I am afraid of buying an Android tablet (and, for that matter, I am leery of buying another Android phone) because I am beholden to the device manufacturers for OS updates. The track record of most hardware manufacturers for driver/software support is abysmal. A few years ago, I threw away a perfectly good scanner because the manufacturer-provided software did not work with Windows XP SP2, and the manufacturer explicitly stated that it did not intent to fix the problem. I have a Thinkpad T42 sitting on the floor of my office (make me an offer, I'll sell it cheap :) ) because the ATI video hardware does not have Windows 7 driver support. [Yes, I could probably use Linux, but that's another issue entirely]. My Droid phone (original Droid) is running a 3rd party firmware which is quite buggy but not as bad as the last official release from Verizon/Motorola.
Why do hardware manufacturers not see their products as solutions to problems and optimize their product definitions accordingly? There's the old quote along the lines of, "No one has ever needed a quarter-inch drill bit -- he needed quarter-inch holes." I would love to buy an Android tablet with the promise of Android OS updates for N years, even if N was only two or three. For that matter, I would love to buy a laptop where all the components were guaranteed to work well with the current version of Windows for some period of time. Furthermore, why are drivers so proprietary? Why not reduce risk by open sourcing drivers, even for Windows? One can purchase a Bluetooth dongle for less than a dollar, but, without driver support, it's entirely worthless. I had to figure out which ones had a particular Broadcomm chip and find a manufacturer which guaranteed that its dongle had that particular one inside.
This is no fun. I'm likely in the to 1% of the US population in my ability to work through such issues, but I still feel quite inept. One would think Apple would be a shining beacon of light to the world indicating that people are willing to pay a premium for "it just works" and "it will continue to work for longer than you care about it working."
I think you have your argument reversed. You're beholden to Apple for all your product updates. With an Android phone you're free to update with whatever ROM you feel like (official from the manufacturer or not).
What's "cheap"? I've been looking for just such an old tank for Linux. (Just missed out on a discarded corporate T41; this may be my way of compensating.)
Sorry, but I didn't find a private email/message channel in your profile nor on hnofficehours.
Why do hardware manufacturers not see their products as solutions to problems and optimize their product definitions accordingly? There's the old quote along the lines of, "No one has ever needed a quarter-inch drill bit -- he needed quarter-inch holes." I would love to buy an Android tablet with the promise of Android OS updates for N years, even if N was only two or three. For that matter, I would love to buy a laptop where all the components were guaranteed to work well with the current version of Windows for some period of time. Furthermore, why are drivers so proprietary? Why not reduce risk by open sourcing drivers, even for Windows? One can purchase a Bluetooth dongle for less than a dollar, but, without driver support, it's entirely worthless. I had to figure out which ones had a particular Broadcomm chip and find a manufacturer which guaranteed that its dongle had that particular one inside.
This is no fun. I'm likely in the to 1% of the US population in my ability to work through such issues, but I still feel quite inept. One would think Apple would be a shining beacon of light to the world indicating that people are willing to pay a premium for "it just works" and "it will continue to work for longer than you care about it working."