The Future of the Toshiba Excite Write tablet

Is the Excite Write a one-off or does Toshiba have plans to make this product their top-end tablet solution? Does Toshiba plan to appeal to the artistic + design market?


Toshiba does have a history of market retreat/ceding to the competition (HD DVD *cough cough*)
Toshiba is an engineering innovator and once went head-to-head in the high definition format wars with the HD DVD standard. HD DVD was the VHS to SONY blueray's, um, SONY Beta format, so it was a bit surprising when they decided to concede the format war to SONY. Thankfully hardly anyone even remembers HD DVD any more and even fewer people knew that Toshiba had been instrumental in its development. However, it does beg the question: does Toshiba support its products well past their best before date, and they do have enough resources to keep improving and retrying.?

Well, the simple answer is yes, they do, and they do. In the 3 weeks that I've owned my Excite Write, I've had 3 updates pushed to it, including version 4.3 of Jellybean. I've owned or used several Toshiba laptops and the support they offer is on par with any other manufacturer. Toshiba products may not be the prettiest, but they are very well built.

To put it into perspective, only 5 months after I purchased my iPad original, it was made completely obsolete by the iPad 2, which introduced performance and platform so different, that within a year half of the apps I wished to install would not run on my iPad, and Within a year the OS was already out of sync between the two products. By iOS5 the game was over as that would be its last full-numbered upgrade: no iOS6, and definitely no iOS7. Still, that iPad is used and enjoyed on a daily basis for watching shows, playing games, and running the apps that still work on that platform. Nobody could argue that it's useless and was not worth the purchase.

With regards to the Excite Write tablet, it has among the highest resolution and performance available for a tablet, has upgradable storage, and has the rare ability to use a Wacom Bamboo Feel stylus, it's something that has a lifespan - in terms of usefulness - approaching 5 years as a result.

Refer to my blog post on Toshiba's poor marketing efforts of the Excite Write.

So even if Toshiba decides it has no business continuing to service the creative market, the Toshiba Excite Write you buy today will remain a powerful, expressive tool for a good number of years.