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Portables

My $200 Laptop Can Beat Your $500 Tablet 789

Roblimo writes "Yes, we know tablets like the iPad are the wave of the future and that PCs and laptops are dead. But some of us see tablets as laptops with their keyboards missing and a few hundred bucks tacked onto the price."
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My $200 Laptop Can Beat Your $500 Tablet

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  • Several good points (Score:3, Informative)

    by Conspiracy_Of_Doves ( 236787 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @09:53AM (#35571936)

    Article makes several good points, but a lot of the problems it mentions are leveled at the iPad specifically and not tablets in general. Non-apple tablets could easily not have these problems.

    Personally, I'd like something where you can just plug the tablet into a docking station that has a keyboard and mouse setup, maybe even a larger monitor, and just pull it out when you need to go portable. Although that doesn't take care of the problem where tablets will be forever less powerful than desktops.

  • Re:Who thinks this? (Score:4, Informative)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @10:00AM (#35572060)
    Asus have a couple of models which IMO sound far more useful devices than pure tablets. The Eee Slider is a tablet with a slide out keyboard which tilts the screen for typing. The Eee Pad Transformer is a tablet that you can stuff into a netbook style housing with keyboard / mouse.

    IMO both devices are far, far more suitable than tablets for any kind of text input, e.g. lectures, writing emails, essays, slashdot comments. Of course the price might be prohibitive when they launch but we'll see.

    That's the biggest issue with tablets at the moment - they cost too damned much money. It really is a ripoff. A tablet should be the same price as a netbook, but manufacturers are still in greed mode. They see Apple commanding stupid premiums for their device and they "compete" by pricing their devices similarly. There is absolutely no reason a decent tablet shouldn't cost $300 or less. There are already a few examples (e.g. Advent Vega is a Tegra 2 10" tablet for £250) but the brand names are still too expensive. Hopefully when the market is flooded with Android 3.0 devices the prices will become a bit more reasonable and competitive.

  • by TheCRAIGGERS ( 909877 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @10:29AM (#35572536)

    About once a year I just take my Model M, hold it upside-down, and give it a vigorous shaking. Of course, I have to vacuum afterwards, but still... canned air is a waste.

    Yeah, the keys still have more dried food stuck to them than the floor at Burger King, but that just adds more tactile response for my fingers, not to mention added security from people not wanting to touch it. It's a feature.

  • Re:Who thinks this? (Score:0, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @10:36AM (#35572624)

    Considering they are selling like mad, i'd say you are wrong.

    Perhaps you should get a job? Then you can afford one.

  • Re:Who thinks this? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Americano ( 920576 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @11:53AM (#35573980)

    And the thing is, that "$200 laptop" was certainly not a $200 laptop when it started its life. He bought it used on Craigslist.

    If you read TFA, his reasons for liking it have to do with the *expandability* of the laptop versus the tablet: ports, dvd drive, more internal storage, replaceable battery. And if somebody else hadn't purchased it first, then resold it when they bought something new, he'd be spending a LOT more on a Thinkpad than he would on an iPad or a Xoom.

    Looking at the specs on a Thinkpad X30, it's a 5-6 year old computer, and in terms of performance, I'd expect an iPad 2 or a Xoom to keep up with it just fine, performance-wise.

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