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Tuesday, December 18, 2007

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Dell Answers Questions About Why The XT Tablet PC Costs So Much

- Warner Crocker

Well, kinda, sorta. Dell put out a statement from Glen Keels on what many are seeing as a too high price tag on the new Dell XT Tablet PC. Here’s what he has to say:

So here's what I have to say on the issue. Probably the most important thing to note about tablet PCs is that we are talking about cutting-edge technology here.  If we just released the exact same technology as our competitors, we would be missing opportunities to drive this market to the next level - and this is an opportunity we did not want to miss.  The result is that our product does carry a slight premium to our competition (emphasis on the word "slight").

We believe that when you take a look at like-to-like configurations AND the incremental technology (that customers have overwhelming told us they want to have), the value equation for the Latitude XT far exceeds that of competitive systems.

We performed a price and feature compare with the Latitude XT, the HP 2710p and the Lenovo X61t.  Overall, what I found was that when you adjust for non-standard features such as Dell's standard 3 year standard warranty, the overall price delta was between 8-13%.  And while this amount is not trivial, the Latitude XT more that makes up for the difference with additional features customers have told us matter most to them. 

I picked this link up from James Kendrick on jkOnTheRun, and jk did a little math. I’m with jk on this one. I’m seeing significantly more than an 8–13% price difference.



Tuesday, December 18, 2007 10:46:12 AM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00)
I just configured a system that's not quite on par with the new Toshiba M700 in terms of a high-end processor and drive, but it's close enough for a simple price comparison. What did I find? The Dell Tablet is a little over $3000 and the M700 is in the $2300 range. That's more than a 20% difference.

Now it's important to note: I'm not adding in optional service plans and the like. I go through machines too fast for any of that to be of value to me. Maybe once these optional services are added in, the Dell machine looks better.

Still, in terms of the systems themselves, there's no way to get around it, Dell's Tablet is more than its competition. Significantly more.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 10:58:36 AM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00)
The xt tablet is full of **it (both words work equally as well). Besides the fact that the tablet uses a capacitive touchscreen, there's nothing special about it. price-wise their "special" capacitive touch screen is cheaper to produce than a wacom digitizer. There's also nothing special about the capacitive touch screen they use, its the pen that's special, but then again the pen would cost about the same as a replacement pen for an active digitizer. (oh, and there's an additional rf emitting circuit working in conjunction with the pen in order to transmit energy instead of having the pen run on batteries) Total cost would still be the same price for the active digitizer.
Howard Y.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 11:27:43 AM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00)
They'll sell a good 10 units at this price...LoL
AO
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 11:28:41 AM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00)
Cutting-edge technology? Apple is doing more with capacitive touch now than what Dell is planning for the future. Seriously hope Apple takes advantage of this opportunity to sucker punch Dell and rolls out their own tablet (which some rumors claim will be at Macworld).
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 12:19:50 PM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00)
It is pretty telling when you have to come out with a public statement to explain why your product is priced so high.....
Rob
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 2:43:58 PM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00)
I'll be curious to see who announces a Penryn tablet first. After all, the Penryn mobile CPUs allegedly go in 3 weeks. Think Dell will immediately update?
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 3:51:19 PM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00)
"that customers have overwhelming told us they want to have"

Yeah, they told you they want to have it, but at what price? Obviously, Dell's customers are overwhelmingly telling them the price is too high, especially when you look at their own forums and blogs.

Yes, of course when you ask people if they want the latest greatest technology they'll tell you "yes", but when you tell them they'll have to pay an $800 premium, you'll see how fast they change their mind.

It's also interesting to note that Dell is making a lot of talk about the latest and greatest technology in the XT, when the only thing superior about it is the touch screen. It ships standard with a slow single core processor, the RAM is slow compared to the competition, and the Harddrive is the slowest in the industry. I know we're talking tablets here and I know we're talking weight and power saving, but you can't talk about cutting-edge technology being the reason for the price premium when most of the technology is at best 3 years old.
Antimatter
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