I'm still kind of regretting not getting one of those $99 HP clearance tablets. When I did a brief survey on EBay they were selling for twice that yesterday. I like my iPad well enough but having a very inexpensive alternative to compare it to would have been nice.
If HP had gone this route earlier they might not have failed in the tablet space. Of course they are losing a ton of money on each unit sold but it might have been worth it if they could have established WebOS as a viable alternative to Android and iOS. There has already been a port of Android announced for the platform; no surprise there given the capabilities of the hardware and the closeout price.
HP's fire sale can't be making other vendors happy though as they are no doubt cannibalizing at least some of the tablet market. Apple probably won't see much of a blip but the Android tablets are going to see a short term reduction in sales and given how poorly most of them have been doing to date that isn't a good thing.
It will be interesting to see how much of an impact, if any this has on people's price expectations, particularly for Android. Apple might just make out like bandits on this one as they have high margins and a differentiated product. The Android tablets are much more commoditized and don't have a lot of room for price cuts if they want to stay profitable.
On a different note, my halfhearted aspirations to be a Cisco CCNP are continuing to lead where most halfhearted aspirations do. I managed to fail the switch exam again. Oddly I know I was much better prepared than the first time and my score was actually lower.
One of my early jobs was working as a programmer in a department that created both computerized and paper and pencil tests. I’ll never claim to be a trained in the art of psychometrics but I do have a pretty good layman’s grasp of the concepts and this kind of variance in the face on increased knowledge doesn’t bode well for the testing methodology in use by Cisco.
I’m done for now on the Cisco front. I just don’t have the motivation I need right now to be successful and I’d rather be spending the time learning technologies and skills that are directly applicable to my current hobbies and side projects.
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