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Memo to Michael Dell: Why not a cheap, e-book-friendly tablet?
October 26, 2006 | 10:23 am
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By David Rothman
Dell’s coming out with a laptop selling for less than $500. Great, Michael. Now why not see if you can’t drive down tablet prices? Tablets with detachable keyboards are easier on people’s backs than laptops are, and they’d be great for e-reading.
Psst! I know of at least one possible K-12 effort that is begging for affordable machines.
Of course, if you and AMD could team up with OLPC‘s $100 laptop project to take advantage of the existing work on an e-book friendly machine, I wouldn’t mind.
The OLPC laptop uses a convertible design, making it a tablet in disguise—see photo. I’d earlier feared it would lack this capability. For inspiration, also see a Lenovo design.
Related: Laptop ergonomic information.
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Comments:
Why not a cheap tablet? Because I already have a laptop. Just as about everyone else around here, I guess. A tablet, just as my laptop, does not go below 2 pounds and above 7 hours. I am not going to spend 500 bucks just for a little portability. What I want is a replacement for printouts: something that lets me sit in a café or in bright sunlight, something that does not yell for its power-brick after a few hours.
Frankly, it is difficult to understand the amount of energy that you seem to spend on loathing the existing eInk solutions. For a second-generation device, the Sony is already pretty neat and definitely usable. Formats are not much of an issue; even for the Librié, there are several nifty conversion tools.
From a commercial point of view, I even think that the current shortcomings of Sony’s and iRex’ solutions (and even the limitations of Google’s generously distributed PDFs) are much more an opportunity than a problem, because they are going to generate a lot of business. Just think about the opportunities for dotReader, if it manages to become more convinient than Sony’s default. And until then, I am really glad that the technology is available, affordable and useful.
If you just wait a year or two, you can use the old 2003 models for the $100 program. They should be worth about that by then.
Josh: I don’t think that the Sony is terribly interactive without a keyboard or provisions for one. Maybe this will change. As for E Ink, I’m not anti-E Ink, just pro-functionality. The Sony is a nice niche product but not what I have in mind for K-12 use. As for formats–well, I dislike DRM, but unfortunately the big publishers like it, and the Sony can’t work with a DRMed files except in BBeB format.
Optimized: What 2003 models? The first $100 laptop isn’t even in production yet.
Thanks,
David
To get a tablet under $500 would require skinning the margin just too close to the bone for Dell’s liking; profits are a big problem for them right now. Additionally, the Tablet PC edition of Windows XP carries a price premium over home and pro editions, something Acer (which championed tablets early on) has complained in public about.
Secondly, Dell is not going to get into a new or developing market; that isn’t their game.
Finally, you can get a laptop for