You may be one of the lucky hundreds of thousands who scored an HP TouchPad for
$99.
Or you may be one of the tech snobs sneering at those who did.
There�s no
denying the TouchPad fire sale made it one of the hottest tech products on earth for a
while, but are those who bought one savvy or stupid?
I�m B.C.
with the Top 5 Things to Do with an HP TouchPad, aka, why any tablet is fine
for most of what you�ll do with it.
File this one under reality check.
#5 Use it as E-reader.
The Touchpad comes with the Kindle app preinstalled and the
Kindle store ain�t going away.
Even if you use the TouchPad for no other purpose you
got it for $15 less than the cheapest Kindle.
There is some risk that the Kindle platform
will evolve and the WebOS based TouchPad will be left behind, but again: $99.
#4 Use it as a photo viewer.
The TouchPad does a particularly good job of harvesting all
your online photos, from Facebook to PhotoBucket, Snapfish and others.
And it beats
the hell out of making people squint at your smarpthone screen or the back of digital
camera.
#3 Car media player.
You can spend the $2 grand to get rear seat entertainment system
for your car, or let our little $99 friend or just about any tablet take over.
The TouchPad
will always support standard MPEG4 and H.264 video formats along with the major
audio formats.
Now, only an iPad will get you access to the iTunes store, but there are
enough other ways to get download and streaming video on a non-iOS tablet, and
anything�s better than the few DVD�s in the back seat pouch that your kids are sick of
anyway.
#2 E-mail.
Its agnostic, works on any device that has an email client and the TouchPad
has one baked in just like any tablet.
And it�s not going to stop working because you
missed an OS update or need an app nobody�s developing for your platform.
74% of
respondents in a recent Google survey cited email as a main use of their tablet.
Before we get to #1, let�s give the iPad its due.
If you want to buy and tablet and not
have to explain yourself, it�s gonna be an iPad.
A recent survey showed 95% of people
looking for a tablet are considering an iPad.
The nest nearest one was the 10%
considering a TouchPad and it�s not even made any more!
The Blackberry Playbook?
Forget it, fewer than 4% care.
And if the iPad retains those sort of numbers, the
TouchPad won�t be the last of its competitors liquidating at fire sale prices.
OK, the #1 thing you can do with your fire sale TouchPad and not care what anyone else
thinks is hit the web.
In fact, if the TouchPad had nothing BUT a good web browser it
could still do everything else on this list.
And it does have a good one, one that actually
shows you Flash based web sites without weird broken stuff on the screen like an iPad.
So whether you found one of HP�s $99 unicorns or are considering some no-name tablet
that�s good & cheap, take heart that you will get a lot of out of it even without a bunch
apps and OS updates.
Orphans are beautiful, too!
Check up for the latest tablets reviews, best street prices - and even news of who might
be having a blowout sale next - at CNET.com, then just click on tablets.
I�m Brian Cooley, thanks for watching.
