all the parts were uniform and just fine, and the odd parts were left on the production line. It just seemed odd that some vendors seemed to be scrounging to fill orders, while Woot obviously got hold of more than 2,500 of the things, at a blowout price. It could be that other vendors didn't want to hold more than a few at a time lest they be stuck with them. Obviously I'm hoping the Woot PEs are the best they ever built since I bought one.

Based on what I know about manufacturing in China, if there were a part quality issue on the PE, we would have heard about it by now. The only part problems I've heard of were power connector related and I think that was on the EE. If there is a quality issue, it will most likely be assembly related and associated with a particular production run.

Given that Entourage is still pretty much a start-up, I imagine they had to finance multiple iterations of assembly line time with each production run being shipped before manufacturing on a subsequent run began. This was not a line created solely for Entourage, but contracted for a specific period of time and number of units with some ODM (Original Design Manufacturer). There wouldn't be anything left to carry over to a later production run since any number of items with different part requirements would have been manufactured in between production runs. It's even possible Entourage may have used different ODMs for different runs depending on line availability and delivery requirements. Unit SNs may provide a clue as to whether this was the case or not.

Based on the tear-down pics, I think the only parts unique to the PE are the PCBs and outer case. The screens, speakers, webcam, and PSU are most likely generic of the shelf components. I think there was probably an initial production run, part of which was sold through HSN, and a subsequent run, part of which was just sold through Woot.

I agree on keeping an eye out for the next Woot-Off.