Take That, Touchpad: No Open WebOS Support For You

[Guest]

If it's not dead the first time around, perhaps another stab it in the back will get the job done?

Take That, Touchpad: No Open WebOS Support For You : Read more

 

[captaincharisma]

good old HP proves yet again it does nothing but fail

 

[aftcomet]

I absolutely loved WebOS's approach to multi-tasking. The system had a lot of potential. HP really mishandled it.

 

[K2N hater]

That's what happens when you leave the right task to the wrong people...

 

[amuffin]

Bought the Touchpad months ago, it was really usefull for browsing the forums. But now, it just sits there.

 

[itsderekdude]

If you have no need for the front facing camera, just load cyanogen on it. It's works insanely well.

 

[tomaz99]

WebOS was nice...but when cyanogenmod released ICS I never looked back.

I assumed that the original OS would no longer be supported when they dumped their expensive hardware for next to nothing with a big 'going out of business' sign...

 

[Thunderfox]

I regularly use my touchpad for web browsing. That's what I bought it for, and it works fine for that.

As a platform, WebOS beats the hell out of Android for its support of useful multitasking. I don't care a whole lot about apps, so that particular platform deficit doesn't affect me much.

I hope WebOS survives and improves, even if the touchpad does not benefit from it. I think most people would like it if they had a chance to try it.

 

[belardo]

[citation][nom]Thunderfox[/nom]I regularly use my touchpad for web browsing. That's what I bought it for, and it works fine for that. As a platform, WebOS beats the hell out of Android for its support of useful multitasking. I don't care a whole lot about apps, so that particular platform deficit doesn't affect me much.[/citation] LOL!!
If you only got it for browsing, then why do you care about multi-tasking? ICS (Android 4.0) and newer has a new and vastly improved task-switcher, very much like WebOS. I'll admit, I use my iPad mostly for browsing.

A lot of apps? there are no apps to multi-task either

For a $100 tablet, the HP is a fine deal. Meanwhile the Nexus 7 sells for $200 new, is supported and is a better device in every way.

I did try out the TouchPad, it was next to an iPad2 at a WalMart. It was a $500 joke with good ideas, but done badly (see Commodore / CBM). The screen and shape was iPad1. The cheap plastic back was cheap plastic.. made my hands feel yucky. The OS (back then) was not stable, could not rotate the screen correctly. The camera of course, is useless. Hence, it bombed badly - worse than RIM's Playbook which is drowning in its own waste. For $100, it was a fair price and became the #2 tablet in the world!

HP did a half-ass job on the TouchPad and the phones, canceled both quickly as well as WebOS printers and computers (Bwahahaha) If it sold for $300~350 retail, it might have had a chance. *might*

The technical market seems to handle only 2-3 standards. (PC/Mac/Distant Linux) (iOS / Android / ?) (PlayStation / Xbox / Nintendo).

WebOS is a zombie OS, like OS/2, AmigaOS, MeeGo, etc...

 

[belardo]

PS: Not to attack WebOS usres / TouchPad. Just its reality that these are a dead platform. You got it cheap and no need to expect more. Yes, WebOS was promising. Its not shocking that HP totally screwed it up.

 

[razor512]

I got my HP touchpad for $100 during the fire sale and have not used my android tablet since.

In terms of the UI and the keyboard, webos easily crushed any other mobile OS, the only limitation is the number of apps.

it offers far better multitasking than android or iOS, extremely easy to mod.

For the most part, I am hooked on webOS mainly for the multitasking (gestures instead of a screen space wasting home bar thing)

and the keyboard. I don;t think anyone could possible find the android keyboard or iOS keyboard better than this. it actually has a number row that you don't have to go through a menu and

Here is a screenshot from my HP touchpad that I am using right now while in bed

http://i.imgur.com/Tln80.png

The tablet also performs extremely well, especially when overclocked to 1.89GHz, and also when the GPU is overclocked from 266MHz, to 320MHz (faster than tegra 2 at stock speeds) (with room for an even higher GPU overclock)

it currently has a relatively stable CM9 build with CM10 jelly bean in a very early alpha stage

It just runs great, and can handle 1080p videos smoothly.

With this tablet, HP got a lot right, where they failed was charging ipad prices at a time when their OS hardly had any apps. when it first came out, it was priced to compete with the ipad but it had only a hand full of applications (all the rest in their claims were from older webos devices that it was able to run in a emulation mode that was poorly made since it only uses about 1/4th of the screen to display the app in a tiny window and fill the rest of the screen with a gray gradient. (at least android allows you to expand the app to fill the screen and if it is made right, text and other things will scale well.)

anyway, the device only had a bad start, other than that, it is still one of the best tablets on the market.

 

[GreaseMonkey_62]

Clearly HP doesn't know what to do with this platform. It could have had potential when HP launched it a year ago, but then CEO Leo Apotheker pulled the plug rather than try and make it work (they spent $2 billion on it after all you'd think they would at least put some effort into building traction). HP should just sell it off at this point.

 

[Guest]

It is an awesome tablet. Totally unlocked, you can't brick it because of the doctor. Overclock to 2.1 Ghz. Load any custom version of Android. Load Ubuntu or Arch Linux. The possiblities are endless. This tablet was exactly what I wanted. And besides, if you have a Touchpad and you still use WebOS......well let's just say you're missing out on the greatness of Android on the Touchpad.

 

[d_kuhn]

For $100 you couldn't beat that deal with a stick. I didn't buy it because I've got an iPad that I don't use much, but at the time it was a good deal for the hardware (even if you had to install a different OS... no biggie).

 

[Djhg2000]

Flame all you want, but I think this was a good decision. Not dropping the support for legacy hardware, but the drop of proprietary drivers.

It's one of the areas where Android is ahead at the moment with lots of open source drivers, but if we could force the SoC makers to drop these [censored] proprietary drivers all together, the world would be a happier place where developers wouldn't have to fight bugs they aren't legally allowed to fix (reverse-engineering) even if they could.

Yes NVIDIA, I'm talking about you.

 

[belardo]

[citation][nom]Razor512[/nom]I am hooked on webOS mainly for the multitasking and the keyboard. I don;t think anyone could possible find the android keyboard or iOS keyboard better than this. it actually has a number row that you don't have to go through a menu and [/citation]
That is perhaps where I give 10/10 for the WebOS,the keyboard looks great... numbers! Some Androids also have the 5th row for numbers but most have a press-hold top letter keys for numbers.

 

[daglesj]

As a current WebOS user I would just wish that the whole thing would just go away. This is a pointless lingering death that isn't needed.

It was great while it lasted and I love using my Pre2 (when I use my Gf's Galaxy Note with ICS I just wonder why it doesn't work as smoothly UI wise as my Pre2 with gestures/swiping) but please let it die and move on.

Sometimes the best just doesn't make it.

 

[eddierocks]

> amuffin 08/02/2012 5:33 AM
>Bought the Touchpad months ago, it was really usefull for browsing the forums. But now, it just sits there.
>
Hmmm, I'll buy it from you if you're interested.

 

[shqtth]

HP is a retarded company. I have no idea why they keep making these funny decisions. THey are worse then RIM at decision making.

 

[Guest]

@Belardo
So you use the pad just to browse the web ....Good luck with that...
...then putting the playbook down when it has the best web browsing experience than any tablet out there....something just don't check right.

 

[meltbox360]

Funny how this tablet is so great and the playbook sucks... The thing this tablet has over the playbook is an android rom but stock vs stock. Playbook at 200 with continued support looks better. By the way open source drivers help so few devs. Most devs would not touch the drivers when making apps anyway. Maybe one in a few thousand app developers could find a valid reason to modify them and even then its not so much the app developers job as the os devs job. It is however nice to be able to fix them without having to beg a company.

 

[belardo]

[citation][nom]daglesj[/nom]Sometimes the best just doesn't make it.[/citation] nods... Amiga. 1993RIP.

@Anonymous:
Hmmm. You get hide your handle? I'm on my iPad now. I also read some books, share photos, use maps, angry birds for the kids, a but of app work. Browser is a browser. Actually I'm please to have Opera on both my iPad and android phone. Many pages look better on that than the buit in ones... But not always.

Play book? RIM still in business? And gee for $200 a Nexus7 can also be had.

 

[brythespy]

Okay... There is no freaking way I am the only one coming to this article thinking they were talking about laptop touchpads...