Tablet-Optimized Application

[Michael McAllister]

I am thinking that Puget Systems could benefit from having a tablet application. Think Android 3.0 Honeycomb. With the way the notification system works on Honeycomb, you could have unobtrusive company updates, hardware article feeds, etc. delivered to someone whom is interested in your products. I know that Apple is in direct competition with PC builders so that is why I do not even bother suggesting iOS.

In the application, maybe you guys can start a podcast of sorts in which you go over the latest computer technologies, benchmarks, cases, video cards, etc. and discuss some of the benefits of choosing motherboard 'X' over motherboard 'Y', for example.

[PCC-William]

That is an interesting idea, but I wonder if it is necessary given that most tablets can simply view our website? We have been thinking about a mobile version of our site, tailored for smartphone use (smaller screen size, lower bandwidth) - but tablets tend to have larger screens and more power so they could likely just use the full site. That plus our optional newsletter subscription (via email, also accessible on a tablet / phone) would seem to cover most of the benefits you mentioned.

[Michael McAllister]

Good point. Does the site scale well on the Motorola Xoom? I don't own an Android tablet, so I cannot test it out. I'm just attempting to help Puget evolve. I honestly think you guys deserve to do well because the costumers are a priority at Puget (as well as the quality of the products).

[PCC-William]

I don't have any Android tablets, but my wife has an Asus Slate (Win7 tablet - love it!) with roughly the same resolution that the larger tablets with other OSes have. On there our website looks great in landscape orientation, but I don't recall if I've looked at it on portrait mode. We also don't use Flash at all, so that should mean the site will render okay on iOS and Android browsers.

[Michael McAllister]

Well, a dedicated application may not be necessary then in that case. It was just an idea I had since a lot of websites have dedicated apps. My intentions were good at least!

[PCC-William]

Certainly - a very good thought, and if there was some added functionality we could gain with it then it might make sense... but the biggest thing I see as being a purpose for apps is to give you offline access to features, and I don't think there are many things we provide which could be offloaded like that without quickly being outdated. Keep the good ideas coming, though!

[Michael McAllister]

Will do!