The Unexpected Tablet

About a month ago I noted that I would be getting in the tablet game sometime this year. First I would see what Amazon produces for the Kindle line this year - a quality color Android tablet, perhaps? If that was not an option, I would simply give in to the Apple-mania and go with an iPad 2 or 3.

Today I have an HP TouchPad.

Here's the story behind it:

Everyone knows this part: this past week HP dumped the TouchPad and Pre lines, and as of today issued a "markdown order" to its retail partners for the 16GB and 32GB TouchPads to sell for $99 and $149 respectively.

This news came to me late last night (about 11:30pm). "A cheap, dead tablet? Sure, I'll take two!" I stayed up until midnight hoping for early price changes from most of my favorite online retailers - no dice. Instead I was up early Saturday morning - just before six - and noticed that Wal-Mart was selling the TouchPads at their clearance prices. I ordered two for store pickup. Awesome.

I immediately ran over to my local Wal-Mart for pickup and got my 16GB unit. I later found out that the store did not have enough units to fulfill my complete order, so I took a refund in stride and happily accepted my one TouchPad.

Here are my first impressions:

webOS is fantastic. In just a few hours of using the operating system, I am already finding it much more usable than Android. Task switching is awesome and the overall user interface is snappy and polished. The default apps are all acceptable and perfectly usable (particular props to the web browser, email client, calendar app, and integrated Facebook app).

I am a little off-put by the hardware thus far. The tablet itself is a bit heavy, although as my first tablet, the weight does not bother me much. The screen is bright, although mine has dimming issues - perhaps a hardware defect in my unit. Finally, the hardware does not seem to always be able to keep up with webOS: on more than one occasion per use, I have to tap repeatedly on my intended target, only to find my app was chugging the whole time. A bit frustrating.

Here is another way to look at my purchase of the TouchPad: this is my first tablet. It was super-cheap. This was not a gamble purchase by any means - simply an experiment. Even though the hardware is not ideal, the novelty of having a tablet and the $99 entry price makes this a great purchase no matter how I slice it.

B3 out.