Well, there was one..... but I think he was banned.

(This really isn't a reply to your post... it started off that way but I'm just enjoying ranting about HP right now... please forgive me.)

I got mine on the second batch, and it's okay. I have an iPad and a Galaxy Tab also and I think it's the weakest of the three. That said, I'm reasonably happy with it. I just wanted it as a always-by-the-couch tablet. So hopefully you'll see what I mean when I say 'instant gratification' wasn't the problem.

I was probably a little too brief in my last post, there was an important detail I missed. While placing the order the servers were overloaded, a bit like you'd expect on Black Friday. I submitted mine on a Sunday morning. A few days later (after trying to inquire a few times...) I finally got a mass-email saying "All orders placed before Monday will get theirs by the end of the week." Two weeks went by, silence. I had to prod them about that and I was told it'd be six to eight weeks. Apparently "you will get it if you ordered before a certain date" really meant "you might get it if you ordered by a certain date." I wouldn't have minded except I had to ask them that instead of being told.

If I were to sum up my complaint about the process into as brief of statement as possible, I'd say that HP's customer communication was terrible. Maybe I'm spoiled by Amazon, but throughout my professional life I've found it's better to be up front about delays than to play the 'we hope they don't notice!" game.

Remember two years ago when everybody was saying this and suddenly stopped?

It costs money to produce. If it's never recouped then it's a loss. Look up the phrase 'no free lunch'.

My mother-in-law ordered one from HP and was met with silence. For the entire month she put up with it, they'd charge her account $150 every friday and then return it. Effectively this meant she was missing $150 even though she didn't have the item. Additionally, she had typo'd her address when she submitted it. When she called to correct it, surprise surprise, they couldn't. All she could do was cancel and resubmit the order... which would have meant no Touchpad for her. While technically her fault, why the call center she talked to couldn't modify her order is beyond me.

My experience was a little better. I didn't mind the $150 disappearing and the address was correct when I submitted it, but HP was TERRIBLE about telling me wtf was going on. On their web page the order status was set to something bizarre like "ORDER COMPLETE" or something that made it sound like my Touchpad was right here. It wasn't. When I tried to email them I was given a generic answer about how I'd get my order within a few weeks and they're very sorry and it took three paragraphs to explain these two simple concepts. It was definitely a source of frustration.

I wouldn't say it "doesn't hurt". It may not hurt enough, but unless they've dramatically improved their customer service, it likely will hurt some.

The cameras themselves also have to spool the film accurately. Slippage means a bad composite.

Actually that brings up a point.. this camera DID witness Han Solo shooting first....

Okay, I'll rephrase his question: Will we be irradiated by a plant run by PHBs?

And? The KB is connected wirelessly. Think about it.

You are half right, and it was well earned.

They used it for the wifi adapter. Wii Content isn't exactly straining the 512 meg SD card that it comes with. It's not that surprising that USB support for external hard drives wasn't Nintendo's highest priority. Oh, incidentally, the whole thing about using the SD card really kinda sinks your argument.

I'll be the first to admit I love bitching about Sony. You got me to confess, that's great! Only... it didn't make any of the points made about Sony go away. Sony isn't selling you anything better than standard flash memory at double the price. They're not selling something that's physically smaller, or has a bfd faster transfer rate, or SOMETHING that at least attempts to thinly justify the price. They're literally just saying "We want more money from you."

If you're a fan-boy, it just glides right in. If you're somebody without any particular biases, but somebody who buys memory cards because you have a cell phone or mp3 player or camera or whatever, it really is an obvious attempt at nickel-and-diming. Since it isn't something only a fanboy or haterade addict would complain about, it is a valid point.

The NES, SNES, GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, and the DS stored the save data right on the media. The DSi, 3DS, and the Wii use a standard SD card for game saves and download of software. The N64 and GameCube used proprietary memory cards like the Playstation and Playstation 2 did.

I don't know why you're fixated on the media the games come on. The original Playstation used black CDs as an anti-counterfeit measure. I don't remember if they ever tried to prevent the PS1 from playing burned games, but the PS2 certainly did. You were never going to use 'standard media' in anything labeled Playstation with the exception of playing movies or music CDs.

Comically, though, you completely left out the PSP and its over-price Memory Stick and 'Unviersal Media Disc'. Heh.

There really is cause for complaint, here. Sorry. .

Oo good point, thank you!

Only if he carries the dock around. Otherwise, we could make the argument that a laptop is really more like a desktop just because somebody hooks up a monitor etc to it.

Not strictly true. I have a bluetooth kb that stays on my desk that's paired to my iPad. When I get up and go to a meeting or something, I just carry my iPad over without the kb. When I come back, I just start typing and the KB's already ready to go.

However, there is one little glitch with this problem that is a little annoying. Once you start typing on the KB the on-screen KB disappears. It takes a while for it to return and I haven't found a magical way to bring it back from the touch screen. Apple's being a little too helpful here, but it's not a deal breaker.

Show us the missing money.

Just for clarification... are you suggesting that a warlord leave his sensitive documents with a henchman to leave in a building that they must then burn to the ground. then leave without verifying that it succeeded?

Heh. That reminds me of the Onion article where the US offered to donate Al-Qaeda 600 million dollars so they could build a fancy HQ building.