…this. See what I’m talking about? How about that 799 Euro price tag. That’s like $1,000 people. For a tablet. For an unproven tablet running Android (which doesn’t cost anything to license, by the way) that’s one hell of a price tag, and it points to one thing: contracts.

A Samsung exec told the Wall Street Journal that the Galaxy would cost somewhere between $200 and $300, which means the rest will have to be covered somehow, presumably via contracts. There is the remote possibility that Amazon got the price wrong – way wrong – but I doubt it. If Samsung is really going carrier contract for the Galaxy, you can bet the only people buying will be very serious Android enthusiasts, likely people hoping to root the device (which could justify the price tag for some).

The JooJoo lawsuits have unearthed some very interesting information. Apparently the device formerly known as the CrunchPad isn’t doing as well as expected. It isn’t doing well at all. To date there have been just 90 JooJoo preorders, that’s a nine with one zero after it, and 15 of those have been returned (which supposedly hasn’t been easy).

If you’ll remember, the initial run of JooJoo’s was supposed to finance a run into high production and provide the financing to support a legal defense against TechCrunch and Michael Arrington. For some reason I don’t think $44,000 is going to do that.

Part of the problem is that the JooJoo was announced in the same month as the iPad at the same price. Who are you going to buy a $500 tablet from, Apple, or some company you’ve never heard of for reasons other than the lawsuit brought against it because the tablet it’s selling may be stolen IP. I think we all know the answer to that one.

Source: Gizmodo

Less than a month after claiming the CrunchPad was “steamrolling” toward production, Michael Arrington has pronounced his web tablet dead. Apparently there was a serious fallout with the manufacturer. Serious as in the manufacturer is going to try to sell the device itself. Without Arrington. Potentially under the CrunchPad moniker.

This is about as spectacular as device wars get. You can imagine Arrington is pissed, and bound to be throwing around any lawsuit he can think up. He writes this about the email he received from Fusion Garage, the company set to manufacture the web tablet.

Bizarrely, we were being notified that we were no longer involved with the project. Our project. Chandra said that based on pressure from his shareholders he had decided to move forward and sell the device directly through Fusion Garage, without our involvement.

Err, what? This is the equivalent of Foxconn, who build the iPhone, notifiying Apple a couple of days before launch that they’d be moving ahead and selling the iPhone directly without any involvement from Apple.

The rest of Arrington’s post on the subject is appropriately distressed. I’m still amazed Fusion Garage would try to pull this off, particularly two days before the product was set for a public launch. For more detail on the drama, head over to to TechCrunch and offer Arrington your condolences.

Source: TechCrunch

Mac addicts are almost proud to spend hundreds of extra dollars when it comes to buying a computer, but an Apple tablet might not just be for Mac nerds. The general expectation is that Apple’s tablet will be like the iPhone or an iPod, bridging the gap between the diehards and the average consumer. With the average consumer, though, price becomes more important, and as a recent study by Retrevo suggests, $600 might be the break point.

According to Retrevo, 68% of Mac users would be willing to spend over that $600 point on Apple’s tablet. In fact, 41% are willing to break $800 for the device. That hangs in line with what we know about Mac users’ spending habits. PC folks, on the other hand, aren’t so easy to persuade. Granted, there are still armies of them willing to pay premium dollar for the Apple brand, but not nearly as many by percentage.

From the survey results, it looks like 36% of PC users would consider spending over $600. Strangely enough, only 16% would spend in the $600-$800 range, while 20% were willing to break the $800 mark. Still, that leaves a huge base of people dreaming sub-$600, a price that I just can’t imagine we’ll see.

As Acer continues to climb the ranks in the world’s top hardware manufacturers (they’re number three for the people keeping track at home) they’re adding plenty of new products to their lineup, including this tablet PC. Dubbed the T91, early reports suggested the tablet might run as much as $700. Today we found out, though, that the T91 will sell for just $500.

The real unfortunate news is that this is the single-touch version running Windows XP, not that sexy new multi-touch running Windows 7. And if this one is $500, I hate to think what the multi-touch version is going to cost. Probably more than I care to spend on a netbook.

As for specs, $500 will get you the standard netbook fare. The T91 comes with an Atom Z520 processor clocked at 1.33Ghz, a 16GB SSD, a gig of ram and Bluetooth and 802.11n for wireless. Not a bad bundle, just hard to justify when a multi-touch can be far off.