We Got Hands On The HP Touchpad And WebOS

Come July 1st HP is going to launch their culmination of HP ingenuity and Palm innovation, the HP TouchPad. It blends HP's styling with Palm's WebOS functionality, ease of use and productivity to build a tablet that may in fact challenge the iPad.

I've had the rare chance to get hands on the TouchPad and I have to say from what I've seen I'm pretty impressed. I will say I'm more impressed with WebOS than the design of the TouchPad, or at least the feel of it.

So here are my thoughts.

WebOS is the big thing

• Just type is beyond belief, apps, email contacts whatever are right there with a few characters. You hit a few keystrokes and anything you might want to open is intuitively ready. It gives you suggestion based on what you typed.
• Real life multitasking, you can have 1,2 3..10 apps open and they are actually live. Nothing goes to stand by everything you see on your screen is ready to go. So if I wanted to play a YouTube video, go back and send an email its all set. No waiting, no switching back and forth. Big plus this is for any apps not "some"
• They have this really cool syncing feature that does calenders, photos and something else. Calenders is really cool, it syncs almost any services and it adds a color to each for easy distinction. So you have a business calender for GMail, personal for Yahoo! and something else. They all show up in colors. It also syncs photos from Facebook, Photobucket and a few other accounts.You get to see them all without having to actually go to the accounts.

HP Touchpad How Does It Feel?

• Hands on it feels pretty fast. From what I've seen you can run, or have open, at least 5 apps without it slowing down
• The screen looks top notch. It takes fingerprints like most but its bright, clear and it is Gorilla Glass so that's a plus.
• The backing sucks! Plastic these days is a bad call. It doesn't fell bad, just not my choice.
• Weight, that is always a big concern. Bigger screen, more weight! 10" tablets to me are two handers but even that holding it in me off hand and trying to type got tiresome.

So do I think the TouchPad will be iPad competitor? No not really. WebOS has a great deal of potential. It does so much in the way the way of integration. Its way above everything the Droid based tablets I've seen.

The down fall if any is the fragmentation for one and the overall design of the device.

• Fragmentation: We have the Android Market (Amazon's version and others), Apple AppStore, RIM MarketPlace, MS Market and now a WebOS market?
• Design: Personally I'm on the middle on this one. I think either go mid range 5-7" and ultralight or go bigger 10-12". You add some weight but you get some functionality. For me the screen size is ok but the weight is a bit much.

For all I've said I'm probably overly impressed with WebOS. I'd honestly buy a TouchPad just for that, it really is that good. I haven't seen a tablet that, functionality wise, performs anywhere close.