Tablets

If you bought a Playbook when they went on sale earlier this week, you might want to send it back. A leak at one of RIMs Canadian partners suggests that the Playbook has been retired.

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Amazon still hasn’t released the Kindle Fire outside the US, in spite of the many interested potential customers. Luckily for the desperate KF lover, 3rd party sellers have stepped up to fill the need.

Right now you can find a small number of Kindle Fires on QoQa.fr. This is a daily deals site similar to Woot, and they have sold eReaders at least once in the past.

They’re asking €199 for this 7″ Android tablet, and that converts to about $261 USD. That’s more than the retail price in the US, but it is not a whole lot more than it would cost if I were to buy and ship the KF to France for a friend.

Do you know of any other companies selling the KF or other US-only eReaders? I’d like to hear about them.

QoQa.fr via eBouquin

Are you in a mood to gamble? Daily Steals is selling an Android tablet today that literally has no brand or model name. It is the latest in a line of truly generic Android tablets.

The problem with  generic tablet like this is that you truly do not know if it’s reliable or if the warranty is any good.

But it also has decent specs and is rather cheap. It has a 10″ screen, and it’s running Android v2.2 on n 800MHz CPU, Wifi, 4GB Flash storage, microSD card slot, camera, speaker, microphone, and  stylus.

Don’t expect it to be  $300 tablet and you probbly won’t be displeased with its performance.

Daily Steals

Last year’s most canceled tablet is on sale again today.

Woot is currently offering the 32GB TouchPad for $220. This unit is refurbished, and it comes with only a 90 day warranty.

The TouchPad has decent specs for the price. It’s running  recently updated webOS 3.0 on  dual core CPU, and it has Wifi, Bluetooth,  1.3MP camera, and 9.7” capacitive touchscreen.

The warranty is perhaps the biggest shortcoming, not the fact that HP killed off this tablet last year. Shortly after giving up on the hardware, HP announced that they planned to open source the webOS operating system. Hopefully this will encourage developers to continue to release apps while they wait for other webOS tablets to hit the market.

Woot

The BlackBerry PlayBook might not be having much commercial success, but that doesn’t mean RIM plans to give up on it. Boy Genius Report has turned up what looks to be RIM’s future roadmap. It’s a set of slides that appear to have come from a briefing for senior management at RIM.

According to the slides, the new PlayBook is going to keep the 7″ screen and cameras found on the current model, bit it’s also going to have a more powerful CPU (1.5GHz vs 1.0GHz). In fact, this seems to be much the same tablet as the one currently on the market, and the only other major change is that the new one will have  3G chip inside (in addition to the Bluetooth and Wifi).

But I’m not sure I believe the slides; according to the roadmap this tablet isn’t due out until next spring. That seems to be an awfully long lead time. I would have expected it to be released sooner.

The gossip-mongers at DigiTimes posted some interesting stories in the past, and today is no exception. They’re reporting that their inside the industry sources are saying that “orders for Kindle Fire tablet PCs are expected to be cut by half” in the next couple months. Production is estimated to be around  million KF a month, which is down considerably from the estimated 6 million units shipped in the run up to Christmas.

This isn’t an unexpected dip in sales, but rather the usual decrease in production that follows the holiday season in most years. It does make sense; lots of people cut down on their gadget buying after Christmas; most are still paying off credit card debt from all their previous gadget buying.

If these numbers are accurate, this is good news for Amazon. Producing and selling a million tablets a month is a feat that a lot of other gadget makers would like to match.

DigiTimes

If your credit cards haven’t melted yet then I have a deal for you.

1SaleADay has Toshiba’s 10″ Android tablet on sale today. This is a powerful premium tablet running the latest version of Android on a dual core Tegra2 CPU. It comes with 32GB Flash storage, an SD card slot, Wifi/BT/GPS. It even has a pair of cameras (5MP and 2MP) as well as a microphone and it can even record 720p video.

This is a refurbished unit, not new, but it comes with the manufacturer’s warranty. This tablet sells for $480 on Amazon, so today’s deal is a good one. It’s even better than the price asked for the Thrive when it showed up on Ebay earlier this week.

1SaleADay

If you passed on the Toshiba Thrive tablet yesterday then here’s your chance to get another good deal.

Woot has the Archos 101 Android tablet on sellout today. They’re asking a reasonably good price for the hardware, but this tablet is refurbished and it’s also slightly long in the tooth.

The Archos 101 has a 10.1″ capacitive touchscreen, and it’s running Android v2.2 on a single core Rockchip CPU. It comes with 8GB of Flash storage, an SD card slot, Wifi, BT, and HDMI out, but no cameras.

This tablet is selling online for $235 brand new, but past sales have brought the price down to $200.

via Woot

If you’re not done with your Christmas shopping yet then Woot has a deal for you. Woot has the Toshiba Thrive 10″ Android tablet on sale today for $290.

This is Toshiba’s flagship tablet, and it’s running Android v3.1 Homey comb on a dual core 1GHz Tegra2 CPU. It has a pair of cameras (5MP and 2MP), a high resolution 10″ screen (1280 x 800), 16GB Flash storage, mike/speakers, a g-sensor, and an ambient light sensor.

This tablet normally retails for $380, and Woot has it for $290. Of course, the unit sold by Woot is a refurbished model, and it only comes with a 90 day warranty. But that’s still a decent discount. If I didn’t already have a 10″ tablet, I would seriously consider getting this one.

Woot

TigerDirect has just launched a new sale for the TouchPad. They’re selling a $250 bundle which includes the 32GB TouchPad, a case, and Bluetooth speakers. This bundle is a slightly less good deal than the $150 that this TouchPad went for during the first clearance, but this is still an excellent price for a premium tablet.

The TouchPad was launched back in the first half of this year, and it hit the market in July.  Both reviews and sales were lackluster, and HP decided to kill the tablet in less than 2 months. Ever since then it has been on and off sale, dead and alive, and it’s death throes have provided a lot of writing material for tech bloggers.

TigerDirect