Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Less people think that HP has a corner on this after their Touchpad debacle, let me give you an example I have a little more personal experience with, from a company that's an easy drive from my house.

Here's the deal. Let's say there was a 7 inch Honeycomb 3.2 Android tablet with a Tegra 2 dual-core processor, an 8 hour battery, front and rear cameras, GPS, built in 4G, wifi (including tethering), and as a photographer one of the most interesting features of all - a full sized SD card slot (not micro). Now, lets further state that this tablet retails for $250. Not $250 on a two-year contract, but $250 straight.

I suspect that there are a handful of you that have already figured out what I'm describing, but I also suspect there's a much larger number of you wondering where you could buy one of these. In fact, it is still possible to find these, although the manufacturer just this week announced they were discontinuing it.

I'm speaking of the Dell Streak 7. If any of you had heard about this tablet before, it was probably when it was first introduced and T-Mobile's 4G network was shaky, and it ran Froyo. Even then, many of it's features SHOULD have made it one of the most popular tablets out there. After all, look at all the excitement there was over the Nook Color which had much poorer features.

Instead, Dell had no idea how to market it, and after putting enough time to truly get the system polished to a point where it could easily compete and win, decided to cut their losses. Having had one for a couple of days now, I have to say it is possibly the best investment I've made in the last several months. It is successfully replacing my iPad, my PHS-300 4g/wifi router, and my cell phone. So I now have almost all the same capabilities I did before (a couple less in one sense, several more in another), and I've lightened my load. Being able to use a Fat32 SD Card is HUGE for my photography as I can pull the card out of my camera, and preview images instantly. None of the uploading and converting I had to do with an iPad. And the 4G coverage on T-mobile beats my Sprint/Clearwire/Virgin Mobile hands down.

Given that I was a developer for the Amiga 1000, I suspect I shouldn't be surprised at finding a diamond that isn't in the rough so much as buried in the bargain bin. But I will tell you that if you are thinking of a tablet this "holiday" season, you may want to see if you can still grab one of these while the getting is good!