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So Amazon’s tablet is a go

Dave Farquhar Hardware September 5, 2011September 5, 2011android, apple, Apple Ipad, atari, christmas, commodore, hp, ipad, kindle, TSA

Reports of Amazon’s tablet plans are trickling out. Basically, it’s going to be a 7-inch tablet running a very customized version of Android, tweaked to play media purchased from Amazon, and priced at $250, half the price of an entry-level Apple Ipad. (In English, we capitalize the first letter of proper nouns, and my native language is English, not C++, if you’re wondering.) Techcrunch and The Register have some of the details. The name: Amazon Kindle. The release date: end of November.

I wouldn’t call it a can’t-miss, but it’s clear Amazon’s thought a lot of things through here.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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Lessons of the HP Touchpad

Dave Farquhar Hardware August 24, 2011October 16, 20181980s, android, apple, Apple Ipad, AT&T, hp, IBM, ipad, kindle, nintendo, pc world, playstation, web os, xbox

At full price ($499 for the 16 GB model and $599 for the 32 GB model) the HP Touchpad was a colossal flop. Like AT&T’s first PC clones of the mid 1980s, it was a me-too product at a me-too price that wasn’t quite as good as the product it was imitating. So, basically, there was no reason to buy it.

At closeout prices, it became an Internet sensation. The few web sites that have it in stock can’t handle the traffic they’re getting. At $99 and $149, it’s selling like the Nintendo Wii in its glory days.

And I think there’s a significant parallel there that highlights the missed opportunity.
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Dave Farquhar

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Psst! Want a cheap tablet?

Dave Farquhar Hardware August 19, 2011August 20, 2011android, apple, Apple Ipad, Canada, hp, ipad, kindle, nintendo, sega dreamcast, web os

HP figured out what to do with all those unsold tablets. Friday they dropped the price in Canada to $99 and $149, depending on the memory. And this weekend, they’re doing the same in the States.

They’re underpowered and they’re orphans, but at that price, I’ll bet they’ll sell.

Dave Farquhar

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Bombshell: HP pulls out. Of tablets and desktop PCs.

Dave Farquhar Hardware August 18, 2011November 3, 2025amiga, android, apple, Ars Technica, best buy, Dave Haynie, hp, IBM, intel, Intel Core, ipad, netbooks, web os

And speaking of duds, it looks like HP has one on their hands in their Web OS-based tablets.

Best Buy has about a quarter-million unsold tablets in their warehouse and has only managed to sell 25,000 of them. And when Woot ran a special on them, selling them for $120 off, they sold a whopping 612 of them.

And now it looks like HP is just going to discontinue Web OS altogether.
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Dave Farquhar

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How to tame e-books

Dave Farquhar Copyright, e-readers July 29, 2011October 11, 2019android, calibre, ipad, kindle, New York, new york times, os x, Project Gutenberg, public domain, sony, wi-fi

I haven’t exactly been rushing out to buy an e-reader, for at least a couple of reasons. The practical reason is that I’m afraid of being locked in to a single vendor. Amazon is the market leader and the most likely to still be around for the long term, but they’re the worst about locking you in. The other vendors offer slightly better interoperability–supporting the same file format and, optionally, the same DRM–but the non-Amazon market leaders are Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Sony, all of which are scary. Borders is being liquidated; B&N isn’t losing money–yet–but its profit margins have shrunk each of the last two years; and Sony’s recent problems are well known to the security community. I’m not too anxious to climb into bed with any of them. Google is entering the market as well, but the first Google-backed e-reader doesn’t support highlighting or note-taking.

The Luddite reason is that I’m old enough to have an attachment to books. Physical books, printed on paper. Maybe this isn’t true for any generation beyond mine (I’m a GenXer), but for my generation and previous generations, having books on your shelf is a sign of being educated. And there are certain books–or types of books, depending on your field–that you’re expected to have on your shelf.

To a certain extent, the latter reason can be negated by playing the e-reader card. Of course I have the complete works of Shakespeare on my e-reader, so those Shakespeare books from college just became clutter…
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Dave Farquhar

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The tyranny of consumerization is real

Dave Farquhar security March 5, 2011December 4, 20181990s, 3com, android, apple, CIO, computerworld, dell, excel, hp, IBM, ipad, mainframe, micron, Packard Bell, RIAA, Token Ring, usb port, windows nt

Computerworld cites the Ipad 2 and increasing demand by end users to use such consumer devices in corporate environments as “The tyranny of consumerization.”

This has happened before. And if history repeats itself, the future will be better than today, but the road there is going to involve some pain.
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Dave Farquhar

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