Are Tablets Just Too Expensive?

An anonymous reader writes "Over at PCWorld they're asking a simple but valid question: Are tablets just too expensive? They point out that, weight-for-weight, pure silver is cheaper than most tablets, and that, like jewelery, tablets are highly thievable. The worst thing might be that the nascent tablet platform gets written-off as a high-priced niche for people with more money than sense."

IMHO, yes

[Monoman]

I say yes but the market may say otherwise.

I don't like how some (iPads) are offered as Wifi only or for 100 more you get 3G. I was under the impression you need to sign up for a plan.

I want both WiFi and cell data for later short-term use like a vacation. Price the one model in the middle of the two and be done with it.

Worth every penny

[Sarusa]

The iPad has been worth every penny so far. $50 a month (500+tax)/12 is less than my smartphone bill, and it's well worth not having to lug around the laptop most of the time. I've saved a ton of money on magazines and books which are now always available in one 'book'. And it's a great little gaming device so I've saved a lot of money I would have spent on much more expensive DS games instead.

Now I'd like to escape the Apple ecosystem, so a ~$500-600 10 inch tablet with Honeycomb would be extremely attractive. And certainly justifiable, especially with the sale of the iPad which is still worth quite a bit used.

The ones without any sense here are the people who can't even imagine the huge number of ways you can use a tablet to improve your life. Unless you're one of the people who really needs a full laptop with you constantly - then it's arguably too much for too little gain.

iPads are perfectly priced status symbols

[__roo]

A year before the iPad came out, a friend of mine spent well over $2,500 on a MacBook. She saved money from her $10/hr job to buy it. A year later, asked for help writing a resume to try to find a better job -- and it turns out that she didn't even know if she had a word processor installed on it. Literally all she had ever done with it was use iTunes to play music and use Safari to check her mail, look at web pages, and watch music videos.

My friend really wanted an Apple product. She lives in Brooklyn, and she sees all of the other people her age covet those Apple products, and she wanted the status of being able to take out an Apple product in a coffee shop. If the iPad had been around at the time, she would have been able to save almost two thousand dollars, and she'd still end up with a device that serves exactly the same purpose: basic web browsing and video playing, with a big Apple logo that other hip Brooklyn people will use to recognize that she fits in.

I'm not sure if this can be generalized to all tablets in general, but I think it speaks to exactly the right price point for the iPad. It was a brilliant move for Apple to introduce the iPad at a time when people were starting to have less money to spend on computers. People who hesitated about buying, say, a MacBook Air could still buy the cachet of having the latest Apple product. And it hasn't seemed to cannibalize Apple sales at all.

(Disclaimer: I've used a MacBook Pro as my main computer for years, and I really like it. That may or may not have colored my opinion.)

Re:The answer

[borjonx]

IMHO the best is the tablet with the physical keyboard. i.e. those nascent laptops where the lid (screen) can swivel 360 and fold back down so it looks like a thick tablet. That way you have a tablet when u want one, and a Real keyboard when u want to enter lots of text. Pat

Re:But...

[adonoman]

It is rare, but not too rare, it is very inert, and it is easy to identify.

That's why fiat currency is so great. It's exactly as rare as we decide it should be. It can be made easy to identify and hard to forge. It's not exactly inert, but in a paper currency, that's a benefit, as the supply can be reduced through attrition. To link a paper currency to gold just removes our ability to adjust its rarity. Gold is great in a collapsed society that can't rely on a central authority to limit the money supply, but in a civilized country, it's just too limited.

The only problem comes in when people can't agree how rare the currency should be. Some people think we have too much, some think there's too little, others think there should be no choice in the matter and it should be set based on a pile of gold bars stashed away being unhelpful to anyone.

Re:But...

[stewbacca]

Also from NPR on Gold:

"Every self-respecting tenured faculty member in economics this country, almost without exception, would laugh [the gold standard] out of court."

"Most economists agree that the gold standard was one of the causes of the Great Depression."

"The world only emerged from the Great Depression when countries started going off the gold standard. And he rattles off this long list of countries — Britain, the U.S., Japan, France and others — that started to recover from the Depression just after going off the gold standard"

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/15/133662179/a-wingnut-argument-for-the-gold-standard [npr.org]

These are different conclusions than your summary.

Re:Bullshit....

[Culture20]

Add to this the idea that if gold is used as currency, a newly discovered mine is essentially causing inflation. Take the old D&D trick of Dragon Hoard Inflation; a great way to make players not spend their money all in one town lest they destroy it (a mug of ale costs 20 gold pieces, and in some cases gold pieces become so common that silver and copper are more valuable). Gold is convenient because it's easier to carry than a goat, and easier to use as "proof of work done for someone" than carrying that person around with you (unless you're a palanquin lifter). But if someone digs some gold out of the ground or pans it from a stream, they haven't "done work for someone" nor is that gold an actual goat. So when this person trades the found gold for goods or services, they're essentially an economic parasite.