So I hear thousands of people are buying HP TouchPads because they want to run Android on the tablets, an operating system which does not yet run on the TouchPad. Stop now. You must stop. If you're buying a TouchPad in the hope that soon "TouchDroid" will have a great, stable, fast version of Android for it, you are falling into a major geek trap.
Never, ever buy a product based on a feature it doesn't have.
I get questions all the time from people who want to buy stuff based on manufacturer promises that may never be fulfilled (or worse, based on Internet rumors of possible future features.) Someone emailed me today asking if I could absolutely guarantee that the Samsung Omnia 7 Windows Phone will get the next version of its OS, dubbed Mango. No. There are no guarantees. If you want Mango, wait until there are phones running Mango, and purchase one of them.
There's a great 1980s song which goes, "Never had a doubt, never a doubt … promises, promises, why do I believe?" (And now that video is the best thing you've seen all day.) We want to trust. Promises are seductive.
But promises are also constantly betrayed, and not always by choice. Unexpected roadblocks pop up. Companies get sold. Things that once looked possible prove surprisingly difficult.
Google Android updates are the prime example of this. Time and again, companies promise quick updates to Android phones, or consumers have just expected them, assuming hey, what's so difficult? Here's one example: Motorola launched the CLIQ XT phone in March 2010 promising updates to its Android 1.5 OS. By February 2011, the company put up this post:
"Our product team members worked for months to attempt to create a version of Android 2.1 that would perform well on the CLIQ XT. When the software could not meet the basic performance standards required, they went back to the drawing board multiple times. They gave it everything they had. … In the end, we were not able to develop a version of Android 2.1 for CLIQ XT that would deliver an optimal customer experience."
That's what you get if you buy products based on promises: disappointment. As far as I can tell, Motorola intended to fulfill its promise. But a promise isn't fulfilled until it's fulfilled, and you shouldn't put down any money based on a promise.
I don't want to whale on Android here, though, because there's nothing unique about Android. When Windows Phone launched, Microsoft promised a smoother, quicker update process than ended up not happening. This wasn't because the company didn't want to do the update; it just ran into configuration problems it "didn't anticipate."
Consumers also don't always have time to read the fine print on promises. I got sucked into this when I was waiting for Microsoft's Entourage 2011 to fix many of the Exchange syncing problems I had with Entourage 2008. Everyone, including Microsoft, insisted to me that 2011 would be much better. But when the app came out, I found out it didn't work with our company's old Exchange 2003 server. Whoops.
There are lots of things to do with a $99 TouchPad. I came up with ten yesterday. But consumer electronics aren't an investment. They're tools. Tech depreciates, it doesn't appreciate. Every minute you spend not using your gadget is a minute it becomes less, not more valuable. And if you're buying a gadget now based on a future feature, that could very well just be money wasted.
There's one big exception to my rule: if you're a developer who loves the challenge and doesn't fear failure. If you're the kind of hacker who loves to roll up your sleeves and build Android for the TouchPad, go for it. If you love to make tech do what it isn't supposed to and you love the rough edges of things, go there. For people like that, 90 percent of the thrill is in the trying. (I know—I was once one of them.) Even if you fail, you learn a lot, and you have a lot of fun.
But average users, even power users? Buy stuff that does what you need. Not stuff that doesn't.