By the end of the 19th Century, the German started developing balloons for military purposes. We could consider this milestone, together with the use of reconnaisance balloons during the American Civil war as the very early stages of modern air forces.
Despite the progress made since then until the late 30s, when classical planes had consolidates its dominance in the air, and when helicopters were beginning to have their earliest realistic prototypes, it was clear before 1940 that balloons had reached a dead end. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937 was the final chapter of its brief history.
Conceptually speaking, the defenders of the balloon industry used the principle of “best of both worlds” to insist in developing that industry. Static possibilities, later developed factually with helicopters, combined with actual mobility like in the classic planes, combined with its very low cost compared to the other models.
Caught halfway between the two flying models, there was no room for balloons.
In a brave attempt to bridge the gap between today’s two main trends towards easy, affordable computing ultra-mobility (netbooks and tablets), Dell is about to launch their Inspiron Duo device.
In our opinion, we are basically talking of an original design that combined the features of both types of devices, tablets and netbooks, and there is some praise about the possibility of getting the best of both worlds.
However, we see a bigger risk in getting caught halfway between both worlds, or, if you’d prefer, getting the worst of both worlds. Few advantages, all the disadvantages, that is.
Besides the clear disadvantages pointed out in the reference news, we see some more:
First, the flipping screen, as a movable part, can be sensitive to hardware failure. The less the mobile parts the better, for reliability. What takes us to the second item.
Second, though flash storage is a plus compared to standard disks with moving parts in terms of reliability, its increased capacity is not really a significant advantage, for netbooks and tablets are more and more oriented to online content that is stored in the “cloud”, not necessarily in a local disk.
Third, its operating system, as it is today, is not a rival for tablets in particular, powered by androids and iOS much more successfully than whatever Windows might be doing. Just look at market data for units already shipped, or to market predictions.
Fourth, having a keyboard (supposedly demanded by customers) is not really such an advantage. Millions of customers, using same figures as in previous item, are clearly NOT demanding such a keyboard, which adds cost, weight and technical complexity.
Fifth, a significant value for tablets, regardless of its OS, is the AppStore behind them. Microsoft is way behind Apple and Google, isn’t it?
Sixth, long-term financial viability. Even if Dell makes an initial success, following the “Qualdroid” business model does not guarantee financial success to them. The “Wintel” model proves so.
Seventh, as well related to Dell’s financials, they are starting from a very weak position at this moment that might not help at all in sustain the time it might take for this Inspiron thing to take off. Maybe they are diverting their consumer portfolio too much, with Streak, Inspiron, mobile phones…?
In praise of Dell we could say it is always good to try new things and move forward with innovation… but we do not really see a major chance here. Not to kill iPads nor Androids at least, Inspiron Duo might blow up like the Hindenburg did.
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