So, after lurking on eBay for several weeks, watching the price of the fire-sale scalpers ill-gotten goods slowly decrease, I finally decided to make a bid on an HP Touchpad….and I won!
I won’t say how much I got my HP Touchpad for, but if you pay more than 250 at this point for a 32 GB, it’s too much. Kudos to the seller, he was very businesslike and the item was in perfect mint condition, original box and wrapping.
I’ve now had this tablet for 3 days, and I can say without reservation, it rocks! Not sure what Apotheker was smoking to make him react in such a negative fashion to a really powerful device, but I hope Meg and team can find a way to recapture the magic. This device easily competes with the iPad, and is hands and feet above any of the Android tablets I’ve tried (Samsung Galaxy Tab, I mean you).
I especially liked putting in my WebOS profile from my Pre+, and having all my apps and contacts appear on the TP. No fuss, no muss. WiFi worked perfectly, as did Bluetooth pairing, calls and SMS with my Pre+.

I immediately tried the Pre+ Mobile Hotspot  with the TP; solid as a rock. Since I’m in Canada, where no Hulu may pass, I went to my online entertainment site of choice to test flash video and audio quality: quicksilverscreen.com. This site is entirely Flash-based, and I was a little shocked (actually, a lot) to find that the Flash video on my TP was much better than my laptop! No glitches, sound issues or slowdowns at all, just lots of movies on the train. Excellent.

I don’t consider myself a WebOS fanboy, since I really was prepared to wipe the TP and put Cyanogen’s alpha – Android release on it. However…I simply can’t think of a good reason to do so! QuickOffice allowed me to view my docs without issue, although I am really looking forward to someone developing a free editing capability for WebOS. And I’m quite heartened by the amount of buzz that continues to be generated in the homebrew and app development communities as new apps show up in the catalog. I don’t feel quite so stupid now.