Well that sucked!

The HP TouchPad that is. Actually, the device itself was very nice IMHO, and the software was very good as well.

So what sucked? My timing of purchasing the HP TouchPad sucked, and combining that with the fact that HP has given up the fight so much earlier than I anticipated. Well, maybe just the fact that HP gave in.



Todd Bradley, executive vice president of HP's Personal Systems Group, was quoted as saying "We’re going to fight everybody. This is not an Apple and HP scenario" and "I'm telling you, this is not the end of the sprint (NYSE:S), but the beginning of a marathon," he said. I've taken this from http://www.crn.com/news/client-devices/229400612/hp-exec-says-tablet-battle-a-marathon-not-a-sprint.htm?itc=refresh.

Reading this just makes me fume. Some fight! Some marathon! When you hear this talk while you are deciding on which product to buy, it is inspiring and builds confidence. When you read it after the company decides to stop selling the product (that you purchased) after 2 months it is nauseating and sounds like a big fat lie!

I really liked the product as I've mentioned in my previous post. It had promise, especially for the $300 that I paid for it. With the latest updates to the OS and the Homebrew stuff it was performing well. I was watching movies on Hulu using Flash and it worked smoothly. If I was watching Flash, I couldn't have too many cards opened at the same time, but that didn't really matter.

I think it would've made more sense to come into the market a little lower in price than the iPad was selling for. With it priced the same as the iPad, and having quite a smaller repository of apps, nobody but the die hard WebOS fans were really going to purchase it, in my opinion. The initial reviews were based off of the initial operating system and I hear that was pretty slow and clunky. When I purchased the TouchPad I immediately updated the OS and it was running much smoother, but sadly the initial reviews were all based on the slow OS for the most part. That didn't help sell the tablet either.

So.. I guess I can stop my WebOS training for now and concentrate on so many things are my list (Ruby, Rails, C#, etc). The list goes on and on really, so I won't get bored. :) But I had an idea already for the TouchPad and I suppose there is no harm telling you all (my 1 or 2 followers that will read this. ;) ). So there goes that dream. ha..


I really do like the following article.. Well written, and I feel for those people that have put so much time into developing for WebOS, keeping up websites and creating the homebrew stuff. http://www.precentral.net/hp-has-neither-balls-nor-brains-1.

According to the PreCentral website the HP TouchPad 16GB will go down to $99 this weekend. Now that really hurts.. not that it is unexpected of course.

Clearly I don't know what the numbers needed to be, or what was the actual expectation. Everyone now seems to be saying that HP will align themselves to be more competitive with IBM. Maybe 10 years down the road we will all look back and see this as a turning point that led HP to greatness. Time will tell but for now, I will ponder what to do with this tablet that I have.


Oh well.. Just thought I'd do a little venting.