Report: Best Buy tells HP to take back its TouchPads

#1

Post by redial » Wed, Aug 17, 2011, 3:08 PM UTC

Report: Best Buy tells HP to take back its TouchPads
arstechnica.com

Re: Report: Best Buy tells HP to take back its TouchPads

#2

Post by canistr » Wed, Aug 17, 2011, 3:21 PM UTC

If the TouchPad, with all its geek cred, is only able to move 25,000 units, then it really makes me wonder how well the other tablets are doing. I went to Best Buy (note: this is Canada) the other day and they had a huge number of tablets in their tablet section. The TouchPad, Xoom, Acer's Iconia, the Galaxy Tab, and various Windows 7-based tablets. If the TouchPad has only been able to move that many units, then there's no way that Best Buy can be happy with any of its other customers. While I see a lot of people playing around with the tablets, very few people are buying them regardless of brand (Apple excluded, obviously).

Re: Report: Best Buy tells HP to take back its TouchPads

#3

Post by vbone » Wed, Aug 17, 2011, 3:26 PM UTC

I think the numbers are suspect. And note that the source is anonymous so take things with a grain of salt.

Re: Report: Best Buy tells HP to take back its TouchPads

#4

Post by abcd_f » Wed, Aug 17, 2011, 3:28 PM UTC

If tapping an icon on a home screen takes the tablet a fraction of a second just to provide visual feedback for that, I'm sorry, but this is simply not a good tablet. Not anymore, not with iPad in the picture.

Re: Report: Best Buy tells HP to take back its TouchPads

#5

Post by thwarted » Wed, Aug 17, 2011, 3:28 PM UTC

Is there something interesting in the comments to the original article? The link seems to take you right to the comments (at least on a mobile device), the actual arstechnia post is at:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/08/best-buy-wants-t...

Re: Report: Best Buy tells HP to take back its TouchPads

#6

Post by j_col » Wed, Aug 17, 2011, 3:33 PM UTC

vbone wrote: post #3

I think the numbers are suspect. And note that the source is anonymous so take things with a grain of salt.

Yep they are very suspect, and just so happen to be right on the verge of HP publishing their revenue figures, so may be some market shenanigans at play.

Re: Report: Best Buy tells HP to take back its TouchPads

#7

Post by j_col » Wed, Aug 17, 2011, 3:34 PM UTC

Lots of discussion about this over on Precental.net about this today: http://www.precentral.net/hp-touchpad-selling-poorly-best-bu...

Re: Report: Best Buy tells HP to take back its TouchPads

#8

Post by acabal » Wed, Aug 17, 2011, 3:42 PM UTC

I think the problem is that people still don't care about or want tablet computers; they care about and want iPads. All the companies jumping on the tablet bandwagon forgot what happened to 95% of the mp3 players that sprang up to compete with the iPod.

Re: Report: Best Buy tells HP to take back its TouchPads

#9

Post by j_col » Wed, Aug 17, 2011, 3:45 PM UTC

abcd_f wrote: post #4

If tapping an icon on a home screen takes the tablet a fraction of a second just to provide visual feedback for that, I'm sorry, but this is simply not a good tablet. Not anymore, not with iPad in the picture.

If you apply the 3.0.2 patch (an over the air update), it resolves most of the performance issues with webOS on the tablet. Unfortunately all of the online reviews were done using 3.0, so the misconception that webOS on the Touchpad = slow has stuck.

Re: Report: Best Buy tells HP to take back its TouchPads

#10

Post by mgkimsal » Wed, Aug 17, 2011, 3:51 PM UTC

j_col wrote: post #9

abcd_f wrote: post #4

If tapping an icon on a home screen takes the tablet a fraction of a second just to provide visual feedback for that, I'm sorry, but this is simply not a good tablet. Not anymore, not with iPad in the picture.

If you apply the 3.0.2 patch (an over the air update), it resolves most of the performance issues with webOS on the tablet. Unfortunately all of the online reviews were done using 3.0, so the misconception that webOS on the Touchpad = slow has stuck.

It's not a misconception. If I use webOS on a touchpad - as it comes out of the box - it's slow.

There were 'misconceptions' that Java was slow too. And Java was slow. And still is in some use cases. But somehow that's the fault of the user, not the technology?