Hardware Is Dead — At Least Most Expensive Hardware Is 342
First time accepted submitter ze_jua writes "In this article, Jay Goldberg, a financial analyst who travels to Shenzhen several times a year, analyses the potential consequences of the very low cost of hardware he found there on the consumer electronic industry worldwide.
He wrote this piece of text after he found a very nice $45 Android 4 tablet. Are we so close to given-away tablets?"
Hyperbole! (Score:0, Funny)
You know, I just can't stand hyperbole! I will have to kill myself over this.
Why, every single hardware article is about how the PC is DEAD! How hardware is dying! And on and on a million times a day!
Can't the media stop it?! No they can't. This will go on FOREVER and EVER!
Re:Nope (Score:5, Funny)
Yup. Recently spent nearly $50k for a new machine (512GB ram, 64 CPU, etc.).
...
Can I be your friend?
Re:Absolutely. (Score:5, Funny)
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apple [theoatmeal.com]
On sale at Fry's (Score:5, Funny)
56 dollars [frys.com]
For the price I paid for my iPad,I could load up my backpack with 10 of these. Imagine a beowulf of tablets!
Sounds like alternate reality...let's make one! (Score:5, Funny)
Ever since Apple went bankrupt after it tried to sell that disastrous mp3 "pod" player thing in the early 2000s (not as much space as my Nomad but more expensive? no thanks!), we've known that the market for high-end, "premium" products had finally closed up. And it's a good thing too, since the last thing we need are more sheeple with a superiority complex getting suckered into bad deals. The Dells my family use have been running rock solid (well, aside from the swollen/leaking capacitor issue, but everyone gets those, even Compaq), and my netbook is a great experience compared to those high-end UMPC [wikipedia.org] devices that ended up sinking the tablet market once and for all. [Ed. note: not everything is a loss in this alternate universe ;)]
I mean, in some other industries, such as cars, high-end products tend to have features that find their way into the more commodity lines after a few years, but we never saw that happening with computers or those weird "smartphone" things that Handspring and Palm used to make before they went belly-up (why would you want to pay hundreds of dollars to have your e-mail with you?). And now that we've been away from premium computers and electronics for awhile, I can't imagine what we're possibly missing out on, to be honest. I mean, my top-of-the-line RAZR V15 can display thousands of colors with the best of them and is easy to use for texting, came free with a two-year contract, and they even added "multiphonic" ringtones with the latest model.
Personally, I feel that we're better off for being rid of the high-end electronics market. It added nothing of value, no one was buying into it, and it's allowed us to refocus on the products that are actually selling, which are all going for free or close to it. Speaking of which, has anyone seen that the V16 will only have 128MB of space for songs? What the hell? That's so 2010, but at least it beats the crap out of the stuff the Sony Ericsson fanboys are still using.
Re:Absolutely. (Score:4, Funny)
You do know that Google can analyse images, don't you?
Re:No. (Score:5, Funny)
But there's also a good chance it has spyware built right in.
For all the people that have looked, the only backdoor found in Chinese gear was ones left there by Cisco, left in because of wholesale copying, not added by any Chinese company. I'd feel safer with a Chinese tablet than an NSA/FBI approved USA tablet.
Re:No. (Score:5, Funny)