If you have been following my blog of late, it has a Tablet slant and the reason for the sudden need for me to buy a tablet is the various companies dropping prices of the said items. I had already written about the Motorola Xoom dropping in price to £249 and how I struggled to actually buy one from a bricks and mortar store. I was out and about yesterday and thought I would try my luck at buying a tablet, any issues and I was happy to walk away – I just do not need a tablet that urgent.
PC World
My First port of call was PCWorld/ Curry’s based in Grimsby, quote a large store and in theory should have stock of ‘things’ right? While I was there I had another look of the Logitech Mice (I need a new one) and sure enough the items they had on offer they had zero stock of- how handy was that (my local store also carried zero stock). I looked at the Motorola Xoom and sure enough the price was £329. I asked a local sales person about this pricing and they have either been briefed on what to say already or have many people asking. What did the person say? Well first that they had zero stock (this is without checking any computer – straight from the top of their head). The next piece of propaganda was that the price of £249 was ONLINE price online and not in store. Once again I stated that you cannot buy it (when I checked) for home delivery and you can collect form store BUT no local store (within 45 miles of me) had any in stock. I seriously think PCWorld need to change their attitude towards the customer or they will go the same way as Comet.
Carphone Warhouse
I spotted a Carphone Warehouse a short walk away and as I knew these also offered the Xoom at £249, I thought I would have a quick check. The person who greeted me was polite and was happy to tell me that the Xoom was indeed £249 in-store and while they had none in stock, the one located in the town centre had 3 in stock last time he checked. While I was there I noticed they had an Archos Tablet for £150, this was a 10.1” device running Android 2.3 with 8GIG Storage. It did cross my mind that this might be enough of a tablet to suit my needs and been £100 cheaper than the Xoom, would it be as well to buy this instead? I knew from experience that if you pay cheap, you get cheap and it will never been as good as the better Xoom Tablet.
Stay Tuned for the full review of the Motorola Xoom.
