WebOS impressions part II...

[Spoooon]

So, now that many of us have TouchPads that we weren't planning on owning, any new thoughts or impressions on the device?

I just got home with a 16GB version and waiting the eternity it takes to boot up.

 

[Tristicus]

Downloading the 3.0.2 right now, but seems smooth so far.

 

[Spoooon]

There's random lag at times and I can't really tell what's happening in the background to cause it.

It's cool that Hulu works. So far, definitely feels like a good deal.

 

[Powermoloch]

still waiting for a verification for mines :*(

 

[Spoooon]

Overclocked. To be honest, not much difference. It seems smoother just scrolling around, but it could just be in my head. 480p Hulu seems to be a smidge smoother though.

 

[Tristicus]

Overclocked. To be honest, not much difference. It seems smoother just scrolling around, but it could just be in my head. 480p Hulu seems to be a smidge smoother though.

Is there a way to "root" it and OC, or can it just be done? How unlocked is it? If you'd point me to a good forum with info, I'd appreciate it.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Yay I was excited about this thread as soon as the clearance hit. Can't wait to see what people say.

 

[Spoooon]

Is there a way to "root" it and OC, or can it just be done? How unlocked is it? If you'd point me to a good forum with info, I'd appreciate it.

It's pretty easy. Search preware in the HP app store. For a buck, you can buy a guide to how it's all done. You don't need it, it's more of a donation to support continued development. It does have all the documentation you need.

If you'd rather not pay for it, just google around and you'll find the info.

edit: preware homebrew development is what you want in the app store.

 

[ponyo]

Anyone download box.net? You're supposed to get 50 gig of free cloud storage for life with a purchase of Touchpad. I ordered 3 pads last night from HP and am anxious to try out the WebOS.

 

[Spoooon]

Installed a "theme" for those interested. It's not a major change.

Box.net is fine. It's not awesome or anything. One minor annoyance is that there aren't any thumbnails for shared images. So, you click your image, then you click on open image, then the image opens. I just started playing around with it, so maybe there's a way to change that.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Comparing the one I just bought to my iPad 2 gives me great appreciation for what apple has done. The iPad is remarkably smoother than the touchpad in virtually every activity. Given the touchpad's specs I'm guessing it's mostly webos that's responsible for the slightly low framerate feel I get from it. I'm greatly looking forward to someone porting android to it to see if that improves things.

The touchpad seems to be a very capable device though. It displays flash content surprisingly well and the onscreen keyboard is as responsive as the ipad's. It's an almost incredible bargain at $100. Webos also strikes me as being as capable and intuitive as iOS, if only it were better optimized.

 

[mnewsham]

Comparing the one I just bought to my iPad 2 gives me great appreciation for what apple has done. The iPad is remarkably smoother than the touchpad in virtually every activity. Given the touchpad's specs I'm guessing it's mostly webos that's responsible for the slightly low framerate feel I get from it. I'm greatly looking forward to someone porting android to it to see if that improves things.

The touchpad seems to be a very capable device though. It displays flash content surprisingly well and the onscreen keyboard is as responsive as the ipad's. It's an almost incredible bargain at $100. Webos also strikes me as being as capable and intuitive as iOS, if only it were better optimized.

Have you updated to the latest OS?

 

[slippysoup]

Picked one up this morning,been playing on it all day. Haven't updated the the latest os yet. I'm actually liking the webos quite a bit. I come from android though and really miss the back button. I'll pretty much just be using this as a couch companion for rss and browsing. Apps take forever to load but haven't had much of a slow down with 8-10 apps open. Youtube was really smooth in the browser. Hoping to get some android on here soon though.

 

[Spoooon]

Yeah, I miss having a back button. And there doesn't seem to be a gesture for going back a page. Another minor nitpick is that it seems like I have to refresh pages manually. I'll be on the forum, swipe the card away, then come back later and have to hit refresh.

Robotek HD looks great.

 

[osage]

I have been playing with mine most of the morning. So far I like it pretty well.
love the keyboard

 

[Powermoloch]

can't wait to get my hands on it

 

[WelshBloke]

What sort of video formats does it support?

If the cheap deals ever come to the UK I might get one for my son to watch movies on long car journeys.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Have you updated to the latest OS?

Updating the OS seemed to improve the experience somewhat, but it's still inferior to iOS in terms of general responsiveness. It's nothing horrible though. Still a mind blowing deal at $100.

 

[basslover1]

Updating the OS seemed to improve the experience somewhat, but it's still inferior to iOS in terms of general responsiveness. It's nothing horrible though. Still a mind blowing deal at $100.

From what I've read, WebOS is not fully GPU optimized at this point so most of the rendering is done through the CPU. If HP does in fact continue support for WebOS, I expect that to change. As the hardware it self is very very capable.

 

[Tristicus]

Updating the OS seemed to improve the experience somewhat, but it's still inferior to iOS in terms of general responsiveness. It's nothing horrible though. Still a mind blowing deal at $100.

Yeah, honestly, at even $250 starting price, HP would have killed the tablet market I think. They could have a great product here, but they fucked it up on their end.

 

[mnewsham]

Yeah, honestly, at even $250 starting price, HP would have killed the tablet market I think. They could have a great product here, but they fucked it up on their end.

agreed, no idea what they were thinking.

 

[finbarqs]

i went from a palm pre to my EVO 4G... and I felt crippled with my EVO 4G... I was way more productive with my Palm Pre, so naturally, I was really hoping for WebOS 3.0. Sadly, they didn't optimized it to the T like iOS and WP7 did... and they have control over the hardware and took them forever to release it too!

What have they been doing? seriously, I just thought it was funny they became overly ambitious when they said that they were going to use WebOS on PC/Laptops in the future. I got a 32 GB during the staples 100+100 off, and I returned it... thank goodness... Though it was cool messing around with, the plastics, and the weight really put a damper on the experience. But it was the fastest WebOS experience I've seen yet!

I'd put a safe bet now that I can put my life savings in Apple products. Not that I'm an apple fan boy (I don't have an apple product yet... but I DID buy my father an ipad, and he LOVES it--mainly because he's tech-idiot and needs a cool device to get him on the boat) But mainly because apple just does things right. They hit user experience first... the core of everything, what people really care about, then hit them with features later as either a "payable addon" or just an update.

 

[randomlinh]

Yeah, I miss having a back button

sigh... THIS is why HP should have made the entire damn bezel a gesture area. On the Pre, you could just swipe back. Why oh why didn't they at least make it a global gesture option...

 

[goog40]

Played around with it for a little over an hour last night.

-it shut down and reboot once. Forgot what I was doing, probably just using the browser
-the first time I tried loading a video on Hulu it completely froze the browser after i paused it. I could scroll up and down in the browser, but the video wouldn't play, and hitting refresh or the back button did absolutely nothing (no visual indication that it was even attempting to do the actions I had clicked).
-Hulu at 480p is very choppy, pretty much unwatchable. At 360p there's still occasional choppiness, not nearly as much as 480p. It's bearable, but not good.
-on the plus side I left it on autoplay on Hulu and a few hours later it was still playing, so it didn't crash again.
-the difference in responsiveness compared to the ipad is really evident when scrolling on a webpage. That tiny bit of jerkiness is distracting.

Luckily at $100, these issues can be easily overlooked. If it had been over $300 I would probably be getting ready to take it back to the store today.

 

[Spoooon]

I'm not going into details, but some stuff to do that seemed to improve the overall experience:

Preware so that you can do the homebrew stuff.

Govnah and UberKernel, mine has been running at ~1.5GHz with no problems and no appreciable difference in battery life.

Muffle System Logging, Removed Drop Packet Logging, EOM Overlord Monitoring from Preware.

I guess the TouchPad and webOS does a lot of logging of information. This seems to account for some of the lagginess according to folks at precentral. Those patches and utilities that I listed disables that stuff. Maybe someone knows more?

To be honest, I don't know how much of that stuff makes a difference but things "feel" smoother now.

Also, somewhere in Preware is a patch for the app tray so that you have a few more tabs (Games, Homebrew) to help with organization.