Will Tablet Price War Mean a Larger Amazon Tablet? 67
An anonymous reader writes "PC Magazine reports that even while Amazon was building their Kindle Fire tablet, it was already planning on a much larger model that 'will be its marquee product and the hopeful cornerstone of its tablet strategy.' Amazon's already begun offering $30 discounts on refurbished 7-inch Kindle Fire tablets, matching last week's new aggressive pricing from Barnes and Noble on their color touchscreen Nook. But PCMag argues that the 7-inch color Kindle was simply a 'beta' release of the larger device to come. 'In no way was Amazon being dishonest with its customers... To be truly fair, many people may never want a screen larger than seven inches because of the associated weight and bulk.' But the author argues that its real purpose may have been as a test run to gather important real-world data for their ultimate war with the iPad. 'After all, as industry insiders joke, all first-generation products, whether hardware or software, are really "beta" programs disguised as initial launches.'"
I want a larger Kindle Fire (Score:5, Funny)
I want a larger Kindle Fire:
One with a 25" screen, detachable CPU tower, Keyboard, mouse, etc. Oh and it must run Windows so I can code on it.
If it helps save money they can do away with the touchscreen aspect- I don't need that.
If they can manage all that then yes- I want a Kindle Fire.
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I want a larger Kindle Fire:
One with a 25" screen, detachable CPU tower, Keyboard, mouse, etc. Oh and it must run Windows so I can code on it.
If it helps save money they can do away with the touchscreen aspect- I don't need that.
If they can manage all that then yes- I want a Kindle Fire.
If you're willing to also do without a battery, since 25 inches is pretty big for a pocket carried device (unless its some kind of compensation issue) it sounds like you'd really like:
http://www.android-x86.org/ [android-x86.org]
with the exception of wanting to use Windows to code on it. Using windows to code sounds like a really warped fetish unless you're just using putty to ssh to a real computer. Well, some folks just enjoy pain and thats just how it is, have fun with it. Seriously though a decent vnc and/or rdesktop
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Is this a Meta-Whoosh?
You seem to have missed the fact that both the original poster and the responder are making jokes, which is a pretty amazing whoosh!
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Is there an echo in here?
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Well i have 'invented' something just for people like you.
basically, its a backup with 2 car batterys on the side, there is a slide-out that comes around to the front, it has place for keyboard, mouse and up to a 30" screen (though for extra, i can cut that down to make it lighter) The back pack holds a mid size computer, has a opening for the back end ports. (and of course, the battery's run the computer)
If you act now, i will throw in the Lawn chair that can be placed between your back and the backup, jus
All in favor of a price war (Score:2)
So long as they are good quality tablets, not a bunch of the bottom of the market cheepies. I want Android Ice Cream Sandwich with 4G for a good, low price.
Re:All in favor of a price war (Score:5, Interesting)
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it already does, in fact all apple i products do. What do you think generates the reality distortion field, :-P
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Not being locked into the Apple ecosystem is worth something to many. It gives the option to buy your hardware from a variety of manufacturers, and the same for your software. You decide the features you want and the software you want to run.
Locked into the android ecosystem (Score:3)
Chains are chains, no matter who wields them. Apple's chains are much more comfortable than Android's chains. Plus, the games are better.
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Not being locked into the Apple ecosystem is worth something to many. It gives the option to buy your hardware from a variety of manufacturers, and the same for your software. You decide the features you want and the software you want to run.
And, after taking a look at what features you want, and what software you want to run, you may find that it's the features offered by and the software that runs on the iPad. Not being locked out of the Apple ecosystem is worth a lot more to many.
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Rumor: iPad 2 to be discontinued next Wed (Score:3, Interesting)
THe best rumor I've heard so far is that the ipad2 will see a price drop to make it more cost competitive with kindle fire. We'll see in a few days.
It is rumored today Monday Feb 27 that...
Apple is dropping all models of the iPad 2 next Wednesday except for a single 16 GB iPad 2 WiFi model. That will be the low ball to bring people into Best Buys, Target, Wal-Mart, Sams etc. It may even be for sale in educational channels as part of Apple's new iTextBook agenda.
Think of this as the 16GB iPad with a huge ten inch iron spike in it to prevent too many from walking out the door. The retail sales people are supposed to 'step' the customer up to a real iPad,
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That's a silly rumor. If there is price drop of the iPad 2, it will be because of the iPad 3 (or the other numerous full-featured Android tablets), not the kindle fire. The kindle fire is a very specialized device. It's not meant to compete head-on with any of them.
ipad 3 (Score:3, Insightful)
But the author argues that its real purpose may have been as a test run to gather important real-world data for their ultimate war with the iPad
Correction, ultimate war with the ipad 2. Their new ipad 2 killer will be shipping right about the time the ipad 3 is shipping. Whoops!
That's the problem with trying to become the new leader by being a really good follower.
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All those other tablet makers using rounded rectangles who are also being sued agree with you... oh wait...
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Let's just hope they don't make them rounded rectangles. Lawsuits incoming...
To those of you who have read about the case and don't understand why this is modded up, the other 24 complaints Apple had about Samsung's design were hidden in the article and not in the summary.
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The current 7" Kindle Fire has as many pixels as the iPad2 in a more compact form. I assume that the iPad3 will add more pixels to make a better screen. I also expect a 10" Kindle Fire will probably up the pixel count. What else could the iPad3 add to up the ante? Everything else I've read is just incremental improvements.
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What else could the iPad3 add to up the ante? Everything else I've read is just incremental improvements.
It could run something other than iOS, that would be more than just an incremental improvement.
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The same with an error of 22%, but nice try anyway.
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That's the problem with trying to become the new leader by being a really good follower.
Lovely phrase... you may remember what people said about Japan and their electronics some decades ago, and more recently to Chinese companies dedicated to follow until they get the edge to cut you back. Don't take it for granted.
Re:ipad 3 (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean like the iPad?
It's funny how people try to spin things.
Amazon is the first mover here. What they will or won't do in the future willy likely be determined by the fact that they are a company that has a focus on Books and eBooks.
They do their own thing. They don't need to be an Apple wannabe.
Re:ipad 3 (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, Amazon is most certainly not a follower. I also consider them to be the most honest internet company. Unlike Google, they don't really need to do personally invasive data mining, because they know exactly what you actually buy on Amazon marketplace. The only thing that comes close to advertising from Amazon is product suggestions based upon what you have previously bought. Far more useful and less intrusive than fake drug ads.
Also, Amazon Web Services is absolutely unmatched. It shocks me that Google has missed the boat so severely in that market, but I guess they were too focused on forcing you to use the cloud through their own services to see the potential of letting people inovate with the underlying technologies.
The first Kindle came out three years before the first ipad, and while the ipad is obviously far more advanced, both devices are simply following the general trend of portable electronics that has been going for two decades.
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The first Kindle came out three years before the first ipad, and while the ipad is obviously far more advanced, both devices are simply following the general trend of portable electronics that has been going for two decades.
I'd say the general trend began with the transistor radio almost six decades ago.
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...except the transistor radio is actually an example of a portable multimedia device. Torah scrolls are not.
All of the associated commentaries are a lot bulkier and rather unwieldy compared to any device that gives you access to all of them either due to sufficient local storage or by some form of "networking".
An entire Gutenberg CD including several "bibles" can fit on the slack space present on any mobile media device.
Moshe's new tablet can even let him argue about the finer points with any other scholar
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What does a CD have to do with things? You put that into an iPad? Umm, I don't think so...
Who is Moshe or Torah?
wWhat cmmentaries to what?
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AWS revenue: $500m. Google revenue: $billions. Who's missed the boat again?
I heart brutal competition (Score:4, Informative)
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Except when the cost-cutting necessitated by that brutal competition requires the company to ship your job overseas?
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Companies will ship jobs overseas regardless of competition, so long as we allow them to. At least with fierce competition, the savings from using overseas labor end up in the consumers' wallets instead of the executives'.
"Grandpa, where were you during the Tablet War?" (Score:5, Funny)
"Were you an Android or an Apple?"
Re:"Grandpa, where were you during the Tablet War? (Score:5, Funny)
"Were you an Android or an Apple?"
"I was kindling and frequenly on fire."
Life is a Beta program (Score:1)
Always testings, always exploring, never stopping.
This is good because the world really sucks.
D'oh (Score:1)
Nook (Score:3)
I tried the Fire on display in Target, wasn't too impressed by it compared to my Nook Color. I have my NC set to dual boot the stock firmware or Cyanogenmod and it's pretty damned awesome for a sub-$200 tablet (bought it for $180 last May before the Fire or Nook Tablet came out). The NC is perfect as a color-eReader-meets-light-tablet even with the stock firmware. Netflix plays great on it, web browsing is pretty good, the app selection is nowhere near Android market, but all of the basic apps are there. The 7" screen is a good compromise between large enough for netflix and reading but small enough to fit in my pocket or my girlfriend's purse.
Anything muchlarger than the 7" form factor will have to compete toe to toe with the iPad and that's gonna be a tough market to get into - especially when people still think of the Nook Color and Kindle Fire as glorified eReaders rather than light duty tablets.
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cheaper to put together. the only physical button is right on the same block which has the usb connector on it too.
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Now this I'd really like to see. However I don't think we're going to get this anytime soon, the signal-processing to determine what's an intentional (edge-)touch and what's just touches caused by holding the device is insane.
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And how are you going to hold a bezel-less touch screen without touching it? There has to be a border of some sort. If they get rid of the bezel, they'll have to leave a margin around the screen that's not touch sensitive. Which pushes menus and icons in from the edges. Which shrinks the usable portion of the screen. Which defeats the purpose of eliminating the bezel.
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Which shrinks the usable portion of the screen. Which defeats the purpose of eliminating the bezel.
I'm not sure it does. A touchscreen is two devices: a touch input source, and a visual display. This only defeats the touch input source part of the purpose. But the visual display is still useful, and in fact we have a long history of non-touchable visual displays.
You already need space between the bezel and icons just so your visual design doesn't look like shit, so it's partly eating into already-dead space. Then you can fill the other dead space with generally non-touchable content. To give very g
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nobody carries around a sheet of paper ... (Score:1)
... but a heck of a lot of people carry around, uh, tablets. Many people would like tablets to stay at the present size of the iPad and/or Fire. But many people would also like a usable screen about the size of letter (or even legal) paper. Such a device would be about the same size as a tablet of said paper and fit nicely into most briefcases, folders, folios, et cetera.
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* Whoosh * (Score:1)
Go to any business setting. Many, if not most people, are carrying around tablets *of paper*.
Why larger screen and not larger memory? (Score:1)
My limiting factor with Kindle's has never been the size of the display.
It has been the size of the memory. I have my entire collection of papers and books on an SD card with room to spare.
But the Kindle, and Kindle DL, can only hold about 1/4 of them at any given time.
Bringing back the SD card slot would attract me much more than a large flashy display.
Kindle Fire has met all expectations and then some (Score:3)
I think it's a bit unfair to call the Fire a beta product. My experience was It met all my expectations almost flawlessly. I can't remember the last time a version 1.0 product worked so well, honestly. The device is a pleasure to use, and it has become my "network" reading device of choice.
The only feature to disappoint was the Silk browser, which was more sluggish than silky. I've settled on Opera for now, but neither Opera nor Silk have the one plugin I really want: ad blocking. Fortunately, Opera lets me disable Flash, which gives the Fire just enough CPU headroom to load pages with acceptable speed.
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Yep. I can't browse anymore without adblocking... some sites are just unreadable.
Firefox is now available for Android, and you can use any of the thousands of Ad-Ons, just like you do on your desktop... include Adblock Plus :)
It is still a rather early product, so its rendering is a bit slower and clunkier than the stock browser, but it is improving with each update. Also, no support for Flash yet (which to many is no big deal). You might want to check it out!
Cheap programming companion? (Score:2)
I don't want apps, cameras, gps, etc. Just give me a cheap 10" wifi tablet with a browser and a pdf reader so I can view PDFs while I code. Anyone aware of such a device?