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| WebOS on HP Touchpad. Android ICS now possible. |
So if you haven’t heard HP sold their tablets at fire-sale for an amazing price of $99 for the 16GB version and $149 for the 32GB version.
A friend of a friend who works at Bestbuy bought one because of the amazing price.
By the time I had found out about this great deal, everywhere in town (Vancouver) was sold out.
When I called different Futureshops and Bestbuys I got laughed at. One guy actually responded, “Dude, you are way too late to the party”. I’m not sure that is professional but he was right!
After looking nightly on Craigslist and Kijiji I finally found a guy selling a brand new sealed in box 16GB Hp Touchpad’s for $200. It was $100 more than the firesale price, but I felt that it would be the last slim chance to get a deal.
So why would I, or you want a Hp Touchpad?
1) Price
Every time a company is losing money on a product and costs them more to produce it then they sell it for, you feel good about it. I pride myself with getting the best deal.
The touchpad retailed for $500 US dollars and fire sale price of $99. They say the hardware is worth about $296 and costs $10 to put together. They are losing money, yes!
2) Technology
I think it’s safe to say most people want a smartphone or a tablet these days. Instead of getting a laptop or a netbook, the convenience can’t really be matched. Although a tablet can’t do everything a netbook/ laptop can, it comes damn close. I love my smartphone, but a tablet is much bigger.
3) Cheap
I don’t mean the price I mean you. You are cheap like me and don’t want to shell out the $650-$700 for the Ipad 3 after taxes. Yes you are used to Apple products like Ipods or Iphones but you don’t like the prices.
4) No Lockdown/ Has HTML and FLASH
Yes, unlike Apple products you are not locked to Itunes! You can simply plug into a computer and drag over. Make your old folders pop your music into them, drag your Ebooks and the OS seems to be able to find them regardless of the directory. Youtube and some other sites are fully accessible as well instead of limitation imposed by Apple.
5) Multitasking
This is great. As you know Iphones and Ipads do not have true multitasking. What this means is essentially the app or game you are playing goes to pause mode and closes until you reopen it.
With the Touchpad the app is truly still going. I love playing a youtube video and read the news on another page at the same time.
6) The Operating System
For me the WebOS operating system is unique and kind of cool. I realize it is not for everyone. It has a card type system where when things minimize they become a card as in playing card shape. You can have multiple cards open at once and they are easy to control, want to get rid of it? Just throw it off the screen (by either pulling it up and it disappears or slingshot style by pulling it down and releasing).
Since I was used to Apple Os I couldn’t understand where the cards were going when I threw them off the screen. I felt like I had 20 cards open somewhere and didn’t realize till after I had closed them. A few of my friends tried WebOs and were disappointed, they said it was hard to control and difficult to understand. Of course since they were all used to Iphones they didn’t understand it. Its a small learning curve, but most people are put off by it after a few minutes of trying to grasp it.
7) Android
Until recently Honeycomb was ported to the touchpad but it was quite buggy. Personally I didn’t even bother to do it. Now, there is a very good, I would say nearly perfect port of Ice Cream Sandwich. After using it for one week now, and downloading plenty of apps I’d say only the camera and A GPS doesn’t seem to work. To be fair the camera is very low quality and I’ve never used it within WebOS except to take a few pictures, and they all look terrible. Or it may have been me. I’ve read there are a few ways to hack the GPS so that it will function somewhat. It seemed to work through wifi on WebOS, but when I tried it on Android it doesn’t seem to be accurate.
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| Ice Cream Sandwich. Super smooth! |
Pros
-Flash. I can watch pretty much everything now. On my Iphone I get some emails delivered I cannot view and it drives me insane. Youtube is not the same experience on an Ipad/Iphone.
-You can dual boot Android or WebOs. For Android fans or most tablet users that is a nice catch. Why be locked down to one Os when you have the option of two operating systems.
-Android Ice Cream Sandwich is very very smooth. I’d say more smooth than Webos that it was designed for.
-Open software. Until recently the software WebOs was not open. HP had it locked down. It has also sent out too updates which have greatly improved WebOs over the two months I’ve owned it. In the future, nobody knows if HP will continue to send out updates, but since they have released code and opened up the system to developers, some programmers will continue to tweak the system.
-The hardware seems good. This is a pro and con. Since Android runs so well that tells me that WebOs not the hardware is at fault. Specs wise the Touchpad is pretty good. Its somewhere inbetween and Ipad and Ipad2. It physically resembles an Ipad as well.
-The homebrew community has done a lot with WebOs and it seems HP is open to it. There are a lot of apps which allow the system to be overclocked, the ripple pointer to stop and other to raise the volume of the speakers. Is it very simple to do this.
Everything I’ve read implies that Android runs smoothly and most people are amazed at how well it runs. Andoid fanboys or I guess fangirls as well, suggest getting rid of WebOs the first chance you can get and put Android on it. Some even suggest just consider it an Android tablet since WebOs is not good and to get this amount of hardware for an Android tablet at this price is amazing.
-The power of Facebook App. I read a few rumours online that claim Apple wanted to have the first tablet to have an App specifically designed for it. However, the Touchpad became the first one to do so. I do enjoy the App and it has a few extra options in the way you view things which is kind of neat, but it’s more a gimmick than anything.
Cons
-The Usb cable. What the heck? Its a cable that you can plug into your computer and you can copy stuff to the tablet but you can’t recharge off of it? That’s ridiculous. What the heck HP?
-WebOS support seems dead. Yes there was an update recently which fixed a few things, but hard to say if there will be anymore support. The future is grim in this respect.
-Slow. The WebOs lags a bit. Yes the updates have improved a lot of things, but it’s no Ipad. If you have used an Ipad you know how fast and smooth the Os is. With WebOs you can feel the lag and notice it even after the newest update.
-It is no Ipad Killer as some people have claimed. It lies somewhere between and Ipad 1 and an Ipad 2 in many ways, but it is still not as smooth on any level.
-Lack of Apps. Supposedly 1,000 Apps are in the store built specifically for the Touchpad. There are 6,000 Palm Pre apps I read that are accessible and most usable I read (which I’ve never tried). They are not made for the Touchpad so they may upscale themselves and not look as good.
-If you run Android, camera, microphone and AGPS will not work unless future updates by the port are fixed.
-Its a magnet for fingerprints. I don't think the Ipad is as bad, but when I look at the screen after a few mins, I can see tons of oily fingerprints.
-Battery Life. I thought the battery life was pretty good on most smartphones and tablets these days, but I guess not. Even my old Iphone 3G after using it for half a year the battery started to die. It would run one day at quite a bit of use. The touchpad seems terrible. Its possible I just got a dud. Some websites report 8 hours of usages. The percentage by just playing music or leaving it on its draining like its water from a hose. When I used the Ipad 2 I was playing Angry Birds HD and after 5mins the battery hadn’t drained even 1%.
Bottom Line
Did I make the right purchase? For me, yes I did. For you, you need to decide yourself.
If you are looking for your first tablet this may be the one. Especially if you buy it used from someone you may be able to get an incredible deal. Firesale was $99 but I don’t think you can find that deal anywhere anymore.
If you have to pay full price or close to full price I’d say stay away.
A lot of people are put off by the Operating System. You can always replace it with Android. Or according to rumours wait a bit and Windows 8 may, not 100%, but may work on it.
If you can get it for $99 I don’t think you can go wrong, if you need to pay more than that, decide if you are willing to experiment or would rather spend the money on a tablet you know is great.
For me this price, the ability to dual boot and the power of the tablet makes it worth it. Even though I paid $200 I feel like I got a deal since it used to be $500.
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