Ordered an HP TouchPad!

[Rob]

I ordered a 32GB HP TouchPad on Sunday. It should arrive someday this week. I got it for $549.99, free shipping and no tax. Pretty sweet. Not to mention since I still have (and use) an old Palm Pre I can get the "early adopter" $50 rebate from HP. So, that's a 32GB TouchPad for the price of a 16GB.

I also ordered the TouchPad touchstone, the official HP case, and a Phantom Skinz screen protector. I'm going all-out on this little device! I use a touchstone all the time with my Pre and my wife's Pixi. We love it and we certainly wanted it for our TouchPad as well.

We tried out the TouchPad at the local Office Depot and Best Buy on Saturday. We really liked it a lot. It runs webOS 3.0 which is quite an improvement from webOS 1.4.5 that we run on our phones. We're really looking forward to this arriving in the mail. I'll let you all know how it goes.

[Dragon]

A pad? Should have gotten at least a Laptop, as they have a bit more flexibility on what can be done. But look forward to your thoughts either way.

[Rob]

Why would I want another laptop? I don't need two.

[Dragon]

I did not know you already had one. But currently tablets are way over priced for what can be done with them.

[Blacksmith1]

so was every other new tech. a good 286 system was several thousand dollars new....

[Dragon]

Tablets are trying to replace netbooks, as they truly cannot compete with a full fledged Laptop in capabilities. Now since they are aimed at Netbooks, one would think they should be about the same price as a netbook, ie 300 USD or there abouts. But for 600+USD come on, I mean my rinky dinky Laptop at 670 will terrorize a tablet anyday of the week. But i guess people will buy anything, I mean they buy 3 or more Xboxes after getting banned countless times for modding it, or because they fried it and got the red rings of death.

[Rob]

Tablets are trying to replace netbooks, as they truly cannot compete with a full fledged Laptop in capabilities. Now since they are aimed at Netbooks, one would think they should be about the same price as a netbook, ie 300 USD or there abouts. But for 600+USD come on, I mean my rinky dinky Laptop at 670 will terrorize a tablet anyday of the week. But i guess people will buy anything, I mean they buy 3 or more Xboxes after getting banned countless times for modding it, or because they fried it and got the red rings of death.

People will continue to do things with their own money that you do not approve of. I knew what I was getting when I ordered the TouchPad. And now that I have it and have used it for a while, I got exactly what I expected. Nothing more, nothing less. You can be upset that people have free will with their money, yet so do you.

[Dragon]

I can careless, but either way how is it?

[Rob]

It's been quite good so far. I've been an avid user of webOS for over two years now, so I just slid right into it easily. My wife, who is not a techie at all, also got the hang of it quickly. She likes being able to prop it up on the counter to watch YouTube videos while she's cooking (I'm so lucky!). It's easier for her to use the TP rather than a laptop for that. I've been using it to stream live Flash video and just regular Flash video, of course. It does Flash pretty well. Not perfect, but very good.

The card system that was present in webOS 1.x has been greatly improved in webOS 3.0. Now, instead of individual cards, we have stacks of cards. It really works well. Say you open the email app. And in an email someone sent you a link to some YouTube video. You press the link and it launches a browser session directly on top of the email card, rather than off to the side as it is in webOS 1.x. So the card stacks are made of up cards that are related to each other somehow.

The speed is good, I think. I was able to load Preware onto my TP and use a few homebrew patches to speed the TouchPad up even more. Man, the webOS homebrew community is awesome! The TP has barely been out two weeks and they already have some amazing tweaks out there.

But probably the most impressive thing about the TP is how it completely integrates into my existing Palm Profile (now called webOS Account). I have a Palm Pre that's configured with two email accounts, tens of apps (I don't use apps that much), and several memos. All of them were pushed to my TP seamlessly. All I had to do was enter my password for the two email accounts and blammo, I was back in business. It even transferred my memos from my Pre to the Memo App on the TP. Nice. Now my two webOS devices are in sync in that regard. Most apps that I had on my Pre were automatically installed on my TP. The ones that didn't make it were ones that weren't made available to the TP. Very few programs failed to transition over. I don't know what is required for a Pre app to run on a TP. The only problem about those old Pre apps is that they run in what I'd call a compatibility window. They're not full screen and they run in a window that's just a little larger than the screen of a Pre.

Angry Birds HD is a free download from the App Catalog. I downloaded it but haven't played it. TuneIn is an awesome app that pulls in audio streams from radio stations all over the world. It needs some work, but for the most part it does well enough. Box.net offers a free 50GB storage account to all TouchPad owners. I got that, of course.

The sound quality is nice. Beats Audio really is a nice set of speakers for this tablet. Strong bass for a tablet and very clear audio. Thumbs up!

[Dragon]

Just out of curiousity, does it or can it communicate with a PC? Also what kind of programs can you use to view movies? divx, AVI, mpeg4, H264?

I have Beats audio on my laptop, I am not all that impressed with it.

[Rob]

Just out of curiousity, does it or can it communicate with a PC? Also what kind of programs can you use to view movies? divx, AVI, mpeg4, H264?

I have Beats audio on my laptop, I am not all that impressed with it.

I don't know yet. I haven't seen anything on it that would look like it communicates with a PC. But, again, it's all brand new to me and I just don't know. Are you talking about network file sharing between Touchpad and PC?

It has a video player that will play video from mkv and mp4 files using the h264 codec.

[Dragon]

yes file sharing is what i was referring to, networking with out the need of a third party program like Apples itunes. At least it can play most common file types.

[Rob]

I am a regular over at the Precentral.net forums and I have seen some people asking about networking as well. So far no one's found a solution to share files other than using the USB cable or a cloud storage service like ZumoDrive/ZumoCast or Box.net. I use the Zumo services and they're awesome. I can stream video and audio directly from my PC to the TouchPad when I connect my TP's browser to zumocast.com and sign into my account. It's awesome.

[Blacksmith1]

So you have to connect the TP and your PC to some sever sitting god knows where on the net, just to see/hear a file that's sitting 20 ft away in your house? It sounds like Rube Goldberg designed this thing.

[Rob]

Oh, no no no! I think you misread what I said.

So far no one's found a solution to share files other than using the USB cable OR a cloud storage service like ZumoDrive/ZumoCast or Box.net. The cloud storage services are directly accessible via an app or browser through the Internet tubes, you don't have connect via USB to connect to the cloud. That would be ridiculous.

It's just like any other small, mobile device out there.

[Blacksmith1]

And how do you get the files to your online drive? (the concept has been around for ten years, with this "Cloud" nonsense being some marketing gimmick) by using your pc. why not just use the wifi conection in the tablet to conect directly to your home network and get the files from the PC. Each extra step pays royalties to Rube...(may he rest in peace)

[Rob]

And how do you get the files to your online drive? (the concept has been around for ten years, with this "Cloud" nonsense being some marketing gimmick) by using your pc. why not just use the wifi conection in the tablet to conect directly to your home network and get the files from the PC. Each extra step pays royalties to Rube...(may he rest in peace)

Oh, I agree with you. The "cloud" is a bunch of nonsense for "file storage on a server". On my PC I can upload files directly to ZumoDrive via Windows Explorer. ZumoDrive actually creates a virtual drive on my PC that's linked directly to the online storage account. It looks just like another hard drive to Windows 7. To upload to Box.net I must do it through my web browser on my PC. I can also upload files from my TouchPad to Box/ZumoDrive by using their app.

As far as I can tell, this tablet doesn't have the ability to connect to a home NAS. Not yet, anyway. Does any tablet have this ability?

[Blacksmith1]

I really don't know as tablets hold no interest for me. the only thing I would do with them is read e-0books and an Ereader will do that alot cheaper.
They should all have that ability tho', you would think the designers would have thought that maybe people might like to transfer stuff directly... and if they conect to the web via your wireless router then it's just a matter of changing the sofware to alllow it. (networking)

[Rob]

Well, I know my TouchPad can connect via Bluetooth to my wife's laptop. I'll have to try file transfers that way. Might work.

Oh yes, an ereader would be far, far better for ebooks than *any* tablet. Reading on an LCD screen is awful compared to one of the e-ink screens found on the Kindle, Sony Reader, PocketBook (which I own), Kobo, or Nook.

[Dragon]

So you can at least communicate directly to a PC, providing you have Blue tooth but anymore that is not hard to accommodate. you should do a little micro review of it, list the things it has on it Ports and such, the things it can, do files it can play, and how you connect to other devices.

[Rob]

So you can at least communicate directly to a PC, providing you have Blue tooth but anymore that is not hard to accommodate. you should do a little micro review of it, list the things it has on it Ports and such, the things it can, do files it can play, and how you connect to other devices.

Crap, I forgot to test the Bluetooth file transfer last night. I'm emailing myself to do it tonight.

[Blacksmith1]

LOL! That's just a sad comment on today's society. electronic post its.......

[Rob]

LOL! That's just a sad comment on today's society. electronic post its.......

I know. :( I have horrific short-term memory. As I tell my wife, "If you don't email it to me or make sure it's in my Google Calendar, it'll never get done."

[Rob]

All right, I got the TouchPad connected to my wife's laptop via Bluetooth last night. Unfortunately, the laptop only sees the TP as an audio/communications device and not any sort of storage system. There's no way for me to transfer files to the TP, I tried. I also tried to push files from the TP to the laptop and it's a no-go as well. Darn. So, for now at least, I'm stuck with traditional USB and "cloud" storage.

[Dragon]

Microsoft would beneifit tremendously by making a OS specifically for TB's.

[slugbug]

Don't you wish you had waited a month before buying this. I tried to get one for the $100 Fire Sale price but everywhere I tried was already sold out.

[rrplay]

Don't you wish you had waited a month before buying this. I tried to get one for the $100 Fire Sale price but everywhere I tried was already sold out.

do you think that you be able to eventually get your hand on one ,even if it costs a little bit more ?

[slugbug]

do you think that you be able to eventually get your hand on one ,even if it costs a little bit more ? If I'm lucky maybe.