Dear HP,
Now that you’ve dropped some serious coin on Palm, start making some changes to what could be a pretty useful OS.
For this installment, let’s talk web browser. Years ago we were lucky to even have internet on our phones and serving up plain text websites was acceptable, but we expect just a bit more out of our smart phones these days. So please step up your game.
Here’s an example of the quality browsing experience I’ve been dealing with lately.
Remember when the iPad was announced and people said “meh…”? And now, less than a year later, it’s a huge bread winner for Apple. Everyone else appears to be noticing as well, in the past few weeks more and more tablet rumors have popped up with the vast majority of big name players in the industry on board.
Don’t believe me? Let’s review…
While I did go outside the scope of the past few weeks, you get the idea. I’m also probably leaving out a ton of other tablets, like the failed JooJoo tablet for example.
This whole jumping on the tablet bandwagon seems to me to closely resemble when ASUS first launched the Eee PC and the netbook revolution took off, people were a little skeptical at first and then realized it was a great idea. Now I’m not saying tablets will kill off netbooks, but they seem to be the flavor of the month for the foreseeable future. And reportedly the iPad by itself has caused a decline in netbook sales for ASUS.
Bottom line, I love the iPad, but I really am excited to see cheaper (and hopefully better) tablet solutions from companies besides Apple.
Engadget is reporting that HP has confirmed, at least to its employees, that it will in fact ship a webOS tablet in Q1 2011. Color me excited.
I know this rumor has been floating around since the day HP bought Palm, but this one doesn’t just say they’ll be shipping a “webOS version of Slate”, which in my mind lends a modicum of credibility to it. Starting from square one with the hardware to run webOS makes a lot more since than trying to force a new OS on to existing hardware, especially hardware that has yet to see the light of day.
Really I just want to see a new device running webOS, one hopefully better designed than the Pre. Come on HP, I need some proof that webOS is alive and kicking and not just destined to be used on your fancy new printers.
Source: Engadget
I got my HP TouchSmart IQ507 Monday afternoon, and after playing around with it for the last couple days, I have to say it’s an awesome machine. Awesome enough to warrant a quick review!
First thing you’ll want to do is open up the HP Touch Screen Controls and disable the Touch Screen Sound option under the Global Settings tab. Doing that will make your experience much more enjoyable.
The 22″ screen looks amazing, it sports a healthy 1680×1050 resolution, great for checking your email, playing games or watching videos. As I see it, the main drawback is that it’s a glossy screen, which is crazy reflective, but a necessary evil in order to properly protect the screen.
The touchscreen functionality isn’t quite ready for everyday Windows use out of the box, seeing as how a lot of things in Windows are a little small for accurately tapping with your finger (and since the screen isn’t actually touch sensitive and is merely using IR sensors to detect your finger creating a break in the IR field, it tends to be just a little off from where you want to click), so it can be quite frustrating. But I was able to make most basic tasks a little more bearable just by tweaking a few settings and adjusting to the screens minor misinterpretation of taps.
Windows Media Center is fantastic on the TouchSmart, even though some of the icons are a bit small and there aren’t a lot of configuration options for such things I was able to navigate with minimum difficulty. The TouchSmart does include a remote for controlling the Media Center as well, so once the novelty of poking your computer screen wears off you can control things from the comfort of your couch.
The included HP SmartCenter is more visually appealing than it is useful. Although it is by far the easiest program to navigate using the touchscreen, so HP did their job well in that respect. The best way I can describe the SmartCenter is to advise you to think of it as RocketDock meets your media library, meets a mediocre coverflow clone, meets Al Gore moonlighting as a professional hobo (this little gem is your reward for sticking it out and reading this article up until this point, yay for you!).
Also, every time I started the SmartCenter it re-enabled that annoying beep that the TouchSmart plays each and every time you touch the screen. Maybe I’m just easily annoyed.
I also took a few minutes to install a copy of Starcraft on the TouchSmart, and while the game doesn’t look at all visual stunning on a 22″ screen, it makes up for it with its very point-and-click oriented interface, making it a perfect candidate for a touchscreen computer. Simply put, playing Starcraft is awesome on the TouchSmart.
While the on-screen keyboard is fun at first, your wrists will likely cramp up after only a few minutes of “typing”, the functionality of it is further limited since the screen isn’t exactly multi-touch and it tends to lose track of your keystrokes after the first few when you try typing faster than one letter at a time.
In the more practical realm of data entry, the included bluetooth keyboard is a very nice slim form factor. It features minimal dedicated media hot keys, just mute and volume up/down controls, so the layout isn’t at all crowded. Don’t fret though, you’ll still be able to control your DVD or music from the couch even without your remote, since all the F keys have secondary functions assigned to them for media playback. My main compliant is that it’s ridiculously loud when typing.
Speakers on the TouchSmart actually surprised me, they’ve got decent range and fantastic volume, sound is crisp even on the higher end of the volume scale. I’ve owned numerous TVs that have had worse speakers than this system.
Anyhow, as I meantioned before I’m going to try and install OS X on it. I’ve partitioned the drive and am going to start out by trying the latest build of iDeneb. I’ll post an update in the next few days.