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back to article Acer insists fondleslab 'fever' is fading

Acer has once again claimed that punters are turning back to notebooks, tempted by the likes of Windows 8 and the ultra-skinny machines chip maker Intel calls "ultrabooks". The PC giant is seeking to spin this as a sign that consumer interest in tablets is waning. Yes, tablet fever is cooling down, Acer chairman JT Wang is …

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  1. Fab De Marco

    Head... about.... to.... explode....

    Wang is Cooling Down

    HP has Pulled Out

    Levono is Pushing forward?!

    I've not been a fan of tablets... they are a luxury for a quick search and status update here and there but not practically useful for what I currently use a laptop for.

    I welcome the change. Now to the Gutter, in order to retrieve my mind.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    Good luck

    Windows 7 runs like a dog on modern hardware, what makes you think the next, even bloatier version, will run smoothly on hardware that will by definition have to be a lot less powerful? It will either need to have a battery that adds a kilo or two, or expect the juice to run out somewhere between locking your front door and getting on the bus...

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    1. Ragarath
      Reply Icon
      Trollface

      Ooooooo

      Someone has an axe to grind, Windows 7 runs fine for me I suspect lack of configuration knowledge?

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    2. Alex Walsh
      Reply Icon

      possibly

      because MS are putting a lot of effort porting their new OS to ARM?

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    3. Chris Parsons
      Reply Icon

      Why do I need a title to reply to a post?

      I don't know what modern hardware you're thinking of, but on my cheapo Lenovo laptop, Windows 7 runs just fine, thank you very much. Oh, battery life about 4 hours, obviously dependent upon what one is doing.

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  3. Alex Walsh

    No fever

    The media and manufacturers have confused iPad fever with fondleslab fever. Look at the failures- the Xoom failed to sell, the Touchpad failed to sell, the Playbook failed to sell, the Transformer, whilst being innovative and all, has failed to sell in significant numbers. The general public don't want tablets, they want iPads

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    1. Martin
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Or good machines at LOW prices....

      ...witness the speed with which the £89 HP Touchpad sold out !

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    2. Turtle_Fan
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      lol w00t???

      OK, I see the point about jobsian gadgets but pause for a moment and look at the reasons those things flopped:

      - Xoom: Came out when honeycomb was a dog and asks for top-dollar pricing without necessarily justifying it.

      - BB Playbook: From the company that's synonymous to enterprise e-mail and messaging, a tablet that won't do either on its own.

      - Asus: w00t!? The TF is selling at much higher numbers than even Asus predicted (as reflected in their guidance statements and brief delivery shortages in June/July).

      The TF, as the only reasonably priced and truly innovative bit of kit is doing way better than expected. As for putting a dent in apple's numbers this may take an iteration or two.

      Mine's the with the TF (sans dock) in the pocket

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      1. Raz
        Reply Icon

        Right

        I got my Transformer (with dock) in July, and it was really not that easy to find, stock was limited. Now it's widely available. Still the best 10" Android tablet, I love the screen.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    Business Model

    Acer are a consumer brand. They NEED the Business market.

    NOW is the time to prepare and attack it with the uncertainty over HP's business.

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  5. Sarah Davis
    Coat

    Pads always were a fad

    Pads are so limited, it was inevitable that it would be a fad.

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    1. Martin
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      I always said they'd fall flat.

      Sorry...

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    2. Mike Moyle
      Reply Icon

      Re: Pads always were a fad

      "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."

      -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch 1904

      "The horse is here to stay, the automobile is only a fad."

      -- Advice of President of Michigan Savings Bank to Horace Rackham, lawyer for

      Henry Ford, 1903

      "Pads are so limited, it was inevitable that it would be a fad."

      -- Sarah Davis, 2011

      It's rare that a transformative technology leaps into existence fully-capable and obviously superior to its predecessor. Tablet computing may be -- like the automobile and the airplane in their day -- in its infancy and find new ways to serve needs that we haven't even considered yet.

      Making a blanket dismissal of an infant technology as a "fad} because of its current immaturity without considering likely future developments can sometimes prove to be a bit embarrassing, is all I'm saying.

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  6. Ian Davies
    FAIL

    Acer insists fondleslab 'fever' is fading

    Yeah, they wish.

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  7. Anonymous John

    They are just too expensive,

    The rush to buy Touchpads at 25% of the previous price proved that.

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  8. ToyBoyT

    Not cooling...just waiting...

    ...for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 to finally get here.... We're not all fans of Apple you know....

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    People want iPads - simple.

    As has (clearly) been demonstrated - people want iPads not any-old-tablet in the same way people wanted iPods not some 2nd rate (albeit cheaper) MP3 player.

    Almost everyone who buys a cheaper tablet does it because they wanted an iPad but could not justify the cash to get one.

    2 1
  10. MGJ
    Holmes

    Reading the analysis

    IHS say that iPad will be 75% of the market this year; its not a tablet market, its an iPad market. They are selling millions of them and making money on it; is anyone else?

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  11. OrsonX
    IT Angle

    BB Playbook Q?

    Got to play with it at the airport, nice size & feel, but just couldn't get passed the WiFi configuration screen on the start-up!!

    There was (as far as I could see) no "configure later / skip" only the option to join the WiFi signals in the area.

    What did I miss? How do you get passed this screen if none of the WiFi signals are the ones you want to join? [what happens if there are no WiFi signals to join??!]

    I probably missed something obvious?

    Still, would have been nice to have had a play with the OS.

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  12. Tom 7

    Porting Windows to the ARM is good

    but only if you can bring all the 'legacy' software with it. The trouble is they cant and 'Windows' really is just legacy software.

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  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    correlate please...

    Can you correlate this article with the one a few weeks ago about Acer stockpiling (or simply not being able to sell) tons of machines shipped into Europe.

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  14. Head

    Hmmm

    Well, having tried the Ipad, Samsungs Galaxy Tab, Dell streak and Acers A500, i found the acer machine to be easily the best, in terms of functionality and quality!

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  15. Tufty Squirrel

    @Buck Futter

    "lack of configuration knowledge" is a fail right there. You shouldn't have to "configure" an OS to run on a particular platform, you should just install it. That's part of where Windows fails for me, and always has : you have to jigger with it to get any sort of acceptable performance.

    It's also part of why I stopped using Linux.

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    1. Chris Parsons
      Reply Icon

      Why do I need a title to reply to a post?

      No you don't.

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    2. Turtle_Fan
      Reply Icon

      So what DO you use?

      OK, so Win is out of the picture and you ditched Linux too.

      So are you saying that only OSX "just works" without any configuration from your side?

      IF (and I mean it, as I can't really tell) this is the case then it's pretty disingenuous of yours to claim that; as OSX was made for a handful of strictly controlled reference platforms and not ready to accommodate anything and everything people can put together to resemble a PC.

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