Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There is a single broad,overarching reason I really like this tablet after playing with it for a few hours. It is elegant. It is refined. It does some common, basic things beautifully, unlike the others - be they android or iPad. The rest - Facebook, Kindle, thousands of apps - they will happen, but its the core device that I truly like. If the core device is rough, no amount of apps can fix that fundamental goof. (Unlike the iPad, which, 18 months after launch, Still has: No replaceable batteries, no flash, no stereo speakers, no stereo microphones, no multitasking, no rubberised back side for a firm grip. Great pitching, though. Probably the same people who sold pet rocks). Anyway, coming back to the Touchpad, what is more elegant? What is more refined? 1. The very first thing is the charging system. The Touchpad charges very simply; you just slide it it into its dock. You slip it in, it charges. Like Apple says, it just works. No futzing with wires, jacks and other crude methods that have not changed in the past fifty years. Even the big Kahuna, the ipad, has a wire that you turn this way and that, trying to ram it into the socket one way or the other. With the Touchpad, you simply slip it into the stand, and you are done. ipad, Android, what have you - find the connector, find the wire, line them up, twist the wire around to be sure its aligned, re-twist it, push it in, twist again if you got it wrong.... Is it that big a deal? Totally. When you have to charge it every couple of days, fumbling with wires and jacks gets boring really fast. (How do I know? From trying to charge my wife's ipad and failing half the time because the socket never really fitted right.) 2. Notifications. If you get an email in the middle of reading a webpage, for example, The iPad interrupts whatever you are doing, and blares out the notification right in the middle of the screen, right in your face - as if I would miss it if was done quietly off to the side. The Touchpad is far more refined - the notifications come up on the top. If it is an email, it will update in the background, and if the tablet is sleeping, the home button gently glows. The iPad/Androids are crude in comparison. Is this a big deal? Once again, to me, yes it is. When I am reading a book, the last thing I want is to be interrupted by a BIG notification blob in the middle of the page telling me I have got a text message. Say it quietly on the side - and I will get to it. 3. Apps handling. How on earth can you even deal with the primitive way apps are handled in current tablets? To open one app, you have to close the other. Its like having to lock your bedroom before you go to the bathroom. Then lock the bathroom when you get back to the bedroom. I like leaving the rooms in my house open, so I can walk about them freely. I like leaving apps open, going from one to the other effortlessly. Does Apple seriously want anyone to believe that their way - one app at a time - is a good way to run multiple apps? And the more apps there are, the more you have to do the shut/open routine. Whats the use of a million apps if, to use one, you have to shut down the previous one? Not to say that the Touchpad has its shortcomings. The software needs some more work, the screen rotation could use a bit of tweaking (update July 2nd - screen rotation seems to have worked itself out today - works well now), it could lose a bit of weight. But the way I see it is that the engineers who worked on the Touchpad had real focus on refinement and attention to detail. If that attitude persists, they will get there in a bit. The Android crew are all about getting a boatload of stuff out the door. And Apple is about incredible marketing, and selling their kool-aid. I wish their attention to detail was as refined as their attention to marketing.