Broback's Blog

The quote below was published on July 1 on ZDNet. The TouchPad was killed on August 18. I guess “a long time” means seven weeks. I feel very bad for the HP product manager who was led to believe the upper brass was committed to his team’s success. (emphasis mine).

I think a lot of business professionals will find the TouchPad to be exactly what they were hoping for in a tablet because it will allow them to work the way they’re used to working, but do it in the convenient form factor of a multi-touch tablet. I would fully recommend the TouchPad to professionals if it weren’t for the performance issues and the fact that HP needs to add editing capability for Microsoft Word and Excel files (something HP says is coming ‘this summer’). With those two things in mind, I would recommend holding out until HP addresses those issues and adds more productivity apps to the catalog. I expect HP to keep pushing forward. Jeffery Ben, a Senior Product Manager on the TouchPad team, told me: “HP is committed to being on this journey for a long time”.