Toshiba Makes Fun of iPad's Lack of Flash On Its Tablet Teaser Site

[Maura]

All Things Digital’s Mobilized blog has found a very sneaky message that Toshiba has placed on the teaser site for its forthcoming Android tablet. Try it yourself – point your iPad browser to Toshiba Tablet and you’ll see the following message mocking you in giant letters:

“Such a Shame. Add this to the list of the interesting places on the internet you can’t see on your device. Of course, if you had a Toshiba Tablet you would enjoy the entire internet. Yep, Flash sites too.â€

Well that’s one way to really irk the competition, and possibly potential customers, certainly! And they really do seem to have a bee in their bonnet about the iPad at Toshiba, as All Things Digital points out that the web site (when you access it from the web, not your iPad, of course!) particularly emphasises all the features that it has that the iPad doesn’t have, including a replaceable battery, USB and HDMI ports, and front-and rear-facing cameras, although that could all change once the iPad 2 comes out of course!

So, hands up who's planning to ditch their iPad and get a Toshiba tablet when it comes out, whenever that is. And however much it's going to cost? Just to get Flash.

Source: Teaser Site for Toshiba Tablet Takes Swings at Apple's iPad | Ina Fried | Mobilized | AllThingsD

 

[epb]

I visit a site called Surfthechannel to watch old tv episodes - on Thursday, some program claiming to be an anti-virus demo took my home pc down. A window popped up, wouldn't let me close it, and even after I shut down IE it kept going. I lost internet access, all my software refused to open, and the "demo" kept trying to install itself. Windows Firewall reported no problems, neither did a scan for a virus or malware. Great.

I shut down my pc, rebooted and it started all over again. I rebooted again, this time into safe mode, went into msconfig and found the program - sort of. I pretty much removed every program I didn't specifically recognize. When I rebooted again, things were back to normal - the program wasn't running, and I could access the net again. My webcam has stopped working, and I somehow lost the onscreen prompts for brightness and volume control.

Hurray for Flash.

 

[FunN4Lo]

I visit a site called Surfthechannel to watch old tv episodes - on Thursday, some program claiming to be an anti-virus demo took my home pc down. A window popped up, wouldn't let me close it, and even after I shut down IE it kept going. I lost internet access, all my software refused to open, and the "demo" kept trying to install itself. Windows Firewall reported no problems, neither did a scan for a virus or malware. Great.

I shut down my pc, rebooted and it started all over again. I rebooted again, this time into safe mode, went into msconfig and found the program - sort of. I pretty much removed every program I didn't specifically recognize. When I rebooted again, things were back to normal - the program wasn't running, and I could access the net again. My webcam has stopped working, and I somehow lost the onscreen prompts for brightness and volume control

Hurray for Flash.

No... Clicking on anti-virus demos too your pc down

 

[epb]

No... Clicking on anti-virus demos took your pc down

Do I LOOK like I'm from Mayberry, FunN4Lo? I didn't click on anything - a pop-up window showed up and went to town without me touching anything, and IE's supposed pop-up blocker was enabled. I don't open strange e-mails or click on pop-ups; I'd sooner lick the floor in a brothel.

 

[epb]

No... Clicking on anti-virus demos took your pc down

Do I LOOK like I'm from Mayberry, FunN4Lo? I didn't click on anything - a pop-up window showed up and went to town without me touching anything, and IE's supposed pop-up blocker was enabled. I don't open strange e-mails or click on pop-ups; I'd sooner lick the floor in a brothel.

To expand, when a pop-up shows on my display, I CTRL+ALT+DLT to task manager and shut down the browser. Even clicking on the close buttons of such pop-ups is a bad idea, as the people that write them disguise that as the "accept" button.

 

[Thphilli]

I visit a site called Surfthechannel to watch old tv episodes - on Thursday, some program claiming to be an anti-virus demo took my home pc down. A window popped up, wouldn't let me close it, and even after I shut down IE it kept going. I lost internet access, all my software refused to open, and the "demo" kept trying to install itself. Windows Firewall reported no problems, neither did a scan for a virus or malware. Great.

I shut down my pc, rebooted and it started all over again. I rebooted again, this time into safe mode, went into msconfig and found the program - sort of. I pretty much removed every program I didn't specifically recognize. When I rebooted again, things were back to normal - the program wasn't running, and I could access the net again. My webcam has stopped working, and I somehow lost the onscreen prompts for brightness and volume control.

Hurray for Flash.

LOL at using IE.

 

[andsoitgoes]

I visit a site called Surfthechannel to watch old tv episodes - on Thursday, some program claiming to be an anti-virus demo took my home pc down. A window popped up, wouldn't let me close it, and even after I shut down IE it kept going. I lost internet access, all my software refused to open, and the "demo" kept trying to install itself. Windows Firewall reported no problems, neither did a scan for a virus or malware. Great.

I shut down my pc, rebooted and it started all over again. I rebooted again, this time into safe mode, went into msconfig and found the program - sort of. I pretty much removed every program I didn't specifically recognize. When I rebooted again, things were back to normal - the program wasn't running, and I could access the net again. My webcam has stopped working, and I somehow lost the onscreen prompts for brightness and volume control.

Hurray for Flash.

LOL at using IE.

Seriously? IE isn't the devil.

Firefox is buggy and a memory hog.

Google chrome is hit and miss, and is doing extra shady crap removing html5 support.

Opera is antiquated and leaves a lot to be desired.

Safari on a PC.... Yeah, no.

As much as IE isn't the best browser, it's far from the worse. I have no problems with it, and haven't for the last what, 12+ years I've been using it?

As for the malware, I get that you know what you're doing, but I've been to the site you're talking about and I've never had virus problems. Ever.

Most of this stuff requires some user confirmation to access your system, even if that means a hidden "cancel" button that hides a confirmation to screw with your system.

Last, but not least, on iOS devices, system programs do not have root access and therefore do not have control to infect you with a virus.

That doesn't mean that flash won't suck up every single percent of resource on a device which, well, it does. On almost every device. INCLUDING my quad core PC with 5 gigs of ram.

I'm okay without flash. Now, convert this stuff to HTML 5 and that might be a huge change. I'd love to play kongregate games on my iPad, as well as a lot of kids based games, and it frustrates me that I can't, but I pick my battles.

A rock solid, established system that has amazing resource control and stability is worth the bits that I lose.

 

[andsoitgoes]

Oh, and last thing. Shame? Shame on you, Toshiba, for using childish marketing tactics like this.

I know apple has done similar things, but this is just stupid.

 

[hookbill]

Wow, I had a nice post all written out bashing the Toshiba tablet. Then I decided to actually look at the darn thing. 10.1 screen running Android Honeycomb. Looks nice, but you still have the inferior Market to deal with.

 

[Hasty]

Shame they have to use this approach as it will stand or fall on it's merits.

Let's wait and see what the weight, price and battery life is.
You can get anything to run on a tablet, it's the choice of tradeoff's that's important.

@epb.....we've all been there. Worse was the recent update to my antivirus which trashed win7.....Hurrah for the mac and the iPads

 

[DaveSt]

Seriously? IE isn't the devil.

Firefox is buggy and a memory hog.

Google chrome is hit and miss, and is doing extra shady crap removing html5 support.

Opera is antiquated and leaves a lot to be desired.

Safari on a PC.... Yeah, no.

Just to clarify this a little bit, Google is NOT removing HTML support from Chrome. They have decided to support Ogg Theora for their video codec in HTML5 (along with Mozilla and Opera) while Apple and others are supporting .H264 as the video codec. So, unlike with Flash, people are now faced with what we had years ago in worrying about what codec is being used within the same "standard".

I don't see how people are getting upset about Toshiba's marketing strategy here. This is what advertising does: points out the weakness in one company's product to sell their own. Apple did it for years with the "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac" commercials. Car companies do it constantly. If Toshiba believes the lack of Flash is the weakness they can exploit to sell their product this type of advertising is exactly what they should be doing. What else should they be doing, have an ad that says "The iPad is the best tablet out there. Please buy ours instead."??

 

[DaveSt]

Oops ... meant to say Google is not removing HTML5 support above.

 

[ctsluder]

I'm sure some of you own Toshiba's and love them, sorry if I upset you by my post in advance, this is just my opinion and experence.

I have had 4 Toshiba's, the first one I loved and had it for 3 years and then the power connector burned up, after that all the other Toshiba's I had were crap I would not consider this tablet at all because Toshiba Hardware is crap and the four laptops I have had all had a motherboard fried or the power connector burned out and Toshiba gave me the run around when they were under warranty and they also had a recall on the power connector and they still gave me the run around about that.

I loved my first one but I think Toshiba has gone down hill as far as quality and yes I paid from 800 to 1200 for each of my laptops from them, so they were not one of the lower end ones.

I think by Toshiba doing this kinda bashing it is not showing the tablet itself and telling the buyer how good the product is, it would never change my mind by doing this.

 

[Hiarcs]

That's because the envy iPad's success.