The NoteSlate saga continues. Earlier this year a company called NoteSlate showed off a concept for a $99 note-taking tablet with a 13 inch, two-tone display. A few days ago I noted that the product had yet to move past the concept phase and despite the company’s initial promises it wouldn’t be shipping this summer.
Now the plot thickens. The official NoteSlate website is now offline — although the company has taken to Twitter to make it clear that it will be back online in August with more clear information about where the product stands.
It’s also clear that if the product ever sees the light of day, it will cost more than $99. It also looks like the NoteSlate could eventually offer a choice of a monochrome display or a grayscale screen for (a little) more color depth.
Honestly, at this point it seems like you’re probably better off waiting for Boogie Board to release its new model with built-in storage for saving handwritten notes. While it’s certainly possible that we’ll see a NoteSlate product one day, I doubt it will be competitively priced. Boogie Board’s current offerings cost less than $40.
With the ThinkPad Tablet offering an active digitizer pen and full Android experience at $500, NoteSlate don’t have a lot of room to rise prices, unless they have a killer extra feature.
http://www.ediaryworld.com
Boogie Board sounds neat, but what’s the use if the data can’t be uploaded to a computer somehow?Â
Does it matter if it comes out? I say that with
enthusiasm that it might come out, but if it doesn’t. Who in the public loses?
This internet ‘bitchiness’ about delays just seems silly.
“Boo hoo I’m angry about a group of people having an idea that takes more
time to make possible that we thought! And, it might not come out ever…which
is a catastrophe in my little world!!!”
Good point, but I think the key difference is that they initially posted a launch date (July) and a price ($99) without making it clear that the product was just a concept at the time.
As far as I can tell, back in January when the NoteSlate concept was first unveiled, it was little more than a drawing of a tablet, but it was presented as a real product that was on its way.
If NoteSlate had said “hey we have a cool idea” from the start and then followed up with “whoa, looks like you like our idea… we’re going to try to turn it into a real product but it might cost more or take more time than we anticipated” I think the situation would be a bit different now.
Although to be honest, that’s almost exactly what happened with the CrunchPad/JooJoo tablet, and things didn’t work out all that well  on that front.
I think they are aiming for a more high quality experience than the Boogie Board… However I get the feeling that I simply can’t trust the people behind NoteSlate anymore.