Goes down. Now, I'm not a fan of tablets, but this was a beautiful disaster by HP. From what I've read, HP is also getting out of the PC market. So what does that leave HP?

Is it worth picking up for $99?

Also, whatever happened to the Google laptop thing? It caused a spark few months ago, but I hardly hear about it now. Does anyone actually own one of those things?

I grabbed one for £89 earlier today because I figure it might be fun to dick about with.

Umm, a huge enterprise market. Same reason IBM is still around.

the exact words i used when someone asked why people would buy a touchpad

i would have bought one but i missed out and i need new boots and car insurance more than i need another tablet

People aren't buying the iPad because it's a great tablet, they're buying the iPad because it's the iPad. I don't care what the gadget freaks on the internet say, tablets are a horrible idea and nobody really wants them. I'm pretty sure the manufacturers know this, but they're still responsible to their shareholders to at least try.

ffs, people criticized the Touchpad right out the door just for having the same price as the iPad. What could they really do? What can any of these manufacturers do? It took an 80% price cut just to get people to talk about it.

Like Darth mentioned, they have an enterprise business. They also produce a wider variety of consumer electronics. I'm definitely not saying HP is a healthy company, but this isn't remotely as serious as it sounds.

I had a really long explanation written up, but then I realized that mscbuck would be the only person on this forum who would understand it. I'll just say that the PC business is really competitive and most manufacturers could make more money by selling their PC businesses and reinvesting the proceeds in other things. In a lot of ways it's a great decision, even for the #1 manufacturer.

Although if I were stupid enough to be invested in HP, I'd probably be too stupid to know it's a good thing.

It caused a spark because Google was giving them away for free. You can buy one right now if you want. They cost about $500 and they do almost as much as a $500 Windows laptop.

I'm not surprised, webOS isn't all that great. Especially compared to iOS and Android. (cue emon rage comment)

webOS has awesome UI features that both iOS and Android lack. You're just dumb.

those features being?

Isn't WebOS actually meant to be geared towards multitasking as opposed to the others?

Synergy, fantastic multi-tasking, great gesture usage, stupid-simple development platform, resolution-agnostic UI being the main ones. Note when I say fantastic multitasking, I really mean it. I half-heartedly wish I had it on my PC. Also, the use of gestures built into the OS was brain-dead obvious and simple, yet until the Blackberry Playbook came around and stole it, it was the only one doing so. It removes all the pointless buttons for actions like going back and forward, and even removes the need for the home button. It's actually faster.

webOS has only had two faults from the very beginning:

1. Performance. I feel if webOS came out a couple years later, it would have rocked everything. But it is currently held down by the hardware too much. It's not unusably slow, it's just not on the same level as an iPad.
2. Apps. Half of this is the fault of performance, and the other is the platform. Since it was designed primarily as an HTML-based platform, there are significant limitations in what could be accomplished. They only just began to rectify that when the Touchpad came out, but it was too late. It did support standard binary apps as well, but those were almost entirely games.

Also I don't agree with Jon`C at all about no one wanting tablets (yes it's made by Apple, but that doesn't automatically make it win. See also: Apple TV). You don't sell 30 million of the things just on a fad. And frankly, it's completely replaced my laptop. It is actually faster than most of the things I'd use my laptop for, and it has a highly reliable battery life. The fact that I can go on the road, watch a movie, and still have 8 hours left is such a freeing feeling. Only a tiny few laptops can come to that, and that's usually at the cost of performance or size.

I played with one of these today and was nearly 30% as satisfied as I would be holding an iPad

I feel your still butthurt from your ****ty lady GaGa video. Its OK though, I actually do like you, you know.

The difference between tablets and Apple TV, is that Apple TV wasn't really, really pretty. An iPad is the ultimate shiny thing.

No, he was actually right, and you're being ignorant.

So after a while of playing about with mine after it turned up this morning, I'd say that these things were never worth the £350 pricetag, but it's nice enough. If they actually do manage to get Android working on it it'll have been worth my £89.

It's not worth £350 because it doesn't have any apps, IMO. I mean, what I really use on my iPad is quite extensive:

1. Remote Desktop (great for fixing stuff on the go, and the screen is big enough to be useful)
2. Netflix/Hulu/AirVideo
3. FileBrowser to manage files over the network
4. Photo viewer (my family uses it for this all the time, especially over HDMI).
5. Browsing the web, naturally
6. Reading my news/RSS feeds (I actually like this more than I do on the PC!)

And that's just the stuff that I typically use ONLY the iPad for. There are other apps I use when I'm on the go, like various chatting apps, maps, system tools, etc.

I think a lot of people see apps as just toys, but they're really not. Sure, the iPad does have a ton of games (and some are excellent, like #sworcery), but frankly many of these apps are faster and easier than their desktop counterparts. For example, I can load a video on Netflix via my iPad faster than I can on ANYTHING else.

What do people think about the Thinkpad Tablet so far?

"Business class" Android tablet? No thanks.

Looks like the Touchdroid project kids have got a dump of one of the developer units running Android that were accidently shipped.

http://rootzwiki.com/showthread.php?t=3692

That's what keeps me coming back to my iPad time and time again. Especially with twitter, facebook, and reddit. The respective apps for them blow browsing with a desktop away. And I much prefer Flipboard / Reeder for RSS feeds as well.

And honestly, after sitting at a computer for 6-8 hours a day for my job, I do not want to sit on my desktop computer again when I'm doing such simple things like those above when I'm relaxing at home. I don't want to have to go to my desktop, I don't want to use my laptop, turn it on / off, etc. I go straight to the iPad because it just does it faster, and imo, better for tasks like those above.

I cannot justify the expensive of a tablet. I've done well for myself using Android/iOS phones. If I were still in school...maaaaaaaaybe I could.

I have a ViewSonic ViewPad10. Dual boots Android and Windows7.

I think it's a brilliant device if you're financially irresponsible. I wouldn't have a clue what the average consumer does with these things but I love it.

I blew my monthly tech budget on a kindle, but I absolutely love it so I'm good.

yay for you but i don't know what that has to do with the cost of touchpads in china

It was a response to the op broman.

I'm still in school. I could use an iPad to take notes in exactly one course over the next year. I definitely couldn't justify the price.

If you also use your iPad as an eReader & you don't pay for the eBooks that you download, the device potentially ends up paying for itself (assuming you're going to use it for a long time). It's true that the same thing could be said about any eReader device, but the iPad enables you to do much more than read books. You could obviously do the same thing on a decent smart phone or even on your desktop, but I wouldn't personally want to read an entire book on either of them. I've downloaded & read dozens of eBooks on my iPad & haven't paid for any of them & I'm not alone.

I'm with mentat on this one. The iPhone is great, but i really wouldn't want to do any extensive reading on it. And for content consumption tablets and even smart phones are a lot... Nicer? Than PC's

You'd be surprised at it's note-taking abilities. I took these following notes in some pretty math intensive classes without any trouble whatsoever (using NoteTaker HD). These were in class too, and it didn't require me having to always skip to the next line, move everything around etc. Was no different than taking notes in any other class.

Actually, that's the main thing I use my iPod Touch 2G for and it works out just fine (aside from holding the battery face-down on the bed and inserting larger-than-normal fruit into its anus as I cry into my bedsheets and oh god please make it stop)



I can't read any of that ****

why did I double post

Luckily nobody needs to be able to read his notes besides himself.

I assume you used some kind of stylus to write that on iPad? What course is this?

Indeed, I used a Stylus from BoxWave. And the class was Econometrics



What Boco said. Plus, the demonstration is simply that I can produce full loose-leaf sets of notes on the iPad and the resolution is clear and you are basically only limited by how you write. It's pretty nice to have backups of all your notes easily, print out nice packets and copies, add addendum's to PDFs (which is awesome for taking notes in classes that just give you PDF reading assignments).

I'm flat out surprised about the clarity of those notes. I'm seriously impressed.

I wish I could afford an iPad :/

I'm guessing it's one of those apps where you pinch-zoom and have to write your notes very large, then can zoom out and they look smaller, because capactive touchscreens don't have the accuracy to handle very fine writing. Nothing compared to a good Wacom stylus and digitizer.

Actually they do have very good accuracy, the problem is the size of the tips. There are ones that have tips not much larger than the size of a pen container.

But no, it's not a Wacom tablet.

The Thinkpad Tablet has a pen digitizer, by the way. It's not Wacom but it's similar technology, pressure-sensitive and everything. That's the main reason I was asking what people thought about it. If I were to buy a tablet, really good stylus support would be a huge factor.

Only review I've seen of it so far says it's a bit slow (not surprised by that to be honest) and thus can't keep up with the pen input very well.

http://gizmodo.com/5835944/lenovo-thinkpad-tablet-comes-a+courtin-business-folk

I wish the battery in my Asus EP121 could get more than about 4 hours, cause otherwise it's awesome for notetaking and diagramming. Thankfully I'm rarely away from my desk at work for that long so at least I can keep it charged most of the time.