got touchpad

[sweatshopking]

anybody else? setup wireless video streaming with KalemSoft Media Player, and it's going great. That app plays ANY video format as well. mkv, mp4, avi, all of it. Very happy. picked up the 32gb model, and man, I've used webos before, but not as much, and it's damn impressive. they needed to drop the price of these a while ago, sell as a loss leader and pick up some market share. it's damn good. any sweet applications out there i need to know of?

[yuriylsh]

I've ordered mine last night. It's still has the "Item being processed" status. I didn't catch the deal when 16GB models were available, so I went for 32GB model. For $146 it's not bad deal at all. It has web browser, email client, video player, audio player, can be used as a picture frame (good ones alone cost more), skype, Office docs/pdf docs viewer, etc. for $146 - it's a steal.

[mako]

Ordered last night. Only intended to get one, but somehow I ordered two 32GBs. Guess I'll send the other one to the folks.

Truth is, I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with it. The price was too good to pass up.

[Corrado]

Got a 32gb today at Wal-Mart. They had no clue what was going on and pricematched it to $99. I've had a galaxy tab, iconic, zoom, playbook and an ipad. The touchpad comes closest to the ipad in terms of quality and usability. I just wish there were more apps. I'm very impressed with the browser though. Flash and java apps run really well.

[TurtlePerson2]

I've been hearing that these things are going cheap. Where does one go to get one for $100-$150?

[Corrado]

I've been hearing that these things are going cheap. Where does one go to get one for $100-$150?

Pretty much nowhere anymore. There was only something like 400k left and they're seemingly sold out everywhere that dropped the price.

[MadManOriginal]

Yeah...I heard about it last night but by that time everywhere online was sold out and B&Ms hadn't dropped it yet. Ran across a thread mid-day today and by then it was too late for the B&Ms that did drop it although the Staples salesperson seemed to rub it in a bit, 'We only had a few and sold one an hour or so ago'

At $400-500 it's hard to justify a tablet versus a budget laptop like the HP DM1z, but for $100-150 I was completely ready to buy. Looks like many people bought them just to flip on eBay, not surprising, just frustrating when the supply was so short.

[codedivine]

Here are some app recommendations:
NomNomNom is an excellent Google Reader. It is different in how it works from other readers, but once you get used to it, it is awesome.
Glimpse is a useful tool for seeing multiple pieces of information.
Toodledo HD is great for Toodledo users.
Robotek HD is a nice game.
Video flood HD is a great way to discover, download or stream videos from great sources like TED.

And of course, you must install Preware, the homebrew catalog. There is no rooting or jailbreaking required on WebOS. All you do is put your device in developer mode by doing this: Tap "Just type" and then type "webos20090606" without quotes and then you will get a "developer mode" dialog. Put developer mode to "on" and then go to Preware.org for instructions.
From Preware, you can install things like Govnah (shows things like CPU load and RAM usage), UberKernel which along with Govnah profiles allows you to overclock to 1.5GHz. Also in Preware are myriad patches and utilities. I have installed ssh for example and also installed a patch for reducing system logging. OC the kernel and install the logging patches, and the touchpad will be very fast. And there are patches for various inbuilt applications. This is something unique to WebOS homebrew and is possible because nearly every application is in javascript so source is accessible to modders.
.

[Corrado]

BlahBlahBlah.

Wow, thanks. This REALLY helped with ALL my complaints about the device. Namely the laginess here and there. This really woke it up and addressed a few other niggles, like opening the folder view in Mail when I only have 1 account. If a bunch of dudes on the internet could make it work like this in < 2 months since release, why the hell couldn't HP do this with all the proper source code and component specs? Its just too bad that it will never get full hardware acceleration out of the video chip. My guess is this thing would SCREAM if they did that.

[yuriylsh]

Here is good post on how to tweak TP a little bit to improve its performance: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/how-to-improve-the-performance-of-your-new-hp-touchpad/3866. It also has links to how properly install Preware that codedivine mentioned in his comment above.

[TheEmrys]

I picked up a 32 GB TouchPad, just waiting for delivery. While I was waiting, I found a few links. Here is what I found and it may help others:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/hp-touchpad-everything-you-want-to-know/4005?tag=content;siu-container

There is about 35 links at that one alone, including a link to the one in the post above. Lots of great stuff.

http://forums.precentral.net/

Without a doubt, the largest site for WebOS. I had originally wanted to move to another OS. After reading stuff over there and people's reviews on it, I may just stick it out.

[TheEmrys]

This thread in particular is an amazingly good reference.

http://forums.precentral.net/hp-touchpad/293028-new-touchpad-heres-your-get-started-guide.html