Apple KILLER decloaked? Google lovingly unboxes Nexus 7 Android 4.3 slablette Google has been showing off its new Nexus 7 fondleslab running the latest version of Android, including a 4G LTE version that's the first hardware to allow 4G reception from a variety of competing carriers. "By the end of the year, consumers are going to buy more tablets than PCs. That's an amazing statistic," said Sundar …
My music archive is huge and wouldn't fit on a 64GB drive. I'd get it for travel and the commute where Wifi is not available generally. I would burn through my data plan in a week with Google Music. I have a huge card in my Razr Maxx HD which takes care of business. It's a lot smaller than the Nexus 7.
Sorry. Deal breaker. I've been waiting too.
32GB is a lot of apps. You keep your personal data on Drive/Dropbox/your local NAS/whatever.
At least that's how it's supposed to work in Googleland.. and how it does work for me. My tablet has almost nothing actually on it. It's a streaming target from my big hard-disked media server and the internet.
A Freudian slip? I presume you meant Network Attached Storage NAS not NSA - However, with all cloud storage where you put your data outside your physical security perimeter you may as well be storing it with the NSA due to cozy agreements with the security services by the software/hardware suppliers and the various entities involved.
If I'm at home, I'd rather watch videos on the big TV (or at least a laptop) than a tiny screen that I have to hold. Tablets make great portable media players (after all, that was what they were called in 2009 and earlier, before the media had to come up with a new name to pretend Apple had invented something new), but if you've only got a Wifi device, or your mobile connection isn't unlimited (or you're watching on the tube etc).
32GB is a lot of apps. How many blu-ray quality films is it, to make use of that Full HD screen?
The only feasible solution is USB OTG, which works, though I'd rather more memory or a microSD.
If you put an SD slot you have to pay Microsoft $8 - $25 per unit for the FAT/exFAT patent license, or be incompatible with most of the devices so formatted that will be inserted therein and suffer returns thereby, and/or suffer injunctions against the import of your product at the FTC. The hardware itself is $0.02, and the silicon and OS natively support it. Microsoft will use that license money to continue to try to kill Google in mobile, as that is what Microsoft allocates those revenues to. Therefore one of the conditions of Nexus devices is that they not have that slot hardware, because paying a competitor money to kill you is not an optimal strategy, and not delivering customer expectation that their camera or phone formatted exFAT uSDHC card will work in their Nexus tablet destroys brand value. SD is for Google a no-win scenario because Microsoft got in early and made their crappy disk format ubiquitous.
Nexus devices are not ever going to have SD slots. They don't need them. Google has worked around that. It's not about Google forcing you into their cloud as a proprietary strategy, it's about Google not paying to have themselves killed because they are not stupid. Get over it.
32GB is a lot of apps. You keep your personal data on Drive/Dropbox/your local NAS/whatever.
At least that's how it's supposed to work in Googleland...
Which might be fine if you're glued to your sofa, but if you ever leave home you will be at the mercy of cellular network providers who don't seem able to manage consistent coverage over even the well-populated parts of the country (and I'm talking about the UK here, the position is worse in more sparsely populated countries) and who charge an arm and a leg for the privilege of using it.
How much would it actually cost to put 64GB rather than 32GB in one of these things, anyway? I'm guessing the parts would only be an extra tenner or so...
"How much would it actually cost to put 64GB rather than 32GB in one of these things, anyway? I'm guessing the parts would only be an extra tenner or so..."
Unfortunately, you guess wrong.
Because of the size of these things, the parts are packed pretty tight, so you don't make a product that can take 4x16gb and then leave three slots empty on the cheapest model; you make the device use a single memory module and change the capacity of the module.
I haven't checked prices recently, but last year if your 16Gb module was £X, then a 32Gb module was about 2.2 x £X (let's call that £Y) and the 64Gb module was about 3x£Y (let's call that £Z). 128Gb modules were something like 6x£Z, but I think they're getting closer to 3.5x now so we might start seeing that capacity option this year.
Also, I'd kind of expect that someone like Google might just have some data about what capacity tablets people are searching for - particularly in price comparisons - and that might make them tend towards particular capacities and price points. That's *my* guess for this thread :-)
The more storage offered the better. High capacity built-in or SD Micro are always welcome but check out:
Seagate Wireless Media 1 TB (Excellent device & works with everything - Android, iOS, Mac, PC & Chromebook).
SanDisk Wireless Media Drive & Wireless Flash Drive are other options (just announced).
Think Asus, who make the Nexus 7s, recently announced a new tablet which includes SD Micro to replace existing models.
No shortage of choices.
You have to remember Google make virtually nothing on these tablets. They are supposed to be gateway drugs into selling you adverts and services. Giving you an SD card or more storage may encourage you to put content on the device that was not downloaded from the Play store or streamed to you from one pf their partners.
"They are supposed to be gateway drugs into selling you adverts and services. "
Which means people have a choice. Buy a Nexus 7 and accept that it is Google's spec, or buy better specified tablet which will be higher priced by virtue of the need to earn the margin at point of sale, and because the better spec costs more.
An unfortunate side effect of selling the Nexus 7 at such low margin is that the economics of paid for repairs are questionable, making it essentially a disposable device. I'm not sure I like that aspect.
They're always throwing that statistic of "soon tablets will be outselling PCs" etc, and it just clicked as to why. It isn't because people want tablets more or that they're far more popular. It's just that you don't need to upgrade your PC as much these days (or buy a new one)
My PC is well over 5 years old now, and yet it can still play new games perfectly fine, as it gets older in the tooth I can upgrade the graphics card or the RAM, that doesn't count as a 'new PC' being sold.
On the other hand 3 years ago I could have bought a top end tablet, it would have been sluggish on some apps, it would gradually slow down more and more and a year later a new tablet would come out with a far superior screen, better CPU and more RAM. Buy that and soon there will be more apps which bog it down, the next year comes and a new top end tablet comes out with even more RAM and an even faster CPU etc etc.
Gains from PC hardware are rather small and generally aren't needed. If they are needed a lot of people will just upgrade their PC (or get a shop to do it for them) rather than buy a whole new machine, tablets don't really give you the option to upgrade, and the new versions of tablets have notable improvements over the older versions.
Why am I rambling like this? Because people take the whole 'tablet outselling pc' thing too seriously. PC is still a far more popular platform, it's just that fewer people need to buy new PCs compared to those buying tablets.
Hear hear. Also there's the point that tablets are becoming much cheaper (indeed, even the £500 tablets, whilst they seem overpriced for what they do, are cheaper than what many laptops sell at). So it means people can upgrade them more often, or are more likely to have one per person whilst they might still share a PC. Long term I think tablets will sell more than PCs, but it's not because they're intrinsically better, or people want touch-only devices or anything else, it's simply they're way cheaper. It doesn't mean that PCs are going to disappear.
I don't have a huge problem with Google showing that slide, it is a launch after all and they want to make their announcement sound as impressive as possible. But the media will run with stats like these, and continue to claim how "PCs are dying" (oddly in articles no doubt typed at a keyboard).
"PC is still a far more popular platform, it's just that fewer people..."
Are buying PCs. People adore their PCs the most. They just BUY them less than tablets now. So PCs are fine. They're loved. They are not abandoned wretches. They'll sit there in the corner, turning grey with dust mostly unused, as we buy and embrace and use our new tablet and smartphone and converged devices. But they were our first love and we still hold them so dear that years from now we won't unplug them from the wall, drag them to the stoop and put them in the yard sale for $5 just in case we MIGHT have to pull up the quickbooks accounts from days gone by.
Purely logic.
" It isn't because people want tablets more or that they're far more popular. It's just that...."
...the Nexus 7 is so flimsy and unreliable that Asus have to build two just to get one working through to the end of the miserable one year warranty.
In this house, we have two. One was DOA on Xmas day, and the other has just been replaced due to failed motion sensors.
".the Nexus 7 is so flimsy and unreliable that Asus have to build two just to get one working through to the end of the miserable one year warranty"
Is this the general experience of these, Reg readers?
I was thinking of getting one, partly influenced by the impressive build quality of my Asus laptop, but if they have been built down to a price and won't stand up to the usual treatment a portable device gets then I won't bother.
I'm typing this on a Nexus 7, and the build quality is excellent. I've not bothered getting a case for it, as the rubberised back doesn't mark easily and the screen feels solid. I've even accidentally sat on the devices couple of times , including occasions when it was in my back pocket. I weigh 97kg (not a lardarse, I lift weights a lot), and the Nexus coped with that.
There are several well-known build quality issues - screen lift (screen lifts up a few mm on left and creaks when pressed), temporary burn-in (visible "shadow" when switching to dark background), severe lagging when you run low on space due to cheap flash memory controller. When I first bought the Nexus 7 it was amazingly fast but now it lags like crazy all the time. Hoping that Asus fixed these issues with the new model.
Another one I forgot is audio glitching, which was really bad on release but was mostly fixed in subsequent updates, but the sound quality from the headphone jack is very poor (more noticeable with high quality headphones, can hear electrical interference noise like early on-board PC audio).
I went through 2 of the 16GB N7's - each time I sent them back complaining that the system was as slow as molasses when you began to fill up the memory. Both times they replaced the glass and sent it back as 'fixed'. I don't think that they officially addressed that issue. Horrible.
Yes, PCs are lasting longer - at work what I used to depreciate and replace over 5 years now is re-lifed for at least one, maybe two more years. Processor power has overtaken software load in all but the top end games. And now I'm buying tablets too, but they live hard lives and I depreciate over 3 years...
No, think about home users. At home I have four people, one "games" PC (5 yrs) and one media PC (3yrs) and one netbook and we all share them. Tablets - we're catching up, but counting phablets (5.1 inches must count right?) we've gone from zero to three in under a year, and I expect there'll be at least two more next Christmas. I think that's why the outsell will continue: PCs are predominantly shared *home* resources, whereas tablets are *personal*, and we're still playing catch up!
Whatever, tablets should keep outselling until the inventories are more balanced - then we'll see!
Exactly. This is the real trouble Microsoft and Dell and such like face. For the time being (and maybe for a long time computers have peaked). A cheap supermarket no brand laptop bought 4 or 5 years ago is still perfectly adequate for most users. The same is happening to mobile. At retina quality display, quad core processing the only genuine improvement we're all waiting for is battery life.
Have you checked the increased sales Chromebook devices?
Main reason for the PC slow down is that most people can do most jobs they need on the web now such as Facebook / lightweight games / maps / email / Google docs / watch media. There are not so many people who need horsepower to do S/W development / video & photo editing / hardcore gaming. Previously the circa. 500US$ laptops used nearly exclusively for web browsing were the only choice.
How come a small $269 fondle slab has better screen resolution than most laptops costing up to, and over, £1000?
Really, it is hard to get a laptop beyond 768 lines now, and most over £1000 are still piss-poor at 1080 lines (Macbook retina and Chromebook pixel excepted). And you wonder why customers are unimpressed?
I'm not sure why 1080 is piss poor, and 1200 is good - it's not that big a difference I agree that the obsession with 1366x768 is annoying, but Apple and Google are no exception, as you've got to pay for those high resolution devices. Samsung also do ones with similarly high resolutions.
I wonder if the issue is cost - I mean, a Nexus 7 is cheap, but it only has a 7" screen. Consider how even 10" tablets are significantly more expensive.
If you are drafting a royal birth announcement for foolscap there is not much difference in useability but for those targeting A4 the 120 pixels make a very surprising difference. Of course, affordable 1440 would be better. Indeed, for many uses, a 17" pivoted to portrait would be an acceptable option. (Sorry about the non-laptop aside.)
1080 is piss-poor at £1000+, but would be adequate at £350 for a basic laptop, after all you can get a 20" 1080 monitor for under £100.
I think 1200 is the minimum for "serious" use of a computer, and that means not as a media consumption device but actual editing/coding/etc. As pointed out 1440 is better still, as is 1600, but the cost becomes a bit high (having said that, the Dell U3014 monitor is 30" and 2560 x 1600 lines and can be had for around £900).
I don't particularly want "retina" resolution as I can't work at a viewing distance of 20cm or so to benefit from that, but I maintain that the current 768 lines is utter rubbish and that 1080 is piss-poor if you are paying £1000+ to avoid the 768 rubbish.
I have two Dell 1200x1920 26" monitors my laptop plugs into. It's amazing. Anything less at typical viewing distance for a computer or tablet is very grainy. You can't even read all fonts at 1080 resolution. It's relative to the size and viewing distance, just like TV's. Go ahead and debate the 4k next gens if you want. Unless you buy a 100" TV, 4k ultra resolution isn't going to look better.
Oh, I got both my monitors for the same price as the nexus 7.
Tablets are not the best tech out there, it's just the best you can take with you everywhere.
It's not entirely fair to compare a 7 inch screen to those that range between 10 to 18 inches and resolution isn't the only consideration of a display but I do see your point.
Given most laptops would be running Windows you wouldn't necessarily want an ultra high resolution display as without adjusting the DPI scaling it can be harder to use.
I think your mention of Windows is spot on here. I've just read this review of a 4K monitor and from this article it is obvious that many Windows applications, including those from respectable vendors like Adobe, do not deal well with DPI scaling (I do realize mention of Adobe and respectable in the same sentence might be arguable point for some, let's just skip over it).
Since almost all laptops are sold with Windows only, this would mean that high resolution screens might potentially lead to serious customer disappointment, simply unable to see the icons and/or use application of choice without magnifying glass. Of course one might simply blame application vendors for not supporting DPI scaling well, rather than Microsoft, but the truth is that vendors often do not bother to add such a novelty feature unless they are forced to, because writing and maintaining GUI code is difficult enough with the APIs provided by Microsoft, without extra complexity of DPI scaling on top of it.
So yes, Wintel block is driving PC platform to its (very slow!) demise, just like happened before with other monolithic blocks. I do hope alternative takes its place before too long.
Higher densities used to be handled easily by WinXP. I am typing this now on an old Dell Latitude D800 that my brother-in-law cast off in my direction since it was dead. I thought to put a new motherboard from eBay in it, and sell it for some "mad money", but once it lit up with the new mobo, I was blown away by the 1920x1200 (16:10/8:5 aspect ratio) screen. I had no idea a 15" inch screen on a 10-year old notebook could have such a high resolution.
The default density was a bit tiny for easy reading, but setting it 125% scaling helped it a lot. Most of the time though I run Linux (Mint 9 based on Ubuntu 10.04) on it, and that works quite well, too.
Then I "go to work" on my employer's shiny new HP Elitebook 2560p, and its 12.5-inch 1366x768 screen feels so constrictive I have to use external monitors to get any use out of it. That replaced a Latitude D630 with 14-inch 1280x800 screen that I would go back to in a heartbeat for actual "mobile" use when no external monitors are readily available.
What's annoying about the work PC situation is that the corporate decision-makers seem to be clueless as to what hinders/facilitates PC productivity. I could have gotten a 14-inch Elitebook (forget the exact model), but it also was restricted to 1366x768. However, my research on HP's site showed there was 1600x900 screen option, and if I got that, and dropped the useless (to me) optical drive, it would have knocked off $100 from the total price for a win-win situation for me and the company, right? NOT - that was not on the buying contract optons list, so no go, and I opted for the smaller HP to at least save my back if not my time. The big corps(e) perpetuate the problem with clueless contracts like that.
I could do a lot of biz work from a tablet now (just not my essential Solaris server terminal sessions), and get higher res, but that is not so nice on smaller screens when the goal is to have as many windows as possible, and big as possible.
ROC makes a great point
I've worked for laptop manufacturers where the list of approved devices for staff is a fraction of all available models.
So if you're like me then in years gone by you bought your own souped up home desktop. Nowadays with a work-issued laptop that's 90 percent great, you're probably not going to pay to replicate that but you'll buy a great screen, tablet and maybe a media player. That next home desktop is now trying to fit into a narrowing niche.
Couldn't agree more.
When shopping around for a laptop, I get increasingly pissed off at how many are still running 1360 x 768, especially when it's a supposed "premium" product.
Even 1440 x 900 shows at least some thought has been given on the screen spec, especially on 13" and lower models.
The only reason tablets have such high DPI is because the manufacturers have decided this is an area they want to compete on. And then more pixels needs a better CPU to drive it and a better GPU for games.
Laptops haven't yet succumbed to this, they fight on other factors.
True JDX. However declining notebook sales prove the OEMs have those other factors partly wrong by not giving consumers many reasons to upgrade their 5+ year old devices, except when targeting users where weight is the overriding concern. We are seeing some innovation like Surface etc. but watching these OEMs slowly learning from mistake after mistake is far worse than watching paint dry. Display resolution is one of those factors.
Amen! I've got a Dell Latitude E6320 and yes it has the same old 1366 x 768 line display these laptops have had for donkey's years. I normally work on customer site so am stuck on this piddly little display only able to see half a page of a word doc at a time unless I zoom out to unreadable proportions. The few times I'm back at base and can dock it to two 19 inch monitors is blissful, I swear my productivity trebles.
I have an Asus Zenbook at home which has a 1600x900 display. That is much more like it but 900 isn't *quite* enough. I wish manufacturers would start competing on resolution, they would probably kickstart stagnant or shrinking sales.
The problem is that laptop manufacturers have missed the boat with big screens with 10 and 7 being the tablet sweet spot they can get competitive prices on hi res screens, and if they can get competitive prices for screens they cant sell competitive laptops.
Simple economic chicken and egg - they cant buy in sufficient volume to drop the prices low enough to sell a large volume of laptops.
So whilst I agree with you - the boat with cheap hi-res laptops on it missed its depature slot :(
(fail on behalf of the laptop makers)
The dumbing down of the PC, and screen resolution, is because manufacturers would rather sell you a crappy drm'd to hell games console.
They wont make what is in the customers interest because thy are too big and too greedy. They'll make what they want to sell. It's only when a company like Apple comes along and rocks the boat by releasing a product (like the iphone) that actually does what the customer wants and sells in the billions that the big dinosaurs are forced to change tack.. until then they'll do as they please.
No, they were buying more BMW 3-Series, which includes a whole lot of different engine sizes, especially the diesels. The M3 is the high-performance, insanely powerful version, and is very, very expensive, and doesn't outsell the Mondeo..they couldn't make that many if they tried. The 3 Series outsells the Mondeo in large part because it has a very low CO2 diesel option, which makes it the PERFECT company car, and has such a high resale it is actually available at the same price as a Mondeo on company car schemes, and also probably via leasing deals. For most buyers, the BMW 3-Series diesel (or small petrol) was actually a very, very sensible option over a Mondeo for these reasons. (And I think the Mondeo is a good car overall, too).
I bought a first day Nexus 7 "2012." Terrific tablet. I'm very pleased with it. But, this new one still has no HDMI, no SD card slot, and maxes out at 32GB. What the hey? I can't believe it.
The original Nexus 7 had the best ppi or resolution or whatever the kids are calling it these days--better than any Apple tab. Really noticeably better than any other in any size. Love it. Performance is really snappy. The only gripe I have had is limited storage on board, no HDMI and TERRIBLE speakers. Almost useless at full volume. With more on-board storage and better sound, I may still fork over the dough...
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/30434/slimport-summit-2013-coverage-what-is-slimport-/index.html
for what looks like a reasonable covering of Slimport basics...
Also,
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/07/google-announces-new-chrome-device-to-get-video-streams-to-your-tv/
is a $35 device that allows you to stream video over WiFi from a avariety of platforms.
I have the current 16 GB model, and I'll have to wait for it to show up in Canada anyway, but...
Will it work with the old docing station?
It has slimport like the nexus 4 (not that useful to me) but will it have USB2go (Old Nexus 7 has it, 4 didn't)
Not sure if it's worth upgrading yet.
Old Nexus 7 took some XDA malarkey to have it read memory sticks, but worked with keyboards etc. Old Nexus 4 was made by LG and didn't have USB OTG in any way. Some AMA on Reddit suggests that the new Nexus 7 has OTG - at least in hardware- since it appears to be supplying power to connected devices.
Does every headline have to have the obligatry Applevert? As if Apple product placement every 5 minutes on the TV isn't enough. Perhaps the Mac reviews should be headed "to take on Windows".
The 2013 Nexus 7 looks great - even last year's still seems one of the best 7-8" tablets (alongside the Note 8). The last paragraph makes no sense - sorry, even if an ipad mini was the same price as a Nexus 7, and ran Android, it wouldn't be in the running.
I may get one, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop using my laptop. (I'm sure that phone sales have long overtaken PCs, but that doesn't mean PCs are going to die.)
I really wanted this announcement to be about a 4G Nexus 4. I get that flying cars are not easy to invent, but how come we *still* don't have a googlephone with 4G???
(yes I am aware of the Google editions of the S4 and the One overseas, but they are unavailable here in Australia)
It's the HAVING it. The ease of putting it on, push in, push out, move to other device (slip in adaptor, put in laptop, PC, television, phone, other tablet, internet café on holiday).
There are a number of reasons to prefer portable memory to cloud storage. Holiday and travel, business or personal is one. Always connected to the internet? Train and bus and shop and car and accommodation wifi available free everywhere? It's not like that, and it's just a hassle to have to worry about finding free or affordable wifi just to access either music or work documents you need, or personal letters. Even with free wifi in places, often you have to register - and it's more hassle when, if you have the SD card, you press play. The limit of 32 GB SD cards is a myth also, as a tiny carry box with 4 SD cards, quickly switchable, immediately has the luxury of what was all most people needed on their desktop PCs 4 or so years ago - 128 GB.
Also, for swapping docs - do you really want to log on to your friend / family member / colleague's machine(s) with your own private cloud account every time you want to quickly transfer a document without having to upload and download to a share site that doesn't require registration?
Another thing is that I'm getting really against wifi. (Watch the documentary film "Resonance: Beings of Frequency".) It's happened quickly and I haven't quite got around to getting the wired, socket connecting network adaptors yet, but I'm nearly sure I will. I'm a sick person most of the time anyway, but I can really feel a difference if I leave the Wi-Fi on at night, and increasingly during the day. It feels bad, and I seem to be getting worse rather than better. (I live in the country where mobile phone networks are very weak and often I don't have mobile connectivity at home, so I'm pretty sure the Wi-Fi is something that has a big effect. I guess it's worse than many peoples' because it's a BT router which requires around 5 GHz to be selected, rather than the typical 2.4 Ghz for N network streaming @ 300 Mbps, needed for HD video and other things.)
The truth is LOADS of people love the SD card slots since they came, and feel they need them. They DON'T want to have to be bothered with copying everything to a separate memory stick and keeping that in much of the time with this handheld device, making it harder to use. BUT IT'S WHAT THEY'LL DO, rather than cloud all the time. It's what I'll do, I'm sure. But we'll all be really p***** off because the tablet manufacturer didn't make this facility a priority as we feel they should have.
For business docs also, it's often nearly stupid not to have 2 back-up copies in case of accidental deletion or something else - one on the machine that's removable, and one online. Hard drive space can go quickly for business use. SD is secure, and make no mistakes, very many business will need to be using a memory stick for travelling around, because they can't be sure to rely on Wi-Fi being available always, risking not having access to docs. That just won't happen, so they'll have their portable memory, which ought to be an SD card, rather than the cumbersome stick.
Phew! I think that's most things. A long response, but your response, Stuart, really surprised me. Easy, removable memory is loved / needed by a lot of people and is often irreplaceable.
The more storage offered the better. High capacity built-in or SD Micro are always welcome but check out:
Seagate Wireless Media 1 TB (Excellent device & works with everything - Android, iOS, Mac, PC & Chromebook).
SanDisk Wireless Media Drive & Wireless Flash Drive are other options (just announced).
OK, totally made up statistic time. I'd suggest that 99% of people don't actually need a computer, whether PC or laptop. What they want is a communication and media consumption device, with perhaps a little light photo editing and some casual games play. For those purposes a tablet is ideal.
I don't see anything other than a continuing decline in PC/laptop sales, certainly in the richer countries where the market is already saturated. We're looking at a market consisting of businesses, scientists, "creatives" (including programers) serious gamers and a variety of hobbyists, not the general public anymore.
Agreed
The vast majority of home use is for email and web surfing, and other media consumption. Business users can add access to a company database, which for most use is easily tabletised.
Most Reg readers probably need a proper PC: I don't anticipate doing video- audio- and photo-editing on a tablet any time soon, but the general public (gamers excepted) do not need the cost and complexity of a full blown PC, even for business.
Teenagers and university students alone account for 10% of the population and all need to do homework and coursework for which a notebook or PC type device is essential if they don't want to go nuts. Over 10% of the working population is self employed, again a PC is a requirement. Think it through and its easy to see for over 50% of households at least one PC or notebook remains a necessity, not a luxury.
Also, its very early days for tablet PCs but these really change the basis of the notebook vs. tablet discussion.
In this household there are four children and two adult women besides me and the trend is clear.
Up until ca two years ago there were two laptops and one desktop pc in frequent daily use.
Now the laptops are gathering serious dust standing days on end without even being switched on while three tables and four > 4" smartphones are being used for practically everything, games, browsing, social networking, recipies, video contacts, movies etc
The only dinosaur using a desktop pc extensively in this household is me, the wisest and most senior male and I have tried to tell the other members that PC's are GOOD and BETTER than tables and phones for many things but they just blatantly ignore my words of wisdom.
The writing is on the wall and as the tablets and smartphones get better and faster the trend will continue.
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But could we have 5GHz compatible wifi this time round please? In my crowded 'hood I would be the only person using 5GHz wifi... My laptop will do it, my phone will do it, my ipad will do it, even my TV will do it.. But the far better half has a nexus 7 which won't do it and the only other option is to buy a wifi router which does dual band and that is slightly more expensive than ditching the nexus 7 and buying her an iPad mini :(
Sure Apple were an early mover in the ARM tablet space but we could as easily say the marketing of the original iPad design delayed the availability of the much more handy low cost 7" tablet format like the Nexus 7. And distracted attention from the desirability of PC convertibles in the larger tablet space. All more complicated than your fanboyism suggests.
"How come a small $269 fondle slab has better screen resolution than most laptops costing up to, and over, £1000?"
It is about giving us something we really need relative to our spend.
It just ain't like your very average Macbook Air. No Intel tax and a small hope for Asus, no diamond encrustment for Tim Cook's bath taps somewhere 'Bermuda with shamrock'.
Add why shouldn't the quality f what we see match our 1080p TV sets or top end laptops?
Any HDMI out port this time around? It's a clincher for me, and others.
I nearly bought the Kindle Fire HD just because of that port, but couldn't be bothered buying an advertising and sales platform (that's hard or impossible for someone like me to make normal) or a Luxembourg company that uses a .co.uk referring agency company.
I have been waiting for an Android tablet, since returning a low priced one previously that wasn't great. I hoped the new Nexus 7 had HDMI out facility and is not too expensive.
Otherwise I'll get a good budget version that does, such as the Sumvision Cyclone until I can see something better. I would buy the Kindle Fire HD and try to erase the OS and boot normal Android, but I just don't want the connection with Amazon's restriction game, and I don't know if I can do the booting, as I'm no techie at all.
£200 pre-order price at Currys online. Cheapest price, so I suppose it's for the 16 GB. Ouch - £50 importing mark up from the American price. Do other countries get similar mark ups? Japan?
£150 would be a good price, though, for what it buys. For the specs of the tablet, I suppose £150 definitely makes it a budget machine, and maybe even close to £200.
While I'm not sure. I think the iPads are definitely overpriced and the premium Samsung tablets are a few tenners too dear at the limit of a good price. Looking at budget machines competing with the 1st generation Google Nexus 7, such as the Sumvision Cyclone 7, @ around £80 and not much different it seems, those premium prices of Apple and Samsung do seem too much. Budget tablet markets may be a bit of a quicksand field, but I think there are stand out budget machines such as the Sumvision.
one device to bind them....tablet for mobile use ....use an entry level smartphone as a hotspot.....do work like photoshop or resumes on a pc with 16 gigs of ram 2 27 inch monitors .....tablet for on a couch , having a meal, read a book, show someone some pictures of a holiday or you digitised on your pc.....have many devices even apple as flash player is not on android.....its all affordable now....i have 6 devices....even cameras are wifi....we are evil smartmonkeys in some ways but some tech , even if its linked toconsumerism is the stuff of dreams and is mind blowing....im 60 and this stuff is insane...i watched grainy black and white tv in the 1950's...no one had a phone...my dad did have a fast car that did 230 km/h in silence....satellites and a man on the moon....contact the first aliens...wow dr who and starvtrek....get with the wonder of it all or you wont cope with global flooding and cannibalism well at all...me i'll either dead, on another planet or reborn with inherited skills from now and so can show you how to light a wood fire and look up at the sky in Awe.
"Consumers will pay $269 and $299 for the 16GB and 32GB Wi-Fi models, respectively, and $349 for the LTE-equipped 32GB version. Sales are limited to the US at present, but the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Japan, South Korea, and Australia will be able to buy the Nexus 7 in the next few weeks."
Can we get confirmation that's right? Other livecasts had the price at $229 for the introductory model and also mentioned that those other markets would be launched simultaneously. But there's enough conflicting reports that I'm not sure what's going on. Also, some had Canada on the list and some didn't, which only serves to confuse me further.
I really wonder if part of the reason that Tablet sales are so high is due to user inflicted damage or loss. I know plenty of people that go through a phone every month or so due to, dropping, cracked screens, or straight up loosing them by misplacement or leaving them in a public place and not remembering it(not referring to theft here). If this is really the case it makes much more sense, having less to due with actual user demand so much as devoted core groups that rely them enough that it pushes up manufacturing demand rather then A large amount of new users, or general upgrades.
As people have mentioned already PC's last alot longer these days. Not to mention a lack of software in most situations that really put a need for people to upgrade every quarter let alone every year even. Expanding on the above topic of destruction. Greatly fewer PC's generally die to dropping and accidents. Laptops are a little more prone to this but this I have yet to meet someone that goes through a laptop a month due to accidents.
Just a little food for thought.
Personally I find that I use my tablet for very different purposes than my desktops or latops. Enough that my PC still generally rules my tech needs.
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