$160 Arnova Craplet Features Specs From 2009

And so it begins. Possibly the usually way for inscription makers to vie with Apple (until they obviously make a viable substitute to the iPad) is to sell trusting consumers a inscription so inexpensive that they’ll purchase it on impulse. Hey – it worked for MP3 players, right?

So, what will bad Johnny be getting for XMas this year, instead of the iPad he asked Santa for? He’ll be getting the 99 ($159) Arnova 8-inch Android inscription from UK catalog-shopping store Asda.

This square of landfill-ready consumer crap comes with just 4GB storage (plus a microSD card slot), runs Android 2.1 clair (remember that? clair initial launched in 2009, with the 2010 chronicle subsequent to in early 2010) on a mystery-meat 666MHz processor.

It gets worse. The shade features nonetheless more tech from yesteryear – it’s resistive, not capacitive, so great fitness with the multi-touch. Battery life is a bad 5.5 hours for video (likely to be sufficient reduction in practice) and… and… And that’s it.

The unhappy thing is that Asda will may sell out of these things, as ignorant people similar to Johnny’s parents tear them up. Even the PR representation sent to me currently shows that this is all about duping the high-street shopper: “just a entertain of the cost of the more costly versions on the High Street” it says [emphasis added].

Calling the iPad a “more costly version” of this is similar to mission the Wacom Cintiq a “more costly version” of the Etch-a-Sketch. A horribly designed, technologically prehistoric Etch-a-Sketch at that. An Etch-a-Sketch so terrible that even the product page for this real-life shipping product features no cinema other than a singular CG mockup.

Should you obviously wish to outlay your hard-earned money on something that will expected defect any person who uses it, and is throw roughly right away in to the junk drawer, the Arnova 8 (from Archos, no less) is existing now.

Arnova 8 Tablet [ASDA. Thanks, Tracey!]