Sharp To Quit Making Personal Computers 93
cylonlover writes "Sharp has reportedly decided to pull the plug on their PC operations — not entirely shocking given that the company has not released any PCs at all in the past year. The company will apparently 'focus on marketing its Galapagos tablet devices coming out in December, along with providing content such as e-books, music and video for these products.'"
Re:Dont trust their tablets either (Score:2, Interesting)
Same thing with the Sharp Netwalker, which is the next-gen Zaurus. They released it in 2009 with Ubuntu 9.0.4 and haven't bothered to announce any upgrade, despite that 9.0.4 EoL-ed this month.
Too bad, because the hardware is otherwise pretty cool.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember with fondness my Sharp MZ-731 home computer, with its built-in 4-colour plotter.
Yes, Sharp made some excellent products back when. But in a market where similarity now is what's desired, and consumers look at price before quality knowing that they'll replace their purchase in a couple of years anyhow, being innovative doesn't help. Do what the others do, just slightly better and slightly cheaper, and you'll sell a LOT more than if you come out with a groundbreaking product.
So I'm not surprised that Sharp left the market, and instead focus on their other products.
Re:Huh? (Score:1, Interesting)
You've never actually LISTENED to Mr. Beck's show have you?
Re:Dont trust their tablets either (Score:2, Interesting)
Too bad indeed, I'd ebay it quick while it still has some value.
The last time I saw a SL-6000 on ebay it was going for like $50 or something which is pretty disappointing considering they cost $699 when they came out.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Both machines were highly innovative. This is a sad day.
Sharp X68000 (Score:4, Interesting)
Before they got into making x86 PC "clones" like everyone else, they had an 8-bit computer line as well as the X68000 which was basically the high end gaming PC of the late 80s. It shipped with Human68K which was on the surface similar to MS-DOS except that it used a 768x512 text display with kanji. The interesting part was the hardware. It had dual 1.2MB 5.25" floppy drives, a YM2151 (4 op, 8 channel stereo FM synthesizer like the one used in Capcom CPS1 arcade machines and many others) and ADPCM chip for sound, and a 10MHz 68K. Then for video it had 512KB of memory for "text" arranged as 4 bitplanes (like the Atari ST or Amiga), another 512KB for bitmapped graphics which could hit 512x512 with 64K colors, and 32KB of SRAM for 4bpp character based graphics (2 independantly scrolling background layers and 128 16x16 sprites). In other words, it rocked, and it cost 400,000 yen.
Laptops are the reason (Score:3, Interesting)
Most people who are ok with the limits of an all-in-one, in that they cost more and aren't so upgradable, just get a laptop. They work well, and you can pick them up and take them with you. They can also easily have an external keyboard, mouse and monitor hooked to them when placed on a desktop.
That's the real issue is that all-in-ones are a very small market because something already pretty much offers what they do and more. Laptops are great if size is the concern, desktops are great for systems that stay in one spot. Only if you demand something larger than a laptop, but you can't have a desktop, is an all-in-one really needed. That is just not many people.
In fact the only reason the iMacs are as popular as they are is because of the lack of consumer Mac tower, something Mac users have clamored for for years. If you need more power than a Mac mini gives you, and that is not hard to need, then an iMac is your only choice unless you are willing to drop $2500+ on a workstation. If Apple introduced a consumer level, $1000ish tower like everyone else has, the iMac sales would drop. A few people would still like them, all-in-ones do sell, including non-Apple ones (MSI makes all-in-ones), bu they are a small market.