my blogI Bought One!
Hah! Managed to snag a cheap HP TouchPad. I know that it's being discontinued but hey, I got it cheap so at the very least it will make a good video player/ebook reader if nothing else. Also Amazon had shipped the case I ordered with my original order so I didn't want to be stuck with just a case and no TouchPad!
Aquire has a fire sale going on now - though it looks like it has sold out so if you're reading this then you're out of luck :-) I ended up getting one from ebay.com so didn't quite score it that cheap but still got it for a good price (shipping is a bit steep though).
Funny thing is now that they've discontinued the product (and heavily discounted it!) it is flying off the shelves - as I write this it is currently at number 1 and 2 spots on the Amazon best seller list, above the Kindle even! I guess HP finally got what they wanted - number 2 spot in the tablet market. Hopefully the surge of sales will result in a few devs still making apps for it for a while yet.
Now I just need to wait for it to turn up! Maybe I'll need to make a webOS section for this site...
UPDATE: Just heard that it has shipped - I'm excited like a kid at Christmas!
UPDATE 2: It has arrived! I love new toys ;-)
HP Cancels TouchPad
Well it turns out I was drunk - A few days after ordering the TouchPad HP announce that they're discontinuing the product, only 49 days after it was launched. I waited a few more days after that then decided to cancel my order with Amazon.
I'd still like one (I really like WebOS - finding it hard to believe that HP just signed it's death warrant) but I'm certainly not paying full price for one now. In the United States they've put it in a fire sale, giving them away at $99 each but Amazon doesn't have any cheaper than US$300 and here in NZ they're still up at the ridiculous price of NZ$679.
I still like the idea of using a tablet instead of a laptop as they're generally much smaller and lighter but I'm not sure which one to get now (the iPad is kinda expensive over here in NZ although I see there are lots of different SSH shells available for it so using it for work would pose no problem). Maybe I should just stick with the new MacBook Air...
HP TouchPad
Well I must be drunk because I just ordered an HP TouchPad over an iPad - I'm not even sure I *need* a tablet but I know watching movies while lying in bed is much nicer on an iPad than a laptop.
Why did I choose this over the iPad? Basically I still think WebOS is the best OS for mobile devices, a really good video app is available for it (no need to re-encode all my movies into .mp4) and it is also really nice and cheap (I've ordered mine from Amazon with a case and it still comes in cheaper than buying it in NZ, and that's already over NZ$150 cheaper than the iPad...). The final (and maybe most important reason) is WebOS Internals and the whole homebrew community, there is no other mobile phone/tablet out there with such open support for tweaking and improving the device.
I'm also hoping I can start to use it as my oncall device, replacing my now aging PowerBook as the machine I lug around in my bag with me. If I can get the VPN set up to connect to our Cisco firewall (apparently this is possible) then with the addition of a bluetooth keyboard I can have a nice light mobile workstation with 10+ hours battery life for when I'm on the road and a great "consuming" device for when I'm at home crashed out on the couch or in bed on Sunday morning :-)
Now I just need the damn thing to turn up - Amazon says delivery sometime in the next three weeks...