HP TouchPad / WebOS: 28 Day Experiment – Day 11

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It’s been a busy couple of days since Monday and I haven’t used the TouchPad as much as I had the week before.  I had thought I would sit down tonight after the Home Tech Podcast was recorded and drop a few notes about the weeks usage.  It turned out to be a much more interesting day than that.

At about 2pm I got wind from a co-worker that HP had announced it was going to effectively scuttle the WebOS platform for the future.

Gina Smith over at Byte.com said this:

In a sharp tactical reversal, Hewlett-Packard today killed its WebOS-based HP TouchPad tablet and smartphones.

Earlier this year, HP unveiled its Palm-designed WebOS family of phones, tablets and PCs with great fanfare. Find coverage here.

The HP TouchPad, released in June, was yet another competitor struggling in vain against the Apple iPad. Recently, HP slashed prices on the tablet. And another one bites the dust.

I guess I was a little shocked that a company that spent $1.2 billion last summer on acquiring Palm and its WebOS would give up on it so quickly.   In the same announcement, HP also announced that it was moving away from it current PC business as well.  They are currently the #1 PC manufacturer in the world.  Huge surprise.

As of this moment, all the major media outlets are covering this story, I am not going to attempt to do that here.  I am going to lament for a moment however, and then move on.  I do have these thoughts.

The TouchPad is a good enough tablet that it could stand on it’s own for a year or two and not need the ecosystem of HP to support it.  In my testing, it did 95% of what I asked it and did it well.  If this tablet now goes on clearance or closeout for less than $200, it’s worth the purchase.  As long as you don’t try to constantly compare it to an iPad every other day, you will be good.

Because I love the underdog, I looked forward to seeing the WebOS complete against the big boys.  It doesn’t look like that will happen now.  For the moment, my eyes are back on the iPad and an Android tablet.  It was good to try and I am glad that I didn’t buy.

Jim Collison is a blogger and podcaster for TheAverageGuy.tv and theHomeServerShow.comand a Microsoft Windows Home Server MVP

This unit was provided by Forsythe Technologies in Omaha NE for review purposes.

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