Old New Toys

I’ve been following this whole HP TouchPad fire sale with much amusement.

I stopped by my friendly Best Buy late last week to take a stroll and try to avoid temptation (it’s a willpower thing) to buy something, anything.

The HP TouchPads were sitting on their pedestal at the end of aisle, all lonely and glancing wantonly over the aisle at the iPad 2s, which had actual humans picking them up and playing with them.

The whole thing reminded me of “Toy Story 3,” where the old toys never get played with by the kids.  Only in this saga, the old toys were the new toys, and the new toys old, and it was the old new toys getting played with and not the new old toys!

Then, HP announces its decision that it’s going to sell of its PC unit (Wait a minute, didn’t we do that back in 2005??), and lowers the price on the HP TouchPad –- a liquidation event of the HP Way kind –- offering up 16GB TouchPads for a bargain basement $99!!

So, then the market, with complete rational unrationality, goes nutso, and the next thing you know, HP TouchPads are selling on eBay for upwards of $300!

Mon dieu, I love this industry.  And people wonder why I’ve stuck around here for 20 years?  It’s never a dull moment!

Although I have to say, I’m not completely in love with the fact that HP’s leaving the PC biz.

I bought one of their computers last year.  I’m an equal opportunity PC purchaser.  I own an Acer netbook, a MacBook and MacBook Pro, an IBM ThinkPad, the HP Pavilion, and this Dell Latitude that I’ve been using recently and am really digging.

I bought the HP ‘cause I loved the keyboard – it felt just like the MacBook keyboard, only without the MacBook price.  Hey, when you write a lot, keyboards matter.

I think I got the HP Pavilion at Office Depot for also a good price, around $550 (with rebate).  Now I’m wondering if I can put it up for sell on eBay for $1,000, see if I can’t tap into some of that HP sentimentality!

Of course, I paid some beaucoup bucks for my first gen iPad back in April of 2010.  And I didn’t even have good reason to buy the thing – I just gave in to temptation.  But after over a year’s use now, and having traveled the globe with the thing, I have to say, I’m a pretty happy iPad camper.

I’ve used it for everything from reading books and magazines and newspapers online (my primary use), to playing video games, to watching Netflix, to writing blog posts.  Tablet computing’s time has come, although if you forced me to admit it, I’d explain that I really do miss the mouse while using an iPad.

Someone still needs to build the better mouse for tablets!

In the meantime, I’m going to share soon the fruits of another new technology experience I’ve had, that of working with Nuance’s Dragon Dictation 11 software.

People have worried me for years about the day I would start talking to my computer.  I’m here to tell you, that day has come — and it’s not pretty.

The moment it starts talking back, I’ll know I’m in trouble.