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Why should Apple have all the fun in tablet computing? In theory, it shouldn't: There are plenty of bright engineers outside of Cupertino, Calif., and they've got a good choice of non-Apple mobile operating systems on which they could try to build a respectable iPad competitor.
Hewlett-Packard, which has the webOS software it acquired when it paid $1.2 billion for Palm, Inc. two years ago -- and which HP is now shipping on its new TouchPad tablet.
The Wi-Fi-only TouchPad looks like the iPad and costs the same too: $499.99 for a model with 16 gigabytes of storage, $599.99 for a 32 GB unit. Its 9.7-in. touchscreen matches the specifications of the iPad 2, but this tablet weighs a little more: 1.6 lbs., versus 1.3 lbs. for Apple's device.
HP doesn't advertise battery-life estimates for the TouchPad, but this devices passes one crucial test: You can park it on a coffee table, then pick it up and use it over the next few days without worrying about having to recharge it.
But that's a problem: With Apple's lead in ease of use and applications, it's not good enough to match the iPad's price and some of its specifications. A competitor needs to be cheaper or better, if not both. And the HP TouchPad is neither.
The TouchPad's biggest strength is its elegant webOS operating system, which still does multitasking better than Android or Apple's iOS. To see what applications are open, press the button below the home screen and they'll appear in miniature form like a hand of cards on a table; tap one to select it, or flick it towards the top of the screen to close it.
Like earlier webOS phones and Android devices, the TouchPad syncs easily to such cloud-based services as Google's contacts and calendar applications.
The TouchPad's web browser include an extra excluded from the iPad and not shipping on some Android tablets, a version of Adobe's Flash software. So you're less likely to hit a page that requires you to reach for a laptop to read it.
But webOS also represents the TouchPad's biggest weakness: Not enough programs run on it. Of the 6,200 programs available for webOS, only about 70 percent run on the TouchPad, HP spokeswoman Molly Coleman wrote. And of those, only some 300 have been upgraded for its larger screen.
The TouchPad includes a few highlights, such as a tablet-sized editions of Facebook (still somehow absent from the iPad), Rovio's Angry Birds game, Epicurious's eponymous recipe database (as seen in the photo above of a TouchPad atop an iPad 2) and Skype video-calling support for its webcam.
But it's missing others. For instance, the Kindle shortcut on the screen of TouchPad I reviewed (which was loaned to me by HP's PR department) was only a placeholder advising that a TouchPad version of Amazon's e-reader was "coming very soon." Other popular tablet applications, such as the Evernote note-taking tool, have yet to ship.
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