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Is the tablet honeymoon over? It seems not everyone is in love with tablets since the Apple iPad just went ahead and turned the whole world upside down with nary a by-your-leave. Dixons has yanked the
Toshiba Folio 100
from its shelves — but not before comically tripling the price to discourage anybody from buying it.
We expected the Folio 100 to be a decent little runaround — after all, it’s Toshiba, the technology enormocorp. We’re not talking about a cheapo tablet from Next, or even the Dixons own-brand Advent Vega and Amico. Dixons isn’t saying, but we understand returns are based on specific technical issues.
One of our readers, Dede, told us his Folio “had a problem with the menu button which had a mind of its own. PC
World had been notified of a fault, so I took it back with no problem.” Lack of Flash and Android Market built-in have also disappointed customers, leading us to wonder: have customers been spoiled by the iPad’s user experience when shopping for cheaper alternatives?
The 10.1-inch Folio packs Android 2.2, a 1.3-megapixel camera and 16GB of memory. It takes SD cards and includes a mini-HDMI connection, USB 2.0, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. At £330, it clocked in cheaper than the iPad and the feature-packed Samsung Galaxy Tab, although Dixons momentarily boosted the price to £1,000 — the thinking being, no-one can return it if no-one can afford it.
Toshiba told us it’s “aware of reports regarding customer returns of the Folio 100, and is currently working with Dixons to provide a solution. An update on availability will be provided in due course.”
Fortunately for disappointed Folio followers, there’s no shortage of other Android tablets to choose from, while a new 3.0 version of the software designed specifically for tablets — called Honeycomb — is also in the pipeline. Sadly, none of this is good enough for Damon Albarn.
