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Peter on Tech

After all, somebody has to point out the obvious!

Fresh Averatec advertising

I was browsing the periodicals today at my local Borders store, and guess what I came across in the current issue of Mobile PC? That's right, a full page ad for Averatec's hotter than hot C3500 cheapo convertible. Here are some grainy and low resolution (but that makes them more believable, right?) camera phone pictures of the page.

An interesting bit is the "starting at" price. Averatec's site claims it to be $1,349.99, while the ad said $50 less. Ha, I'll take the lower price and threaten false advertising claims if they argue.

Cute little spread with the different configurations clearly shown. Not too many companies even "count" the mode with the screen upright but turned "outward" - the "Movie Theater" mode. Kudos, Averatec!

Two of the examples...

...and another two.

Here's a quick rundown of the features and specs. I wonder which configuration this is. Just like cars, these things have "starting at" prices, but computer ads rarely show the "price as shown". Will these be base or highly upgraded specs?

  • AMD Athlon XP-M 2200+ with Quantispeed Architecture (Quantispeed?! Are they serious? Who comes up with this stuff?!)
  • OneNote 2003 - another OEM bundling? Outstanding!
  • Built-in DVD+CDRW combo drive - the big selling point
  • 802.11g Wi-Fi - nice! Not the cheaper 802.11b.
  • 60 GB HDD
  • 512 MB DDR333 - not too shabby at all
  • High Contrast 12.1" XGA display - but which digitizer? And how wide of a viewing angle?
  • Notebook bag included - wow, free? Averatec rocks!
  • Free 24/7 customer support - that certainly looks nice in a magazine ad

So there you have it. How much of that you'll get for the advertised price, or how much that configuration will cost is unknown. But it's shaping up pretty nicely. Note that battery life and weight aren't mentioned, so I wonder if those aren't good enough to be strong selling points.

You know, unless this model somehow horribly sucks - like a dodgy digitizer, processor compatibility issues, snail-level speed, or something crippling like this - the C3500 will be my tablet of the year, period. Just for the fact that it can cram a decent feature set into a small package and price it right. The tablet for the masses.

And here's some food for thought: how come my overpriced Toshiba M200 has only two USB ports, while this cheapo unknown has four?!

Published Jul 18 2004, 09:36 PM by peter
Filed under:

Comments

 

peter said:

The price difference is due to a $50 mail in rebate. No need to threaten false advertising.

;-)
July 19, 2004 10:52 AM
 

peter said:

I still maintain that if the same company is doing the advertising, the "starting at" prices should match in all places. Buyers are confused enough as it is. Plus I really hope retail kicks in with larger rebates - this thing was supposed to be kissing the magical one thousand mark after rebates, according to many promises.
July 19, 2004 11:12 AM
 

peter said:

BargainTabletPC.com has a great editorial on the Averatec Convertible with all of the confirmed specs. and a full press release.

www.bargaintabletpc.com
July 19, 2004 1:53 PM
 

peter said:

I agree that there is no need to advertise different prices by the same company. It does lead to confusion.
July 19, 2004 10:24 PM
 

peter said:

"Quantispeed?! Are they serious? Who comes up with this stuff?!"

Well, AMD does. See this white paper from AMD on what Quantispeed is:
http://search.amd.com/cs.html?url=http%3A//www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/25531B_Quantispeed_wp.pdf&qt=%2Btopic%3A1325960345,+United+States+||+quantispeed,+|+language%3Aen&col=idx1&n=1
July 20, 2004 10:29 AM
 

peter said:

Here's what shady.. their site conflicts with their release on the weight of the PC, (release 4.5 vs site's 5.5), no video card is mentioned and I believe it to be a worthless S3 chip, their store makes no mention of the laptop case, and they say the T80 model is on sale only at CostCo, though my local CostCo's said they have none, their web has none, and there are none on order. Why make the press release saying they're available when in fact they're not available anywhere? Their own website store shows stock as "No".. so frustrating.
July 20, 2004 6:49 PM
 

peter said:

Yeah, but what's the battery life like?

All those stats are nice. But if the thing needs to be near an outlet every 90 minutes, its utility is pretty limited.
July 20, 2004 11:16 PM
 

peter said:

Guess I missed that.... the battery life is supposed to be up to 3 hours.

Nice if that's real. We'll see soon enough I'm sure.
July 21, 2004 12:32 AM
 

peter said:

Update.. it looks like they've removed any mention of the T80 model on their own website, so no more reference to CostCo... color me surprised. Their site is still saying no on stock, my emails have not been responded to, and there's no mention of any sales phone number... Guess the only thing to do is to wait it out and see if any reviews start popping up.
July 21, 2004 8:00 AM
 

peter said:

Yet another update.. got a reply from Averatec saying 'within 3 weeks'. That seems like a pretty safe statement for them to make, but by then there'll be so much hype for the Dell and the IBM tablet PCs. Also some tablet PC site was saying in Staples & Costco's as early as this weekend, this confusion is driving me insane.
July 21, 2004 5:12 PM
 

peter said:

Confusion and Chaos are the Tablet PC's middle names.
July 21, 2004 5:27 PM
 

peter said:

Battery life is only 90 minutes on this guy :(
August 3, 2004 10:08 AM
 

peter said:

That's based on personal experience? Even if you select some sort of power saving/portable power scheme? That would certainly be a downer, since they claimed "up to 3 hours", and thus I was hoping for about 2 - 2.5 in real life.
August 3, 2004 10:12 AM
 

peter said:

Averatec sucks, there customer support is horrible they do not honor there warrenty so do not buy
August 4, 2004 12:32 AM
 

peter said:

I'll have to say that I can't personally say one way or another, since I haven't dealt with them, but their notebooks do end up pretty well regarded at least in major publications. Are you saying it based on a truly bad experience with them, and are there more people who could confirm it? Otherwise it's just like certain groups have bad experiences with, say, Dell, which on the other hand gets decent ratings from everybody else.
August 4, 2004 7:50 AM
 

peter said:

Bought the T80 about three weeks ago, pretty good. Only three complains so far.
1. Get little too hot sometime.
2. 1.5 hrs batteries life is very short.
3. Averatec support staffs isn't horrible, they just need to hire some faster thinker! I got "um..." "arr..." bit more than when I dealth with Gateway...but sure isn't horrible, at least it got my questions answered!
Try getting in a huge fight with Gateway sales rep and having your orders canceled 3 times by their computer and you'll know what HORRIBLE customer service really is. For poor customer service, please go to www.gateway.com and buy or even try to buy one of their computers.
The AMD is actually measured up to about 1.8 Ghz (Averatec tech support said), pretty fast for a tablet that only costed 1297.99 (Costco was selling T80 at 1297.99, but I believe most of them are sold out already.)
And for those of you who worry about warrenties and/or believe that Averatec wouldn't take care their own warrenties (I haven't have to talk to them about warrenties yet,) why not try buying it with AmericanExpress Blue Cash card? Standard feature on that card is AE will extend any products factory warrties.

Anyway, that's the update on this 3500 T80 for now.
August 18, 2004 6:48 AM
 

peter said:

what and where is the best deal for Averatec C3500? Staple's selling it for $1,298, but u have to pay sales tax.
September 14, 2004 5:46 PM
 

peter said:

Less than 4 months old and the screen went bad. Returned to Averatec only to have them claim the unit was not covered by the warranty because the unit was “damaged.” BS! Never dropped and not a scratch or dent on the unit. $480 to replace the screen. Cheap to buy, expensive to own. Not as durable as they would lead you to believe. This unit was babied and still failed. They do not stand behind their products. Spend the extra $$ and buy a reputable brand.
December 4, 2004 12:30 AM
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