HP Planning to Beat Apple in Tablet Pricing War

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apmyhr

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I wish people would stop referencing 500 dollars as the price for the iPad. Lets be real, no one is going to get the base 16GB version with no 3G or docking accessories. I think the real price of the iPad will be around the 1,000 dollars people expected, because anyone who gets it will get the 64GB, 3G, and all the docking accessories they can so that they can prove they are true Apple loyalists.
 

Vermil

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You can't do a full OS tablet PC that can compete with the iPad. It's undoable. Now I have some doubts about how deeply many poster here really consider things,.. But a full blown tablet PC is not a particularly good idea. It will be heavy, slow, and run out of batteries immediately. And if you try to have it in your lap or the couch, it's going to overheat because you block something. I don't want some shit like that. That would be unusable. To be useful, it has to be really lightweight so I can bring it around. It has to have a real 'on'-switch, not windows boot. It has to start immediately when I want to check something. And it has to have very long battery life, so I can actually use it in practice.

Now all this comes from a guy that tries to live with carrying a notebook PC for long periods of time, and depends on batteries. And one who foolishly bought a powerful (C2D + discrete graphics) notebook at first. After having learned to hate that one with a passion, I made a much better choice next time (singlecore + good integrated graphics), much lighter to carry around, much better real battery time, allowing amongst other things a much brighter and better display on battery. It even has as good performance, because it draws less power. What I'm getting at, is real user comfort, real usability.

This thread sound like no one else have ever tried this experience? You all dream about fullblown, portable, handy computers, and seem to have no idea of how annoying and painful it is, to actually get some real practical use, from a machine that attempts to be all that.
No, the iPad is perfect. For anything it can't do, I'll want to use one of my desktops anyway. ...Or even my notebook laptop.
That doesn't mean there won't be other 'perfect' tablets from others. But it won't be those trying to be replacement computers.
 

back_by_demand

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[citation][nom]fuser[/nom]Are you sure it took that long? My Windows 7 machine comes out of hibernate in less than 5 seconds and boots from POST in about 30 seconds. I'm not running a crazy fast system. Just a Core 2 Duo E8600 with 4GB of RAM and a WD Caviar 7200rpm hard drive.[/citation]
It is a laptop and my BIOS is really rubbish, so i'm comparing against what I expect from a mobile platform like a tablet. If the Slate is faster than that I will be impressed as those times are more than acceptable to me. Let's see shall we, let's face it if Sony can make a superslim laptop with Quad-SSD in RAID then all you have to do is remove the keyboard and stick the screen there instead and that's the kind of machine that no-one could argue with. Even Vista would run peachy on something like that and from the last year's worth of using Windows 7 in either Beta, RC, RTM and finally Retail it is a force to be reckoned with in terms of speed and usability.

OS and hardware obviously have a symbiotic relationship. MS don't make PCs and PC makers need an OS to make their machine work. Tablets have been around for many years but the hardware was rubbish even though XP Tablet was (at the time) revolutionary. Now that tablet hardware has finally grown up it needed a good OS and Tablet XP would have not ben up to the job. Now that Win 7 has been released all the tablet tech that has been sitting in R&D for the PC makers is now flooding the market. Even Linux and Android versions are jumping in because no-one wants to miss the boat.

Apple made a serious mistake however, by try to create a separate product that doesn't work in the same arena as the other tablets they will alienate people who want it to replace their aging laptops or netbooks.

They should have taken a page from Nintendo's book of marketing and product innovation. They had the world leader in the Gameboy and when they made the DS it cannibalised their existing customer base. Sure people stopped buying Gameboys but the DS was intended to replace it, not supplement it. In the process they also took marketshare away from other previous rival handheld users and the total number of users in what was also a more competative market. The original Gameboy sold 118 million units to date, the DS has only been around 6 years and it has shifted 125 million units and more version are sold every day. It is a tried and tested marketing strategy that should not be deviated from, if you have a product with strong uptake and recognition, make another that is better and when the original buyer comes to replace it, he brings his friend too.

If Apple wanted to make a tablet they should have made one with OSX, it would have partly cannibalised the MacBook market, but would also have drawn customers away from rival netbooks, laptops and tablets. The iPad does none of this, it supplements only and offers nothing extra to tempt away users of rival products.
 

didymus03

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If I have the money in my student budget by the time this thing comes out and it proves to be something that would make a great photoshop/painter digi-painting tablet along with running a full fledged (multitasking) OS, I could definitely see myself getting one for school and personal purposes. I'm not even considering the iPad.
 

wintermint

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[citation][nom]Gulli[/nom]Sarcasm mode/ Beating Apple at pricing, now there's a challenge... /sarcasm mode[/citation]

Good one! Everybody knows that Apple products are overpriced D:
 

Trueno07

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The professors here at my university use these 14in Fujitsu tablets (running Win7) and they work brilliantly. My proff will come in, plug it into the projector via VGA and begin writing. Very rarely are their hiccups or the computer not registering his writing. I can see how Apple might be at a disadvantage with it not running a full OS, that's very limiting and quite Disappointing. It's as if they left it open for a company to compete with them.
 
IMO tablets are a waste of time and money...

You can hook up a micro projector to a decent laptop and attain the same outcome at a much cheaper price... No hiccups whatsoever...

ipad = gigantic overpriced ipod, nothing more....
 

hardwarekid9756

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My faith in slates/tablets and whether I want one is literally hinging on this and the Dell rebuttal. I want a tablet, but only if it's useful, usable, and well-functioning. I've got a lot of really awesome ideas for something like this, and if this proves to be the right fit for what I wanna do, this is literally the future IMO.
 

pharge

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[citation][nom]Trueno07[/nom]The professors here at my university use these 14in Fujitsu tablets (running Win7) and they work brilliantly. .[/citation]

Only problem is:...... that tablet cost >$2000. HP slate was originally aiming for the $1000 price tag... now they are trying to make it cheaper.... how is that going to affect its spec? That is what I am worry about... A cheaper HP slate may ends up an underpowered touchscreen netbook...>_< that will be very sad to see that happen...
 

back_by_demand

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[citation][nom]pharge[/nom]Only problem is:...... that tablet cost >$2000. HP slate was originally aiming for the $1000 price tag... now they are trying to make it cheaper.... how is that going to affect its spec? That is what I am worry about... A cheaper HP slate may ends up an underpowered touchscreen netbook...>_< that will be very sad to see that happen...[/citation]
Those 14" tablets probably cost $400 to manufacture. Dont forget that what they charge is not what it is worth to build and sell. If I am right the Slate will comprise mainly existant tech in a compact form-factor. If it uses Windows 7 it will need to be an x86 CPU and will likely be one that has multiple uses outside a tablet, such as the Atom chips are used in netbooks, the ram will likely be standard, the drive may well be integrated rather than user replacable to keep the thinness down but will still probably comprise the guts of an SSD. Even if it is a user replacable drive and they keep initial cost down by using a spinning HDD, some bright spark will replace it with a proper SSD anyway. So my guess is the only really new things will be the chassis and the screen, which will be the only relatively expensive componant.

So, what does this mean? I reckon they could make a tablet the same spec in storage as the top-end iPad, with enough ram and cpu power to make Windows 7 run very well for about $400 - $450. Charging $600+ is a marketing tactic only to steal initial market share, eventually when people start buying tablet they will release ones that are faster, lighter, thinner, bigger screens, more HDD exactly the same as PCs. Thats when they can earn more profit by upselling at point of sale for premiums.
 
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