[Galaxy Tab 10.1 General] BarryH_GEG:
Before the fire sale, Staples put out a $100 off coupon on top of HP's $100 price drop so it was $299. I thought it was a decent deal assuming it was early in its lifespan and with HP behind it things would evolve pretty quickly.

Pros:

- webOS in tablet-size worked well. It was fluid and intuitive. Basics like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth worked and behaved well.

- The e-mail app was terrific.

- The display was decent, not fantastic, but decent.

- The conductive charging station was cool.

- Overall performance was good with little lag.

- It comes with a free 50GB box.net account which is well integrated in to webOS.

Cons:

- webOS is like iOS, rigid and inflexible. If you like tailoring and customizing your user experience you're SOL.

- The web browser was pathetic. It was great for sites that are basic but anything Java or Flash heavy caused it to crap out. With few native apps, you have to rely on the browser for things like Netflix, HBOGO, and Rhapsody. They either don't work or flake out so often it takes 5 shots to get something playing. Rhapsody streaming for example wouldn't keep the device awake.

- There are no document editors available. Period. And now there probably won't be.

- The PDF implementation can only read the most basic documents. It can't render anything complicated.

- No available e-reader supports ePub.

- It was heavy and bulky and felt like a Gen-1 device.

- It supported no DRM-protected files and natively only supported MP4 video.

- Video streaming through KalemSoft, a third party product, added additional format support but it was slow and all but the smallest files stuttered to the point of being unwatchable.

- Apps? What apps?

I was still in the 14 day return period when the fire sale was announced and returned it and all its accessories. I could have had it for $99 with a price adjustment but who would want it? Half-baked is now its permanent state and with the limitations described its pretty much unusable. I got flamed in the earlier TP discussion thread because people were deluded by the huge discount. You can't use it as a browsing device because it chokes on complicated websites, you can't use it as an e-reader unless you only subscribe to Kindle, you can't use it for video/audio because of its limitations, you can't use it for games because there are none. So basically the only thing it did well was e-mail and to a lesser extent social media. So for $99 people have a big and heavy e-mail reader.

I got a Tab on Thursday. Talk about night and day. I have a SGS2 and a lot of TW stuff is common between them so I had no problem getting it set up. It does everything I need it to do and does so pretty much flawlessly. I'm streaming MKV video over my tethered SGS2 without dropping a single frame. The TP, even if it lived, never could have accomplished that. I have a 3G model coming in two weeks from the UK so, with HSPA+ data, it'll be the perfect travel companion.

So the lesson I learned from all of this was to screw being an early adopter. Go with the number one or number two because its your only assurance of longevity. If a company with HP's resources could pull the plug so quickly, what are the chances of lesser-resourced companies/technologies surviving? And to the $99 TP owners, good luck. Even a chicken with its head cut off runs around for a while before it dies.