Tablets

Last week my dad emailed me about a cheap internet tablet by a company name Velocity. It was $200 and my dad wanted to know if I thought that it was a good buy.

My initial response was "no way"! Obviously there is an iPad and a 1,000 cheap knock offs. However, my dad is more frugal (and less susceptible to clever advertising) so I checked it out.

What did I find? A nice little tablet that was, admittingly, slightly underpowered and hampered by the lack of Android Marketplace. The tab ran at 600 mghz, had a nice 7' capacitive touch screen and runs flash as well as an iPad (which is to say, not at all). It came packed with a Kindle app and apparently was great for browsing the internet, which seems to be 90% of the reason to own a tablet. Not bad.

A little more searching and I found a tab from a company name eLocity. This tab has an hdmi out port, a Tegra dual core processor (faster than Apple's "magical" device), bluetooth, a usb port, a removable battery and upgradable storage. Total cost: $300.

Now the point of this post is not an endorsement for elocity's tablet, the point is the power of advertising and peer pressure. It's highly debatable that internet tablets are wise or prudent purchases, but they are fun and have a certain amount of fun appeal. However, this emerging market is becoming synonymous with the iPad. Apple did this before with iPod, but anyone who likes techy toys should be very happy that Apple was challenged by competitors. Without competition, Apple would still likely have iTunes music locked out for other players and we would be paying $500 for the player itself. In spite of challenges from Microsoft, Creative and others, Apple still refuses to allow easy battery replacements.

Worse than anything else, Apple will announce a new iPad next week. Likely it will have an retina (hd) display and a front facing camera. The screen doesn't matter, but the camera does, as video conferencing is becoming the norm. Those millions of units that have launched this year will be obsolete. Call me cynical, but given how "all in" Apple has been on front facing cameras this year, it seems like they knew this change was coming. This is the definition of "planned obsolescence".

Apple is in many ways the least consumer friendly major company in the US, but they make some sexy products and clever commercials. The message that we learn from Apple is that everything they make is sexy and good, while other products are cheap and knock-offs.

And I have to confess they caught me on the tablet thing.