Tablet PC: Acer blames Microsoft for high prices

[DaveSimmons]

I'd love a cheap tablet PC to try as an ebook reader, and for roaming net access & playback from my music jukebox, but they cost so much more than laptops. According to Acer, blame Cana--uh, MSFT :

"The cost of a tablet PC is $200 (7,000 Taiwan dollars) more than its notebook counterpart. Of this difference, the hardware cost is only between $30 and $60. The majority of the difference comes from the OS license," said Wang. "We have tried to negotiate the fee with Microsoft several times in vain. It's very regrettable."

(I assume the extra hardware is the pen-sensing screen and detachable display)

ZDNet story

 

[thraxes]

How about an Linux implementation? Tablet PC support for GNome or KDE would get me interested.

 

[Ameesh]

you have any idea how much R&D money ms poured into that project? maybe they should just give everything away for free and only charge for tech support.

 

[Hammer]

Originally posted by: Ameesh
you have any idea how much R&D money ms poured into that project? maybe they should just give everything away for free and only charge for tech support.

ok

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Considering MS pours $1B/year into the Xbox, I could see them giving it away. Hell, students get MS software for free/near free all the time.

 

[bleeb]

Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth
Considering MS pours $1B/year into the Xbox, I could see them giving it away. Hell, students get MS software for free/near free all the time.

A lot of people get "free" software all the time. Those are the ones that cost the most.

 

[LikeLinus]

What a load of BS. But Acer fails to mention they sell their Tablet PC for $2,199!!! They can complain about MS making a profit, but damn look at the mark-up of their product.

 

[thebestMAX]

Dont know about you guys but I have had ACER products fail more than most and getting a reply from them is non existant or at least was 2 years ago.

I solved by just never buying or recommending anything with their name on it.

 

[WinkOsmosis]

Does Acer still make desktops? I had a Pentium 100 made by them.

 

[Booster]

Originally posted by: WinkOsmosis
Does Acer still make desktops? I had a Pentium 100 made by them.

It seems they do, but it's kind of strange that even the latest models have the now obsolete "turbo" mode indicator which is always on. I don't get it.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Ameesh
you have any idea how much R&D money ms poured into that project? maybe they should just give everything away for free and only charge for tech support.

Or for security fixes

$150 extra for a tablet OS over the laptop OS cost seems a little self-defeating for MS though, hurting tablet adoption for any uses except corporate and industrial.

It would make more sense to me for MS to accept less per tablet (the normal $50-100 instead of $200-$250) to try to get them out to many more users. MS would make back the R&D through volume and possibly just taking a little longer.

 

[arcas]

With many laptops going for $1200 or less, their tact of blaming M$ for the high prices seems weak at best. Even if they offered a tabletPC without an OS (perhaps for the BSD/Linux community), they'd still be pricing them in the $1800-$2000 range. Not going to find many adopters at prices like that.

 

[theNEOone]

my brother recommended the new acer tablet and i actually bought it and played around with it for about a month. it really is a remarkable piece of machinery, but i was able to get an extra 300mhz centrino, extra 2" on the screen, extra 10gb 5400 drive, and extra 128mb of ram, 802.11b/g, and misc. specs for the same price and size (ultraportable) with a dell, so i just returned the acer. i am going to miss the tablet functionality though, it was very convenient at times.



=|

 

[PlatinumGold]

Originally posted by: arcas
With many laptops going for $1200 or less, their tact of blaming M$ for the high prices seems weak at best. Even if they offered a tabletPC without an OS (perhaps for the BSD/Linux community), they'd still be pricing them in the $1800-$2000 range. Not going to find many adopters at prices like that.

your comparing apples to oranges. you can't compare Tablet PC's to your AVERAGE Laptop. you have to compare them to the Subnotebooks. the ones that weigh less than 3 lbs. in that range of laptops prices are in the $1500 to $1600 range. plus they all come with Win XP Home whereas the tablet pc comes with Win XP Tablet which is basically XP PRO with additional features.

comparing the Tablet PC to the SubNotebooks, prices lineup pretty much the way that Acer said they did.

btw, i have a Toshiba TablePC and i LOVE it. i kind of wished i had gotten a Centrino TabletPC (gateway has a decent centrino Tablet PC) but i wanted a convertible and not one with keyboards additional).