Bunch-o-noise made to today about the launch of the Motorolla Xoom pad.  The theory is that it only sold 100,000 units. At $800 a pop at BestBuy, that is a cool $80 million. Clearly, a first time product in a new category – that’s a raving success.

I love my PalmPre WebOS phone. I was going to wait to get a Pad computer until HP released a WebOS based tablet. However, it looks like that will be six months down the road. So, I went ahead and got a Xoom pad about five weeks ago.

My thoughts on the XOOM:

Hits:

• I am surprised how close I am to being able to give up my laptop.
• The camera is excellent. Good pics and great video. My video was flawlessly smooth.
• The video chat cam is fairly good as well.
• Extremely fast. Rarely do I slow down.
• Th new Amazon AppStore is easier to use than Google’s App Market.
• I have found may more utilities (sftp/secure shell) types for Android than other pads.
• Using an HDMI cable to put video on screen is quick and painless.
• The Motorolla case that doubles as a stand is better than any other pad case I’ve seen.
• Battery length : I’m hitting 9hrs in heavy WiFi usage.
• A bluetooth keyboard works good with Android, but I wish it had a pointer to use a bluetooth mouse as well.
• It’s not an Apple product.

Misses:

• No Netflix.
• No Skype video calling.
• Many apps that run on Android v2x do not run on honeycomb or crash often.
• Multitasking is fairly rudimentary
• Apps are Built on Java – ugh.
• For all the claims of “open architecture”, I find android to be pretty lock tight.
• There was no ‘WiFi’ only version available until much later.
• It is a touch heavier than the iPad.
• Google’s AppMarket has several problems that make it infuriating to use (no quality back button).
• The optional Motorola dock/stand is difficult to lineup and use.
• The included SD card slot is not active – yet.
• No hardward buttons to control pad – everything is software.
• Brightness has to be cranked at all times.
• Builtin browser is pretty lame – Opera Android Mobile is mucho better.
• With the builtin browser, many sites default to their ‘phone view’ and are next-to-impossible to get out of to see the full screen.

Summary:

All-n-all, I am pretty happy with my new pad. I carry it just about everywhere and it has replaced the need to carry a laptop locally.

I was setting on the couch getting frustrated with the silly iPad. I am not a big iFan. So, naturally, the iPad is sorta backwards for me. As I was grumbling about not being able to figure it out, my 4 year old daughter reaches over and with 3 clicks, says there you go dad, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for her to show me how to do something on a computer.

Needless-to-say, it was a moment that I had never felt older in my life. I remembered all those times I showed my folks how to run the VCR and cable box. I realized that in order to stay current with technology and and the world, that reading news, studying, learning, and growing in my computer skills will require careful diligence.

I thought the only way to followup with the Robots.txt blog, would be to do a 404blog.

So here we go.

Everything below this sentence is from the old robots.txt blog.