Amazon shook the consumer electronics market last year when it introduced the first sub-$200 tablet, the Kindle Fire. Many were skeptical of the online vendor's foray into electronics, but some saw it as a stroke of genius. By leveraging its vast library of online titles, Amazon set itself up to compete on content with the industry leader, Apple.
The Kindle Fire was an instant hit by combining Amazon's library of e-books, music, and movies with one of the lowest tablet price points featured quality technology, and it was strange then that few companies tried to replicate Amazon's model. Tablet manufacturers are still trying to compete with Apple, releasing products with specifications close to or better than the iPad. The result has been that few tablets under $400.
Perhaps only one company, Google, possesses the resources and the content to offer a tablet capable of taking on the Kindle Fire.
The first Google-branded handset, the Google Nexus One, was manufactured by HTC and was the first to be sold directly by Google to consumers. It served as the template for other Google devices like the Nexus S, the Nexus ONE, and the Galaxy Nexus. With each product, Google partnered with an established device manufacturer, focusing its own efforts on the user interface and optimizing its Android operating system for a particular device.
Google finally introduced its first branded tablet, the Nexus 7, at its I/O conference June 27 with a price tag of $199, meaning it will compete directly with the Kindle Fire. The Android OS, particularly Honeycomb, had long been used by iPad competitors. The Nexus 7 tablet also included the latest version of Android, 4.1, or Jelly Bean.
Like the Kindle Fire, the Nexus 7 offers specifications comparable to other tablets while also taking advantage of the rich library of applications that were available through Google's Android Market. Featuring a seven-inch display, the Nexus 7 also uses Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3 processor while also sporting 1GB of internal RAM and the option of up to 16GB of storage.
The combination of a high-end processor, a multitude of applications optimized for Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and a $199 price tag for the 8GB model gives Google a chance to make a dent in the tablet market. Early indications are that the pre-orders for the Nexus 7 are substantial. If Google succeeds with the Nexus 7, the pressure will grow on Apple to introduce its own seven-inch model, the protests of the late Steve Jobs notwithstanding.
Click on the image below for an in-depth look inside the Nexus 7.
The Google Nexus 7 tablet as manufactured by ASUS.
Last time I saw something readily repairable was a 1990s era Canon film camera. Actually had a mechanical shutter train. (shudder, horrors, etc.) Need I add that my former business has done a belly flop. Same with a side line fixing VCRs and cars.
I am not at all surprised at the complexity since I have been witnessing my son using the Nexus 7 we got him for Christmas this year. It is an amazing tablet and I am in awe at the level of voice recognition it has displayed - I remember using voice recognition software in the past where you had to speak slowly and say the word very clearly. This tablet translates accurately to text a mumbling teenager! He is having a blast with it and so far functionality has been flawless...
The only test question I remember from the Navy was a picture of a nail a screw and a hammer. You had to match two of the three up correctly. I guess I did better than most because they let me work on what we now refer to as "weapons of mass destruction".
I'm sure they could make one that would be repairable. It would weigh about 5 pounds and be the size of a 1" loose leaf binder. They would sell approximately zero of them, even to people who say they want something repairable.
Honestly, I've had pretty good luck repairing stuff like this. All that can go wrong that is repairable is loose connections.
If you want them to stop using massively integrated chips that mean that pretty much every function is on one chip, so that you can replace them as needed, then increase the above estimate to 8 to 10 pounds and it would probably be more the size of a 2" binder, maybe more. And it would probably cost more like $1200.
Personally, I had a 7" tablet last year and it was OK but too heavy and too thick. it's thin and light and low power (therefore long battery life) that makes these worth having, and that's anathema to being highly repairable. Some things just aren't repairable, you need to get over it. You can't fix a CPU by cracking it open and soldering the silicone either, but nobody complains about that.
It seems as though the reason for the FCC delay is the voice search feature rolled out in the Jelly Bean update to 4.1.1 just a couple days ago. Voice search is the patent Apple is defending that had halted the Galaxy Nexus.
Tluxon, I heard that Google is planning for a different business strategy, which is almost similar to Amazon Kindle. In Nexus tablet, they are planning for a wide variety of business through Google Play like amazon.com in Kindle. Without aiming a future profit, they cannot survive in a cost to cost model business.
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
A new battery design, which replaces lithium with abundant and low-cost elemental sulfur, is still in its nascent stages but shows real promise for giving batteries more energy potential.
The push to achieving more intelligent, integrated manufacturing is putting a strong focus on networking and connectivity as key enabling technologies.
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For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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