# Worth the effort?



## Spazzymz (Jul 15, 2011)

I realize that getting a touchpad for 99 or 149 is a great deal but it seems that most are ending up on ebay for 250+ and climbing. It'll be 2 weeks before I have any cash to put toward a tab and unless hp restocks or best buy gets more, ebay may be the only choice. Is it even worth getting at that price. Or better off getting galaxy tab or transformer. And the news that cm7 is already on it is awesome even if it will be a while before its released.

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## adamfuhrman (Aug 22, 2011)

Technically the touchpads are worth about 300 bucks in materials. But it really comes down to how much is it worth to you. I personally wouldnt pay more than 250 for a touchpad.

http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/HP-TouchPad-Carries-$318-Bill-of-Materials.aspx

Also appearently HP had produced roughly 1,000,000 touchpads according to a friend that works for hp. I thought it was a little much but then i remember best buy alone had preordered 250,000 units in which most of them are being shipped back to HP and are the ones that HP is doing the restock with.

Im pretty sure that there will be enough TP's once they do the restock. Right now the TP's are just a hot item, in a months time all the TP's that are on ebay for 300 will be back up for 200 because like every fad item, it dies off.


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## Spazzymz (Jul 15, 2011)

I guess I'll just wait it out see what happens. I know cmteam will get it working great and hope I get a touchpad on the cheap. Otherwise I'll grab a galaxy tab 10.1.

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## Turdbogls (Jun 7, 2011)

if you can find a transformer for around the $250 price, i suggest jumping on it ASAP. 
as for the TP, i was worth it for me to buy mine (about $170 shipped for 32GB) but i would be hard pressed to pay any more than that. while the thought of android running on it is intriguing, there is no official word on wether it will become a fully functional android tablet. if it does, it will totally be worth the $250 price, if not, i wouldn't pay over $170 for a 16gb. WebOS crippled this amazing hardware so badly, its almost not enjoyable to use.


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## cake (Aug 29, 2011)

It's worth the effort if you really really want it. I mean it's a really good deal too.


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## g00s3y (Jul 12, 2011)

Even if a port doesn't come, you could still sell it on ebay for at least 175% of what you paid for it.


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## bamaredwingsfan (Jun 9, 2011)

Would $200 cash for a wifi xoom be worth it? I have seen a few of them on craigslist for around 200


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## Lucifer (Aug 29, 2011)

Hi,

just have mine TP on the way. Paid about 200 bucks on Ebay. And yes, its worth it.


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## Taylored (Aug 22, 2011)

I would not pay more than a $50 premium on the Touchpad. The inflated re-seller prices will die down eventually. And IMO, the Touchpad is not worth more than $200. It is a fun toy, but it is pretty buggy and not well built. My tablet has frozen up on me several times. The casing is not very solid. It creeks and pops a fair amount.


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## crump84 (Aug 21, 2011)

Taylored said:


> I would not pay more than a $50 premium on the Touchpad. The inflated re-seller prices will die down eventually. And IMO, the Touchpad is not worth more than $200. It is a fun toy, but it is pretty buggy and not well built. My tablet has frozen up on me several times. The casing is not very solid. It creeks and pops a fair amount.


Sounds like you may have a faulty device. I haven't had any issues at all. Other than the total lack of applications, i really like my TP.

Sent from my Gingerbread Speedy 4G using Tapatalk


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## Turdbogls (Jun 7, 2011)

i think the hardware is actually pretty good on it. the build quality seems pretty good other than being scratched fairly easy. the screen is nice and bright, with good viewing angles, colors are a little Dull in comparrison to my thunderbolt. obviously the thing has some serious processing power, but like i said earlier, WebOS is crippling this tablet. i have some slight freezes, adding a tab to the web browser is not as nice/fluent as android and Dolphin (it wont even load the web page in the background) switching between cards is "pretty" but i still think android is faster/smoother at multitasking. switching to a new card and going right to work, that works about 50% of the time. the other 50% usually takes 5-10 seconds for the touch to be recognized. 
IMO its worth$170 or $200 (16gb 32gb) but to think people actually spent $400+ on this thing...i would be pissed.


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## Taylored (Aug 22, 2011)

crump84 said:


> Sounds like you may have a faulty device. I haven't had any issues at all. Other than the total lack of applications, i really like my TP.


Could be, but that is also a reason to be wary of spending too much on the Touchpad. I doubt I will have much luck getting any service on a faulty device.

I bought two Touchpads. I gave one to my brother. His runs about the same as mine. I have not asked him about the creaking and popping that I have, but his power cable died after 4 days of use.
I have never been impressed with HP computers. This is about what I expected. But at $99 I am not complaining. i am just saying I would be complaining if I had paid an amount that would have put HP in the black on all of this.


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## crump84 (Aug 21, 2011)

Taylored said:


> Could be, but that is also a reason to be wary of spending too much on the Touchpad. I doubt I will have much luck getting any service on a faulty device.
> 
> I bought two Touchpads. I gave one to my brother. His runs about the same as mine. I have not asked him about the creaking and popping that I have, but his power cable died after 4 days of use.
> I have never been impressed with HP computers. This is about what I expected. But at $99 I am not complaining. i am just saying I would be complaining if I had paid an amount that would have put HP in the black on all of this.


Yeah I can't complain at all for the $160 I spent and i definitely wouldn't have even considered the TP at full price. Mine was a little laggy out the box but after putting a oc'ed kernel on it and removing the ripple it runs really smooth.

Sent from my Gingerbread Speedy 4G using Tapatalk


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## Taylored (Aug 22, 2011)

crump84 said:


> Yeah I can't complain at all for the $160 I spent and i definitely wouldn't have even considered the TP at full price. Mine was a little laggy out the box but after putting a oc'ed kernel on it and removing the ripple it runs really smooth.
> 
> Sent from my Gingerbread Speedy 4G using Tapatalk


The OC kernel and remove ripple helped a lot, but still not enough. I will probably do a 1.7 OC at some point this week. To be fair--I am a very heavy multitasker, so that might be part of the problem.


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## Bounce (Aug 25, 2011)

A sub-$200 tablet from Amazon is also on the way in late 2011 or early 2012 (2 each. 1 in 7" and 1 in 10" format). It will depend on what your NEED (vs you're marketing-hype driven "want") is. Here's my take on the TouchPad after living with it for a week.

Several things that it should do that have been limited by HP.

1. Print to network printer... only if it's an HP printer. iOS will do it if you have ANY printer plugged into an Apple Air[something or other] but there's also 3rd party support to print through the Mac to any printer it sees. It would be nice to see someone munge a stack to print to ANY LJ4 compatible printer regardless of how it broadcasts itself on the LAN.

2. Blue-tooth pairing with phone. This allows phone calls and text messages to be routed to the pad from your paired phone as long as you're within 30 feet of the phone (blue tooth range)... IF the phone is a WebOS phone. Again, the BT protocol stack should allow this to work regardless of phone OS. This was a limitation created by HP to drive phone sales.

3. Blue Tooth pairing with keyboards. Slick. I now have a use for my iMac wireless keyboard. Works great.

4. WiFi only (no cell phone connectivity). The hardware had spots inside the case for the supporting modules but it was clearly "for future development". The same hurdles of the iPod Touch in that you have to have a hot spot to connect through.

1 & 2 were things I didn't even know it could do. Once I learned of them, I was disappointed that they didn't work with all brands of printers/phones but neither were functions I expected to be there and lost.

4 was a known going in. It would be nice at the office to have cell connectivity since WiFi traffic is jammed and scanned. Other than that, if it becomes too big an issue I can drop back and punt with the smart phone or switch to a smart phone that can be a WiFi hot spot. I think the iOS will at extra costs for turning on that feature.

Beyond that, the WebOS is MUCH MUCH slicker than I expected. The dual core processor is snappy. I'm in no hurry to root it to the AdroidOS. Storage is plentiful. I already have something like a dozen movies on it in MP4 format (after taking a while to figure our what combination of settings to use for best quality v space). Music could fill it but that's already the function of the phone. The tablet is a better platform for visual stuff.

With HP rethinking their decision to shitcan the product (their app store is still running, they just pushed an OS update out yesterday, and they're ramping up for another production run of the tablets) I may have actually stumbled into another BestBuy GPS deal (where they mistakenly priced a $500 Garmin for $129 and saw every bit of inventory fly off the shelves in 3 days).

Last night, I was sitting at the iMac, working on several open windows and had the TouchPad tethered to it for file copies, etc. With the tablet set up in its case to stand portrait-wise, I found the additional screen very useful for yet other tasks instead of flipping through windows on the main screen (once there were enough open screen to fill the 27" real estate to the point that additional windows would end up stacked underneath). The TouchPad set at the low-center of my field of view doing the things that tended to need to "gas gauge" their way through a process or which could be easily navigated with taps instead of extensive typing. It just happened before I noticed; very naturally falling into this nice rhythm.

Rating? Thumbs up. At the $500 - $700 price of an iPad, I'd continue to opt out of tablets. For $99 - $149 the TouchPad is the shit! As-is, I can now wait patiently for a stable port of Android that includes access to the App store, etc. By that time we might be seeing the crunch from the affects of HP actually orphaning the platform (or not).


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## lafester (Aug 27, 2011)

IMHO all it needs are a few ports - full size usb, sd and hdmi would have made it a solid $399 tablet with maybe one more os revision to smooth out the bugs. 
I notice ebay stock is getting lower and prices are steady if not a little higher.


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## comoc85 (Aug 26, 2011)

To the OP: The most important thing you must consider when buying a tablet (or ANY electronic device for that matter) is what it can do right out of the box. People (especially those who know a thing or two about rooting and the like...myself included) tend to buy devices based on what it might be able to do in the future with 3rd party development. DO NOT DO THIS! It will always leave you sorely disappointed. If you want a tablet that runs Android, get one that comes with it stock. I've been a victim of this mistake quite a few times. You should never let rumors of "soon to come" awesome features sway your choice. Save up and buy the device with the features you want and don't automatically expect it to be fully supported with future updates either (another mistake I have made in the past).


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## Spazzymz (Jul 15, 2011)

"comoc85 said:


> To the OP: The most important thing you must consider when buying a tablet (or ANY electronic device for that matter) is what it can do right out of the box. People (especially those who know a thing or two about rooting and the like...myself included) tend to buy devices based on what it might be able to do in the future with 3rd party development. DO NOT DO THIS! It will always leave you sorely disappointed. If you want a tablet that runs Android, get one that comes with it stock. I've been a victim of this mistake quite a few times. You should never let rumors of "soon to come" awesome features sway your choice. Save up and buy the device with the features you want and don't automatically expect it to be fully supported with future updates either (another mistake I have made in the past).


 Oh I think I've already made up my mind. Unless I can get one for the firesale price I'm gonna wait and get the Toshiba excite.

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## MyComputerDoctor (Jun 10, 2011)

crump84 said:


> Sounds like you may have a faulty device. I haven't had any issues at all. Other than the total lack of applications, i really like my TP.
> 
> Sent from my Gingerbread Speedy 4G using Tapatalk


I would have to agree and state that although there are not many applications for the TP, it runs great and without flaws. I have owned a number of tabs including the Xoom, and I feel the TP is a very solid device and the screen clarity is second only to the iPad.


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## piiman (Aug 21, 2011)

Turdbogls said:


> if you can find a transformer for around the $250 price, i suggest jumping on it ASAP.
> as for the TP, i was worth it for me to buy mine (about $170 shipped for 32GB) but i would be hard pressed to pay any more than that. while the thought of android running on it is intriguing, there is no official word on wether it will become a fully functional android tablet. if it does, it will totally be worth the $250 price, if not, i wouldn't pay over $170 for a 16gb. WebOS crippled this amazing hardware so badly, its almost not enjoyable to use.


How did they cripple it?


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## Turdbogls (Jun 7, 2011)

"piiman said:


> How did they cripple it?


Play with one for a while Nd you will see. Switching to tasks will randomly cause a 5-10 second freeze, opening new browser windows is slow, sometimes the thing doesnt rotate... Just small little quirks that are pretty annoying especially coming from an android phone. Its not terri le, but having 1gb RAM and a dual core processor, thia thing should be faster and have no lag or hesitation. To make it even bettrr i cant read email on it and my OTA caused me to have to web doctor my TP. Pretty awesome....


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## piiman (Aug 21, 2011)

Turdbogls said:


> Play with one for a while Nd you will see. Switching to tasks will randomly cause a 5-10 second freeze, opening new browser windows is slow, sometimes the thing doesnt rotate... Just small little quirks that are pretty annoying especially coming from an android phone. Its not terri le, but having 1gb RAM and a dual core processor, thia thing should be faster and have no lag or hesitation. To make it even bettrr i cant read email on it and my OTA caused me to have to web doctor my TP. Pretty awesome....


I have and I have none of that. Have you turned off the logging? have you Over clocked it to 1.5g or 1.7? It runs native at 1.5 so no problem there and mine is completely stable at 1.7. I have no lag at all. it never freezes it rotates the second I turn it. Its smooth as silk. HP turned on all the logging it could do and you really don't need it it makes a big difference. I never could get the OTA the servers were o over loaded so I actually use WebDoctor to update it.


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## MY05GLI (Aug 26, 2011)

did a search found a site called mrcellphoneunlocker anyone ever hear of this? looks like he pre-purchased some, i dunno? but there 180 + 15 shipping


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## conmanxtreme (Jul 15, 2011)

"MY05GLI said:


> did a search found a site called mrcellphoneunlocker anyone ever hear of this? looks like he pre-purchased some, i dunno? but there 180 + 15 shipping


It looks like its tied to the Dev, rhcp somehow because it's listed under his twitter profile


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