Price

What do these companies not understand about the pricing of their fondleslabs?

Anything anywhere near the price of an iPad, then people will buy an iPad instead.

£400 is too much

There is no point trying to sell a tablet at the same price as an iPad. It won't sell.

I Was There

As someone who was there, I can confirm that despite Sony's best efforts, this was the usual DSG clusterfcuk. I pitched up just after 5.00 a.m., and was assured that all 100 people in the queue from yesterday had booked their place. In fact, at the time, there were about 80. So despite the bribe of a £549 RRP telly, not exactly matching Apple in the fanboi league overnight.

Thinking the game up, I headed for a coffee only to see a photographer tweet that there were still spaces in the queue. It took 25 minutes to find a Sony marketeer who confirmed that I should just join the queue anyway. By then I'd missed out by about a crucial 30 places or so.

The only thing magical and revolutionary about this launch was the magical and revolutionary close-up magician, Brendan Patricks, sent to amuse the queue - who was genuinely amazing.

I stuck around until we were let in anyway, and had a good play with the tablet with the assistance of a very well trained Sony rep - DSG's photogenic youngsters doing little more than smiling inanely. Mind you, in order to do that, I had to tether the slab to my own Three MiFi, as DSG were unable to provide a workable WiFi network in their "flagship" London store. Even with this early software, it seemed responsive, and fullscreen flash on the full iPlayer site worked perfectly. I quite liked the wedge shape too, although I'm not sure about some of the industrial design, the ports, in particular, look a bit shoddy.

If Sony controlled the whole retail experience, they might be halfway to competing with Apple. While they are stuck with retarded channel partners like DSG, they've got no chance. Should have launched at John Lewis.