GreenZoner egypt: JamesBower

Lemons to lemonade: how manufacturing and mechanical setbacks shrank the Wikipad

<div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;" trbidi="on"><hr dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" />   	  	      	 	 		  		  		  		  		<div class="copy post-body" dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">	<div class="image-container" style="text-align: center;"> <img alt="Lemons to lemonade how manufacturing and mechanical setbacks shrunk the Wikipad" data-src-height="340" data-src-width="620" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2013/02/wiki620-agai.jpg" /></div>A smaller,  cheaper gaming tablet? Wikipad President of sales Fraser Townley says  it was always in the cards -- but it was supposed to be the company's <em>second</em> tablet, not its first. Business, of course, doesn't always go according  to plan. Just before the Wikipad's planned October launch, the company stayed production  to refine the product's gamepad element, Townley told us, addressing a  technical hiccup that could have troubled customers. Not too long after  that, the company's screen supplier told them the part they had hoped to  use for the Wikipad's 10.1-inch display was being discontinued. Salt?  Meet wound.<br /> <span>Wikipad set out to make the best of a bad  situation: it skipped a step. "The 7-inch was always in our roadmap and  on our plan," Townley told us, "we just accelerated it." That decision  was partly made to please the community, which was a little</span><span> </span>concerned about price<span>. At $249, the new Wikipad is certainly easier on the pocket book, but the redesign delayed the product <em>just</em> long enough to leave it teetering on the edge of a new generation -- the next </span>Tegra chip<span> is right around the corner. Fortunately, so is <em>another</em> Wikipad -- Townley told us the tablet's original 10.1-inch form  would be out by the end of the year. He couldn't say if the delayed  slate would be using NVIDIA's latest, but he left the possibility wide  open. </span><span>"</span><span>There would be no point in launching a  Tegra 3 tablet just months before the launch of Tegra 4, would there?"  he joked. "We'll keep up with the market." An admirable goal, to say the  least. </span><br />  	   	  	 </div></div>