7-inch Toshiba Thrive now in stock at Toshiba for $379.99
The 7-inch Toshiba Thrive was an exciting addition to the pocketable market when it was first announced, but when it first went up for sale the high price and non-official retailers were something of a concern. Thankfully, that problem has now been solved, as Toshiba now has the 7-inch Thrive for sale on their website for a cheaper $380 dollars.
Putting down that $380 will get you a Tegra 2 processor, 1280 x 800 display, 1GB of RAM, all in the same form factor as the Thrive's larger counterpart. The price may seem steep compared to other tablets like the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet, but what differentiates the Thrive in this area is software. While both the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire run custom Android versions based on 2.3 Gingerbread, the Thrive is running stock Android 3.2 Honeycomb.
This would have been fine in September when the device was announced, but now the price seems somewhat steep for a tablet without the promise of Ice Cream Sandwich. However, the Thrive is still a very decent looking Honeycomb tablet, and right now pretty much your only choice other than the similar Honeycomb powered Iconia Tab A100. And who knows, the Thrive may just get an Ice Cream Sandwich update in the future.
[Toshiba via Phandroid]
