I bought one for my daughter three weeks ago and it's been great because we video chat every week. I also like it for texting her with textplus because my phone has lousy buttons. I bought another this week for a replacement should the screen break or battery die. Such an amazing deal. I use docs to go for portfolio management and bookkeeping, the calendar is great and syncs with the cloud, I think RIM can pull it off.
Disagree that HP Touchpad was total crap. HP like RIM came out with an Operating System that had too many flaws. HP TP as shipped initially would not operate well at all, upgrades followed and now it is reasonable if not great. It is closest to resembling the current BBPB system with cards and multitasking. The appworld still exists and maybe one can still run Skype on it, I don't really care. It has a decent genealogy app and an outstanding music app. You can run an Android dual boot on it. If Leo had not precipitously pulled the plug they would have made a go of it. And yes they had a 7" tablet of which there are a few examples. And had phones also. Palm was a pioneer like RIM. But no big media content like Amazon, Apple and what Google is building. Thus HP in a lot of ways was in the same competitive situation as RIM is now. And don't forget that HP pioneered the fire sale those of you who got really low priced BBPB. And even gave me $350 back on my regular price purchase of the TP. But I assume that Mike has had a bad experience with a HPTP. The phrase "total crap" should be used with backup.
A major manufacturer can't afford to turn the lights on at the plant they make them for 130k units a quarter. That is bad. The only good thing about it is that it's not like a car. If your Playbook exploded you were gonna replace it anyway, you don't need spare parts like if your car broke down. This means you'd just buy the latest and greatest thing on the market at the time. It's sad for RIM, but it still works out for the consumer either way..... You have nothing to lose by them stopping production. 2 years from now it'll be obsolete anyway.
