WhyNottMe?

HP will be selling off more touchpads Dec. 11 and why I don’t care

Thursday, December 8th, 2011 | Uncategorized

HP, not too long ago, decided they were done making hardware, than they weren’t done, than they were, and frankly I don’t know where they stand now.

To clear out their inventory, they sold all their new touchpads with webos for $99 bucks for the 16gig model and $150 for the 32.  The touchpad was the first tablet (in the new race of tablets) to not run an operating system designed for a phone like any android tablet or iPad does.  Not a super bold move, but still a bright idea.  This tablet was said to be the iPad killer (sort of like every android phone that comes out it seems).  it rocks a 9.7″ screen and has a decent resolution at 768 x 1024.  It is a wifi only tablet (not a deal breaker for everyone) and has a 1.2ghz dual core chip.  Where this thing really shines is that is has a dedicated gpu, so it’s supposed to be a better experience video wise.

On Sunday, Dec 11, 2011 at midnight, HP will be selling off the rest of their stock of refurbed units at this same price.  it seems a good deal considering the closest price for a tablet would be the kindle fire at $199.  So why am I not excited about this?  I have a lot of reasons.

We’ll get one thing out of the way, even though this isn’t really a road block for me to get one, I’ll say it anyway.  I am an IOS guy.  I love my iphone.  I’ve invested hundreds of dollars into my multiple iPhones and apps.  It wouldn’t make sense for me to start buying apps for android or webOS.

ok, so the first reason, those that own the hp touchpad, those “lucky” few to snach one up before they were sold off the first round, when I come accross them on forums for this new release, are offering theirs for sale as well.  One guy sold it for $25 and even told the buyer, it wasn’t even worth that.  so what’s the problem?  first off, there seems to be a firmware issues with the GPU.  review after review brings up frame dropping as a serious issue.  Other problems, webOS is dead.  aside form indie programers, you won’t be getting very many new apps or support.  HP has said there will still be updates, but if they’re not making a successor to the Touchpad, it’ll turn out like most android devices and stay NOT updatable.

Web browsing on it is said to be very fast, that’s a plus.  It also supports flash, which opens up a large portion of the web closed off to us mobile safari users.

Because webOS is dead a lot of people have been putting android on it.  I’ve read a few accounts where they’ve bricked their device, and those that were successful say it’s very skitish, crashing regularly, missing support of some of the interface, and one guy said it heated up a lot, to the point that he thought it would melt the plastic casing.  I read one forum where a guy loaded linux on it, but he didn’t say anymore, just that it successfully loaded.

so the reason I don’t care.  I don’t like android devices because you have to reprogram the thing to play nice with other devices.  sure it’ll work, but I want a tablet I can just pick up and run with.  I want a tablet that movie watching will be an enjoyable experience, the touchpad hasn’t offered that with it’s dropped frames.  It seems like those who are excited about the touchpad, don’t own one.  and those that own one are excited to get rid of it.

although, one review I read said it made a great picture frame!

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