News - HP TouchPad available from July, starting at £399

[HEXUS]

Wi-Fi version only to start with, Apple dictates pricing once more.

Read more.

[crossy]

To me £399 is a bit pricey for what is merely a single-user device, I'd kind of hoped that they'd undercut the iPad's to get some market share.

Hopefully there's some substantial employee discounts available, because I think I'd really like one if it was cheaper.

[bobharvey]

Been waiting over a year for this, and what do we get?

No 3G. Ok, you can 'touch' your Pre3, but I'm still waiting for one of them too.
No sd card slot, of any size, at all.
No bulk storage mode on USB, so no bloody use at all on a Linux desktop

Sorry, Palm, Sorry HP. This is a bitter dissapointment, and charging the iPod price when it's probably not finished, and the app store is definitely still in nappies is just extracting the urine.

Why on earth, having waited this long for the miserable thing, have you let me down so badly?

[crossy]

No 3G. Ok, you can 'touch' your Pre3, but I'm still waiting for one of them too.
No sd card slot, of any size, at all.
No bulk storage mode on USB, so no bloody use at all on a Linux desktop

Pre3 - yes, I wondered where that'd got to, although there's some online retailers advertising it for shipping.
SD card slot omission surprised me too - I assume that they're just trying to ape the iPad. Either that, or they figure that the management types the TP is aimed at would lose an SD card!
Linux connection - leave that with me, I'm sure I've seen someone commenting on that on the internal forums. I'll check back with them and see what the deal is.

Sorry, Palm, Sorry HP. This is a bitter dissapointment, and charging the iPod price when it's probably not finished, and the app store is definitely still in nappies is just extracting the urine.

Agreed 100% - although (reputedly) the OS is more complete than Android 3.0 is. I really would have like to see the ability to run Android apps, like the Blackberry pad reputedly can, as this strikes me as a great way to flexibility.

[directhex]

To me £399 is a bit pricey for what is merely a single-user device, I'd kind of hoped that they'd undercut the iPad's to get some market share.

Hopefully there's some substantial employee discounts available, because I think I'd really like one if it was cheaper.

The danger with undercutting the iPad on price is in becoming a cheap iPad as far as consumers are concerned. HP want the Touchpad to be considered an equal (or superior) to the iPad in consumer perception terms, not the cheapo own-brand equivalent.

[directhex]

No 3G. Ok, you can 'touch' your Pre3, but I'm still waiting for one of them too.

The 3G model isn't ready yet. It's due in an extra couple of months.

As for the Pre 3, I expect the release date to be made public before the Touchpad ships.

[crossy]

No sd card slot, of any size, at all. No bulk storage mode on USB, so no bloody use at all on a Linux desktop

Okay, this is all unofficial.

Apparently the TouchPad does support flash drives and HDD's on the USB port. No SD slot because they're intending the major off-board storage to be "in the cloud" (remember that HP's having this major push on cloud storage and services - although I wholly agree that a uSD slot would've been nice).

As to the interconnect with Linux, then at the moment the preferred option is to enable SSH on the TouchPad and then use that to exchange files with the Linux desktop (which I guess would be a lot easier if you're on KDE), and I'm guessing that something like SSHFS would be really helpful. I note that there's some talk about drag n' drop of music from iTunes, so maybe there's some conduits (apologies for the Palm-speak) for other content types too? I'm asking around.

Problem appears to be that, at the moment, the lack of available TouchPad's is holding back the many, many Linux hackers in HP from being able to try stuff. From the feedback I got, there's certainly going to be a run on the company store when the TouchPad's go on sale.

[pp05]

In general for those who have owned previous devices;

Do WebOS devices come loaded out of the box with most common features you will need without the need for to many extra apps?

[directhex]

In general for those who have owned previous devices;

Do WebOS devices come loaded out of the box with most common features you will need without the need for to many extra apps?

Which features do you need, exactly? It's got a browser and email, and in the market you can grab Angry Birds...

[crossy]

In general for those who have owned previous devices;

Do WebOS devices come loaded out of the box with most common features you will need without the need for to many extra apps?

All the WebOS devices I've looked at can do Mail, Web and some limited Office type stuff (document reading) "out of the box". There's an assumption that the newer kit (Pre 3, TouchPad and possibly the Pre 2) will also slot in IM if you need it. I've also seen some talk about Skype being available.

There's a (limited!) app store from which there's more software available. There's also some home-brew available, mainly at precentral.net (and some other sites like webos-internals.org and webosroundup, but precentral is the main one).

And there's a Linux type OS under the hood, and apparently (here-say because I don't own a WebOS device to try yet) it's relatively easy to get down to the command line level (if you enjoy that kind of thing).

[pp05]

Which features do you need, exactly? It's got a browser and email, and in the market you can grab Angry Birds...

All the WebOS devices I've looked at can do Mail, Web and some limited Office type stuff (document reading) "out of the box". There's an assumption that the newer kit (Pre 3, TouchPad and possibly the Pre 2) will also slot in IM if you need it. I've also seen some talk about Skype being available.

There's a (limited!) app store from which there's more software available. There's also some home-brew available, mainly at precentral.net (and some other sites like webos-internals.org and webosroundup, but precentral is the main one).

And there's a Linux type OS under the hood, and apparently (here-say because I don't own a WebOS device to try yet) it's relatively easy to get down to the command line level (if you enjoy that kind of thing).

I've liked webOS in terms of usability.

As long as it has a good speaker/mic, ability to record phone calls within the phone call that covers it as a traditional phone like my Nokia E51. Veer might be good for this.

Skype/MSN integration will be another excellent feature in messaging. WhatApp and similar messaging apps nowadays would also bridge the IM gap yet closer.

GPS navigation would be a good feature on it too. Decent battery life. Can play mpeg/ avi files would be a bonus. Flash support as an option?

There is also a rumour about HP licensing to other handset makers which would potentially mean better hardware / design. At the end of the day HP have advertised a device 6 months in advance. I saw the Touchpad launch in Feb and was quite excited about the platform, it's now the middle of June, no price, no launch date, nothing.

[rant]
With Nokia to make announcement any week now on WM7 devices...

I want to use a phone that does the basics good and a device the company selling it is passionate about. To find new ways in expanding capability and usefulness of the device for end user, WebOS doesn't inspire confidence at the moment in this regard.[/rant]