Hewlett-Packard has quite a bit riding on the marketplace success of its TouchPad tablet, slated for a July 1 release.
The 9.7-inch device not only represents the manufacturer s attempt to carve off a piece of the burgeoning tablet market, but also the debut of the webOS operating system on a form-factor other than a smartphone. HP has plans to port webOS onto desktops and laptops in the future, which in turn places a lot of pressure on the TouchPad to demonstrate that the software platform is a viable one. (HP inherited WebOS when it purchased Palm for $1.2 billion in 2010, and plans to load it onto PCs by early 2012.)
In the United States, HP will offer the 16GB version of the device for $499.99, and the 32GB version for $599.99. The TouchPad relies on a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, faster than a significant portion of the tablets already on the market.
But how’s the TouchPad faring in early reviews? The hardware s attracting praise, despite the lack of a rear-facing camera, but webOS seems to have some kinks begging to be worked out in the near-term. At least, that s the opinion of reviewers like AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg.
“I’ve been testing the TouchPad for about a week and, in my view, despite its attractive and different user interface, this first version is simply no match for the iPad,” he wrote in his June 29 review. “It suffers from poor battery life, a paucity of apps and other deficits.”
After a round of testing, he concluded that the TouchPad s battery life was only 60 percent that of the iPad 2, and that its app store boasts only 300 tablet-optimized apps. He also needed to reboot in order to correct its sluggishness, an issue that HP claims it will fix with a future software update.
Macworld.com’s Jason Snell seemed to agree with many of those points.
To read the original eWeek article, click here: HP TouchPad Reviews Mixed, Citing Tablet’s Need for Tweaks
