Showing posts with label HP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HP. Show all posts

Thursday, December 29, 2011

My TouchPad Today: Cracked!

Several months ago, when reports surfaced of TouchPads showing cracks in the area of the speaker ports, I checked my TP and my wife's... No cracks found!
A similar inspection in just the past few days turned up something a little bit different on my TP, but not terribly dramatic...



It's been in a case since it was about three weeks old.  Before that it was in a neoprene sleeve for protection.


What's a fella to do?

For right now, probably nuttin' but "watchful waiting" since it doesn't seem to be growing and doesn't seem to be affecting anything.

If it spreads, I might delicately apply a wee bit of super glue.


Will I return it to HP for repair or replacement under warranty?

Probably not for this crack... I have enough real problems in my life to deal with already without getting into a sparring match with another (alleged) customer service organization.  The TP ended up only having a net cost of $100 and there's little to gain in trying to get "Leo's Legacy" fixed or replaced.

Gee, thanks, Uncle Leo!



Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087





Tuesday, November 8, 2011

My TouchPad Today: Four Months in the Buffet Line with the TP?

As of today, I'm at the four-month mark with my TP and figure its a good time to take a look in the rearview mirror and peer into the crystal ball about what lies ahead.

Rearview Mirror
  • The TP was in sad shape when it debuted in July and is somewhat better now that it has received a couple of updates. But let's not kid ourselves into thinking that's its a polished product worth $500. The firesale price of $100 for the 16GB model is too low, but a helluva lot more realistic than the debut price.
  • Copy/Paste remains incredibly bad.
  • QuickOffice and Smart Office have brought document editing to the TP, but both have limitations that make a fella long for a PC with a full-fledged web browser and mouse.
  • Sometimes ya just need the functionality and precision of a mouse to get things done.
  • The TP, despite its limitations, has largely saved my laptop from the bumps and bruises of four months in the world of coffee shops, fast food joints, cars and back porches.

Crystal Ball
  • The TP is a goner, but tablets, as a whole, are here to stay. The question is... Where will they fit in the roster of devices we own and use?
  • For my money, the tablet wont be a PC killer/replacement. It also won't be a smartphone replacement. Each device falls into a niche, somewhat like the assortment of woods and irons a golfer carries in his bag. There's some personal preference involved in club selection, but the good golfer knows how to pick the right club for the right situation.
  • Tossing around more metaphors here... Right now the world is in the midst of a tablet craze and folks are using tablets just for the sake of using tablets. When the dust settles (or the bubble bursts) the tablet will be the buffet line of the online world, the spot to graze and consume from the Internet online menu. The PC will continue to be the kitchen and dinner table of the online world.

What's in your TP rearview mirror and crystal ball?



This post was drafted on my TouchPad


Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087

Friday, November 4, 2011

My TouchPad Today: Pennant - Looks Like a Winner

Last night I downloaded Pennant from the HP App Catalog ($4.99) and took it for a brief test spin... I really liked what I saw!

What is Pennant?

Pennant is a database of all MLB games since the early 50's that's served up in a unique data visualization format that will probably blow you away at first glance, but will ultimately pull you back in for more and more.

Check it out at http://www.pennant.cc/index.php

BTW, the first game I checked out was from August 1963 between the Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians... my first visit to Fenway Park!





Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087

Friday, September 30, 2011

My TouchPad Today: Bezos & Hastings - The Dirty Duo of Internet Business

Yes, my friends, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Reed Hastings of Netflix/Quickster/Whatever are the Dirty Duo of Internet business.

Hastings has been on my "bad" list for a long time. His recent pricing and company split shenanigans were only real-life confirmation of what my built-in BS detector told me when I first saw him on Charlie Rose's program several years ago. (I suspect that in real life he sets off BS detectors at a distance of five miles!)

On the other hand, I've been a Bezos admirer until recently... namely yesterday when Bezos/Amazon announced their new Kindles, and finally decided to make good on the HP firesale pricing of the TouchPad for all purchasers. Ya coulda knocked me over with a feather!

Its painfully obvious what both of these business gurus did will, in the long run, be beneficial to their customers, employees and shareholders, but its equally clear that its a lousy way to treat your customers and employees in the here and now.

Hastings and Netflix did the right thing by spinning off the DVD-by-mail business, but failed miserably at managing their customers through the changes... hence the uproar at Greed Hastings's arrogance. And I'm sure that its been much more painful for Netflix's employees than if a proper change management plan -- or any plan -- had been used with their customers.

Bezos/Amazon's TP price rebate decision was a great move business-wise because it put cash into tablet customer's hands on the same day that it announced the modestly priced Kindle Fire and the other new Kindle models. Brilliant... but by holding out for a month, your customer-facing employees took an undeserved beating on your behalf. Your customers and their money were held hostage for pure, naked greed on your part.

Somehow, Jeff, your proclamation yesterday about the type of company you and Amazon have chosen to be set off BS detectors around the world.

Mr. Bezos, have you met your new roomie Mr. Hastings?

Which of you is taking the top bunk?




Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087,

Thursday, September 29, 2011

My TouchPad Today: Splashtop Remote HD - The Tortoise or The Hare?

During my past couple of days of tinkering with (actually trudging along with) Spalshtop Remote HD for the TouchPad, I can truthfully report that Mr. Hare never made an appearance.

This puppy -- er, tortoise -- will never be confused with anything related to speed.

It lives in the same neighborhood as families named Sluggish and Finicky.


All of that being said, the slowness probably isn't actually Splashtop's fault. This is, after all, a remote desktop app, subject to the whims of the Internet connection gods.

And is the finickiness related to the same gods? I'm thinkin' "yes".

So what's the problem here?

Me thinks that it goes directly to the concept of remotely controlling a mouse-based device with a multi-touch device... You can do it, but how much can you actually do, and how much can you actually do well... and what's the cost in terms of time and effort expended?

Sure, you can stream video or audio. Sure you can read/surf with it, but the experience starts to break down and become an exercise in frustration when you need to scroll vertically in a window. Too much effort for too little in return.

A deeper breakdown of the experience reveals itself when you attempt to create some content in an application like PowerPoint. Yes, it can be done, but, once again, at what cost?


So, getting back to the fabled Tortoise and the Hare...

Splashtop Remote or any other similar app is almost guaranteed to be the Tortoise.

The real questions are how much do you really need remote access via your TouchPad and what type of work do you need to accomplish?

Assuming that your need is more in the direction of accessing content, rather than creating content, Splashtop Remote HD is a good purchase for your TouchPad. Otherwise, consider yourself warned!



Follow me on TouchPad... @rnolan1087

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

My TouchPad Today: The Tablet Won't Kill the PC - The PC Lives On and On and...

Tablets like the TouchPad are obviously here to stay, but will they kill the PC and make it disappear from our lives?

Nope! Its probably gonna be with us for longer than any of the so-called visionaries can imagine. (Though tablets will get much better in the long run at creating content... one of the PC's fortes.)

Sure, IBM saw some kind of handwriting on the wall several years ago and dumped their PC business on Lenovo. Sure, HP, in its current stupor, is mulling dumping their PC group. But this kind of thought and vision is taking place kinda way up in the business stratosphere.

So what's happening in the dens, basements and garages of the world? People are clinging to the PC in its many iterations of the past 20+ years. The PC lives on and on and on...

How do I know?

First off, I'm generally "progressive" with technology, but I do find myself nursing along a 2003 vintage mini-tower PC -- holding my data going back to 1993 -- that has been upgraded from XP to Vista to Win 7. Its final retirement has been deferred countless times. Plus, along with my HP TP, Win7 laptop, and Pre2 smartphone, I'm holding on to a fleet of PDA's, laptops, and netbooks (and related software) in various stages of semi-retirement, ready to jump back into the game at a moment's notice.

Secondly, and more importantly, last week I had an experience that brought me back to earth vis a vis the actual penetration of newer technology into those dens, basements, and garages I mentioned earlier. A friend told me that her husband had a computer that refused to boot. I naturally offered to assist in reviving the beast. What I found was a bit of a shocker...

The fella uses three PC's in his business and they range from one that is vintage 2000+ to two that are 1995-ish. The older ones actually date back to when he started to computerize his work in the mid-90's... which was the last time I chatted with him!

Why hasn't he done more updating along the way? There are probably a bunch of reasons, but the main one is that the older PC's support older equipment he still uses in his business today and has no need to update at this point in his life.

Now, just imagine how many times this type of scenario is repeated across the country and around the world!

The PC lives on and on and on...



Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087

Friday, September 23, 2011

My TouchPad Today: The HP CEO Shuffle - Good News/Bad News

Alas, the ouster of Leo Apotheker as HP CEO is one of those classic good news/bad news scenarios...


The Good News -- Meg Whitman is the new HP CEO, meaning that Leo Apothecary is out.

The Bad News -- Meg Whitman is the new HP CEO. Feels like an "any port in a storm" move on the part of the HP board.



Some other thoughts on the matter...


  • The Good News -- (Insert any name here) is the new HP CEO, meaning that Leo Apotheker is out.
  • If Pee Wee Herman, like Meg Whitman, were sitting on the HP board since January, could he have been the new CEO today?


I'm not seeing Whitman as the fix to what ails HP.

Anyone have Pee Wee Herman's phone number handy?




Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

My TouchPad Today: A Slow Day While Waiting on Leo's Fate

It was another slow day for me in the world of TouchPad.

Other than waiting on HP's board to decide the fate of beleaguered CEO Leo Apotheker, I twiddled a bit with a couple of apps...


  • Tea Reader -- Had to delete and reinstall the app this morning after it couldn't load my Google Reader feeds. Spent a goodly amount of time futzing around with getting it to re-access the correct one -- the one with news feeds -- of my two Google accounts.  Some user error, some app stubbornness.



  • Spaz HD Beta Preview 2 -- Downloaded this app last night and took it out for its first real spin today. I like the fact that it displays a full list of the tweets that I follow, unlike the truncated list provided in the app I've been using.  Beyond that... Meh.



Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087

Friday, September 16, 2011

My TouchPad Today: Tea Reader - An All-Star Player!

Continuing the baseball-related theme from yesterday's post about Video Flood HD being a utility infielder...

Tea Reader is a definite All-Star on my team of TouchPad tablet apps!

With the Enyo-style three sliding panes of info, it has reinvigorated my interest -- and ability -- to follow my Google Reader news feeds.

Over time, it had become a real chore to scroll and slog through my subscription feeds in the Google Reader interface (Desktop = poor / Mobile = brutally bad ).

Tea Reader removes the scroll and slog with the ability to rapidly flick and view through the (sometimes lengthy) list of stories in each of my feeds. This comes in very, very handy when your feeds contain a number of overlapping and duplicate posts.

(For my money, Tea Reader is an even better Enyo fit and user experience than the HP's own built-in email app.)

Would it surprise you that Tea Reader is batting "clean-up" in my TouchPad lineup?



Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087

Thursday, September 8, 2011

My TouchPad Today: TouchPad Battery on Standby - Update

In a post last week I mentioned that the battery in my wife's little-used firewall TP was draining about 20 - 25% per day when turned off and not plugged into a Touchstone or conventional USB charger.

Well, this week the battery is showing almost no loss when kept at idle and off a charger... A pleasant development.

(I wonder if the battery has stabilized itself after experiencing more charging cycles?)



Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087

Sunday, September 4, 2011

My TouchPad Today: A Bookmark Trap - The Future is Now

A month ago I posted an item A Bookmark Trap?...  noting that the new item "Clear Bookmarks" on the webOS browser preferences list was an accident waiting to happen. This item precedes the familiar items Clear History/Ciookies/Cache that have been in previous versions of webOS.

Well, the future is now and the accident has happened!

A couple of days ago I was having lunch in a restaurant with free WiFi and something was wrong with the connection. After a bit of fruitless troubleshooting, I decided to switch over to the mobile hotspot on my Pre2.

As it turned out, trying to connect to the phone was also fruitless... and the TouchPad was nearly unresponsive.

I managed to open preferences in the browser and intended to clear my history, cookies and cache to see if this basic troubleshooting move might get things back on the right footing.

Alas, it was not to be... My first automatic/reflexive swipe at the preferences list blew away my list of browser bookmarks.

Gee, thanks, HP! I couldn't have done it without ya!


Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087

Saturday, September 3, 2011

My TouchPad Today: The Brutality of TouchPad Copy and Paste - LikeThe Stone Age?

The Copy/Paste functionality on the current HP TouchPad can be readily summed up in three words.
  • Brutal
  • Brutal
  • Brutal
This isn't a new discovery, but the release of Quickoffice HD (w/document editing) shines a whole new light on how badly this function was designed.

I think the cavemen could work faster with a chisel and stone!


Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087

Friday, September 2, 2011

My TouchPad Today: TouchPad Battery on Standby

My wife isn't really using her TouchPad yet, so I'm having to keep a bit of an eye on it...

Seems like the TouchPad drains about 20 - 25% of its battery power per day when turned off and not plugged into a Touchstone or conventional USB charger.

(Just a casual observation over several days this week.)


Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087

Thursday, September 1, 2011

My TouchPad Today: TouchPad Battery Life

For me, the battery life of my TouchPad continues to be one of the nice little plusses of tablet computing. Gone is the constant battery indicator watching of the laptop world.

Thus far, when working unplugged, I haven't had the need to plug in at any point in a given day to get more juice to keep going.

My guesstimate is that I'm using in the vicinity of 15% of my battery power per hour, unplugged and continuously on wifi.

I can live with that quite nicely!

How about you? Enter a comment below.



 Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

My TouchPad Today: Quickoffice HD on the TouchPad

I installed the editable version of Quickoffice (Quickoffice HD) on my TouchPad a couple of nights ago, but haven't had an opportunity to take it out for a ride on the "highway" yet. (I've only ventured just a bit outside of the driveway.)

First impressions...

  • With the brief spin I took "around the block", I think I will ultimately be ok, though not overjoyed, with Qo HD.  
  • A pain point I see for me is the TP's dreadful Copy/Paste functionality when working with spreadsheets. My brief test drive showed it to be a real productivity killer, just like it has been with anything else thus far on the TP that has needed Copy/Paste.
  • Overall (and stating the totally obvious), the TP is now much closer to what it should have been for the July 1 / July 17 launch.
Maybe this upcoming weekend I'll get to report more fully on life with the TP and Quickoffice HD.


Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

My TouchPad Today: Preware on My TouchPad

Over the weekend I finally dipped my toe into the world of Preware on my TouchPad.

I installed the following patches/applications...

  • Increase Touch Sensitivity and Smoothness 10
  • Muffle System Logging
  • Remove Dropped Packet Logging
  • Unthrottle Download Manager
  • Increase TouchPad Volume (Lite)

First impressions..

  • No adverse effects seen on my TP thus far
  • TP seems "stabler"
  • My TP does not seem "faster" now, as compared to my wife's TP which does not have Preware installed.


Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087

Saturday, August 27, 2011

My TouchPad Today: HP - Fire, Ready, Aim?

The New York Times reviews HP's uncanny ability in recent times to shoot itself in the foot...

For Seamless Transitions, Don't Look to Hewlett


Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087

Friday, August 26, 2011

My TouchPad Today: The Firesale TouchPad

The firesale TouchPad I ordered on Sunday morning from Best Buy arrived yesterday.

Between last night and this morning, I set it up for my wife by downloading the webOS OTA update and adding some apps from the HP catalog...


  • Gemini File Manager
  • DigiCamera Lite
  • Audubon Birds


I also went into the phone app and minimized logging as per James Kendrick's recent ZDNet Mobile News blog post about how to speed up the TouchPad.

The only difficulty I ran into was that it took NUMEROUS attempts to download and install the OTA update, DigiCamera and Audubon Birds. HP's servers must be swamped with all of the download requests from the firesale brigade of new users.


Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan@1087

Thursday, August 25, 2011

My TouchPad Today: TouchPad Firesale - Reveals That No One is in Charge

The TouchPad firesale fiasco this past weekend exposed a dirty little secret of the computer and Internet worlds... No one is in charge (and no one's been in charge for a long time).

Like many others, I had a TouchPad firesale purchase ($99/16GB) cancelled by the wonderful, upstanding merchants at Amazon and onSale.  I include Amazon as a full-fledged co-conspirator since they host the onSale storefront.

Here's my take on the firesale weekend...

Good Outcomes

The TouchPad (severely overpriced at the original $499 for the 16GB model, still overpriced at $399) was a super bargain at the $99 firesale price.

HP inadvertently changed the future pricing structure of the tablet PC market. Apple may be able to maintain their pricing structure, but every other tablet manufacturer is faced with selling their tablets at a loss, in hopes of somehow finding a profit in the long run.

Revelation of the Dirty Little Secret

Commerce on the Internet is built on sand. The underpinnings -- both human and electronic -- are sand and washed away rapidly by unanticipated forces.

What most of us saw and experienced were the crashing waves of the TouchPad weekend washing out the sandy electronic  foundation beneath the websites selling the TouchPad, exposing them to the open air.

The waves also exposed a lack of business integrity that has been hidden behind the gloss of the Internet for a generation now.

Merchants took TP orders that they couldn't possibly fill. Where were the businesspersons with the integrity to say "Shut it down. If we don't have 'em, we can't sell 'em."?

Merchants were clueless -- and continue to be clueless -- in regard to matching the firesale price of the TP for all purchasers, regardless of the date of purchase. Some have matched. Some won't match. Some will match, for some dates purchased.  Some will match for some people, regardless of when purchased.

Where's the integrity? HP has asked TP merchants to match the firesale price for all purchases.

No one is in charge here.  No one has been in charge for a long time.


Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

My TouchPad Today: TouchPad Sound - Tommy, Can You Hear Me?

Last night, I finally had the opportunity to download HP Play on my PC and sync some music to my TouchPad. Then, for a bit last night and this morning for a period while doing laundry, I listened to some of my favorite tunes of decades past, as well as some newer stuff.

I listened in a several ways... with earbuds, with closed-ear headphones and just via the built-in Beats speakers

First impression...

The sound is good, but something seems to be "missing". Though I kept pushing the volume all the way up to max or one notch just below, it wasn't volume that seemed to be missing.

After pondering it for awhile, I think the sound from my TouchPad is missing some degree of presence or power.

Thinking back to my audiophile wannabe days, it seems something akin to listening to high-end speakers playing music coming out of an underpowered amplifier. The music is in the room with you (not "coming at you", because of the good speakers), but it doesn't have enough power behind it to keep you from reaching for the volume control in a futile attempt to make up for it.

I wonder... Is this something that can be boosted/fixed by a software update, or is it something we'll have to live with on the TP?


Follow me on Twitter... @rnolan1087