I reviewed this a while back on geardiary.com:

http://www.geardiary.com/2009/02/22/review-openmoko-neo-freerunner-from-sdg-systems/

It was....a unique design but the Android port didn't work well at all. The Openmoko code was even more of a mess. It was also SLOW.

I like the idea of a completely libre device, but the G1 was WAY better than this....and that's saying something.

+1 for coffee snorting funny....

Sometimes they don't give you the choice though since they do all sorts of presetup. Setup that doesn't need to be done.

If you want computing easy...don't buy a laptop. Get a tablet or iPad.

No it's not a bad service if you TRUST Best Buy. I do not. :-P

They do this ALL the time. YOU CAN find a laptop without their crap. When you do, they charge you less. They put it on there because they want to sell you their crappy Geek Squad tech support. I reject it. The bad thing is that sometimes YOU CAN'T GET THE SALE PRICE WITHOUT THE BLOAT!

No it was priced right according to iSuppli who did the teardown. If HP sold it at $150 there would have been a loss on each device sold.

http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/HP-TouchPad-Carries-$318-Bill-of-Materials.aspx

They probably COULD have saved money somewhere, but they already chintzed on the plastic in the back.

The real problem is there were no apps. There was no real push by Palm OR HP on gaining developers. At least not one like there should have been. Plus the SDK was REALLY late. By that time, Palm was already dead in the water, HP picked them up and did NOTHING with them.

48-49 days does NOT make a developer community. The Kin was an exception as there was no development community but HP did WebOS no favors. People aren't going to buy the damn thing if they can't get or program apps. This all started when Palm was REALLY LATE with the SDK. HP did it no favors, but it was right on the cusp of something that could have been cool.

Leo Apotheker was and IS the WRONG person to lead HP. HP hasn't ever been about the high end servers for years. Sure, people bough Superdomes but IBM had far eclipsed HP in the amount of servers it sold. Sun did too (but still failed). Leo is going down the wrong path. HP made great calculators, printers and computers and was KNOWN for them. They made servers too but when was the last time you heard them talk about that? They had HPUX and Tru64. Did nothing with either.

This is a sad sad road that HP went down and it might ultimately kill HP.

Best April Fools EVER!

I have to say I miss Geeks in Space. ALOT.

This is true. However, the comment Mrs. Kostolnik made was defamation and she should have kept the thoughts to herself.

All to often we say things that could set these nutters off. Better not to set the nutter off on YOU so be nice to him and don't piss him off.

Not saying this guy shouldn't be put away, but sometimes we say things we shouldn't have said. This is one of those cases!