Nokia slips from 1 to 3 in smartphone sales

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Apple and Samsung Electronics ended struggling Nokia's 15-year reign at the top of the smartphone sales rankings in the second quarter, researchers said on Friday.

Nokia has dominated the smartphone market ever since its 1996 launch of the Communicator model, but competition from its two nearest rivals and a slump in its own sales sent it straight from first to third place in the three months to June as growth in the sector starts to slow.

Apple sold a record 20.3 million iPhones in the quarter despite the fact that its iPhone 4 model is now more than a year old. Usually success of smartphone models does not last so long.

Apple unveiled its sales last week, but on Friday analysts also estimated Samsung sold 19 million smartphones in the quarter, well ahead of Nokia's 16.7 million as it was able to benefit from booming demand with smartphones using Google's Android software.

"Samsung's Galaxy portfolio has proven popular, especially the high-tier S2 Android model," said Neil Mawston, analyst at Strategy Analytics."

Strategy Analytics estimated smartphone market volume grew 76 percent from a year ago in the second quarter. ABI Research was somewhat more cautious estimating market grew 62 percent.

SLOWDOWN WORRIES

Growth on the overall cellphone market slowed too in the April-June period, as sales of basic phone models dropped for the first time in seven quarters due to consumers reining in spending, research firm IDC said on Friday.

IDC said strong smartphone demand boosted the market to still grow 11.3 percent from a year ago to 365.4 million phones, but this was a clear slowdown from the 16.8 percent growth seen in the previous quarter.

Strategy Analytics estimated the total market at 361 million cellphones in the quarter.

In a Reuters poll, 29 analysts' average forecast for the total market stood at 374 million phones.

IDC said sales of simpler so-called feature phones fell 4 percent from a year ago due to conservative spending and continued shift to smartphones, most visible in developed markets, such as the United States, Japan and Western Europe.

The shrinking feature phone market is having the greatest impact on some of the world's largest suppliers of mobile phones," analyst Kevin Restivo said in a statement.

Stalwarts such as Nokia are losing share in the feature phone category to low-cost suppliers such as Micromax, TCL-Alcatel and Huawei."

Struggling Nokia, still the world's largest phone maker by volume, saw its phone sales shrinking 20 percent from a year ago. This helped Samsung to close the gap to the Finnish firm in the overall cellphone market to the lowest level ever.

Some analysts already forecast for Samsung to become the world's largest cellphone vendor next year.

(Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Andrew Callus)

Apple has more cash than US government today

New York, July 29 (IANS) As of today, Apple boss Steve Jobs is richer than Uncle Sam.

While the world's most powerful government has just $73.76 billion in its reserves, the world's top technology company has a neat cash pile of $75.87 billion Thursday.

The US Treasury Department Thursday warned that it has now only this much operating budget as Republicans and Democrats fight over raising the nation's debt ceiling. With only that much reserve at its disposal, the Obama White House has warned the Republicans that the US government won't be able to meet its obligations as of Aug 2.

Facing a government default, Obama can definitely turn to Steve Jobs to give him a very brief breathing space.

The failure by the Republicans and Democrats to come to a compromise to raise the current $14.3 trillion debt ceiling by Aug 2 could lead to a hike in interest rates. The already battered dollar may also plunge further.

With its market capitalisation of $363.25 billion, Apple is the second largest company on the planet after American oil giant Exxon Mobil. The Cupertino-based Apple started rising suddenly in 2007 when it entered the smart phone market with the launch of its first version of the iPhone.

Within three years, Apple went on to overhaul BlackBerry company Research In Motion (RIM) which invented the smart phone and dominated the market.

But its fortunes skyrocketed last year with the launch of the iPad tablet which has sold in millions. In fact, the iPhone and the iPad have made Apple the czar of mobile computing technology as rivals play up catch-up.

The stock of the company, which doesn't pay dividends, has now touched $400.

After Apple, another non-financial company sitting on a huge cash reserve is Microsoft whose own pile is about $40 billion.

World's Most Expensive Watches !! Will U Believe it????

Rs 33,77,250



Rs36,02,400


Rs57,63,840


Rs 72,49,830

Rs1,01,59,875


Rs1,06,10,250


Rs1,26,40,641.48


Rs1,43,19,540


Rs1,44,09,600


Rs1,64,69,722.50



Rs2,28,75,240


Rs2,29,15,767


Rs2,81,43,750




Rs3,10,70,700


Rs3,15,21,000


Rs3,19,14,652.26


Rs3,39,97,650


Rs3,51,50,418


Rs4,05,27,000


Rs4,50,30,000


Rs4,50,30,000

Rs 4,91,66,861.07


Rs 8,16,25,881


Rs10,80,72,000


Rs 12,15,81,000


Rs 12,40,57,650


Rs14,85,99,000

Behold Muammar Gaddafi’s ‘Libyan Rocket’

Gaddafi's Car

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has always been internationally recognised for his vibrant fashion sense, sleeping in Bedouin tents wherever he goes, wearing huge provocative buttons, being guarded by heavily armed women, just to name a few. An epitome of Gaddafi's eccentricity is the car he designed for himself, which Libya claims is the safest vehicle on earth. However, don't go into any details to back up the claim.

The Saroukh el-Jamahiriya, which means Libyan rocket, is a five-seater saloon with the nose and tail of a rocket and powered by a 230bhp V6. Launched at a conference called the Organization of African Unity and organized by Colonel Gaddafi in 2009, the Libyan Rocket comes with airbags, an electronic defense system and collapsible bumpers that supposedly help out in a crash.. Wonder what is an "electronic defense system"? Apparently, no one knows what it is or how it works.

Dukhali Al-Meghareff, chairman of the Libyan Arab Domestic Investment company which produced the prototype, touted it as revolutionary in automotive history. "The leader spent so many hours of his valuable time thinking of an effective solution. It is the safest car produced anywhere," said Mr Meghareff.

4G wait till early next year

New Delhi: High-speed mobile and Internet services, using fourth-generation (4G) technology, will be rolled out only by early next year as operators are still in talks with equipment vendors.

Operators are expected to finalise contracts by the third quarter of 2011 (October-December) and start rolling out services by early 2012, "when consumer demand and operator ecosystem will be in place".

"By the end of this year, the entire ecosystem for effective rollout of 4G in India will be in place, including handsets, data cards and networks," said Ying Weimin, president of GSM, UMT and LTE network at Huawei.

Long-term evolution (LTE) technology, or 4G, allows data downloads at higher speeds. Essentially, a four-minute song can be downloaded in four seconds.

Beginning with metros and high revenue earning circles, 4G is expected to spread to other towns and cities and attain pan-India coverage over a period of two years.

"The business model that is emerging is that operators will sign up 2-3 equipment vendors and give rollout contracts for different telecom circles," said an operator gearing up to launch 4G. The potential deal size is expected to range between $250 million and $4 billion for a single contract.

According to industry experts, Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries-owned Infotel, being the only pan-India 4G player, is expected to set the trend in service rollout and tariffs.

"All operators are waiting to see how Infotel forges alliances with vendors and deploys the new technology," experts said.

Infotel has won licences in 22 circles. Others to bag licences are Aircel (8), Bharti Airtel and Qualcomm (4), Delhi-based Tikona (5) and UK-based Augere (1).

Mukesh Ambani is likely to align Infotel's rollout with the global 4G road map, under which countries such as the US, South Africa and Latin America will go live between 2011-end and mid-2012, experts said.

Though the migration of millions of mobile users to the 4G network will initially be slow because of the lack of affordable LTE-enabled handsets and devices, industry players are optimistic about a fast uptake.

"Prices will gradually decrease as more subscribers opt for LTE. We experienced a surge in 2G and 3G mobile telephony with reduction in handset prices. The same can be expected of LTE in a shorter period because of the rapidly maturing ecosystem," said Mark Atkinson, head of global LTE sales at Nokia Siemens Network.

Push for sport in Ratna list

New Delhi, July 22: The Union home ministry is learnt to have endorsed and forwarded to the Prime Minister's Office a proposal to include sport in the Bharat Ratna category, an administrative process that can culminate in the selection of Sachin Tendulkar for the highest civilian honour.

Till now, the honour has been awarded for "exceptional service towards advancement of art, literature and science, and in recognition of public service of the highest order".

On April 15, sports minister Ajay Maken sent a note to the home ministry recommending the inclusion of sport in the list. P. Chidambaram this week forwarded the letter to the Prime Minister's Office with "positive observations", sources said.

Neither Maken nor Chidambaram has named Tendulkar, but the timing of the sports minister's note ' days after India's World Cup victory ' makes the connection clear.

Maken, a Tendulkar fan, wrote to Chidambaram: "I write to you knowing that you are an ardent sports lover...."

He claimed that sport "singularly surpasses any other idea... as a cohesive force and nurtures our national pride" and helped fight "divisive tendencies".

Although many MPs and fans had demanded that the Bharat Ratna be conferred on Tendulkar, a counter-opinion also exists.

Last year, The Telegraph had said in a leading article that the authorities should not get "carried away by popular sentiment" and confer the Bharat Ratna on Tendulkar. The leading article on March 4, 2010, had asked if sport counted as "a serious enough sphere of achievement".

"...And if it does, should cricket have top priority?" it added, citing how the game was played in a handful of countries and rarely attracted top athletes, who pursued more strenuous games.

The article had acknowledged Tendulkar's fine qualities of batsmanship as well as many records and placed them in context.

Last February, The Telegraph columnist Ashok Mitra had warned that handing the award to Tendulkar might open the floodgates for fans to demand similar honour for, say, the tennis star of the day, or film stars.

"It is a predicament the authorities could face any day now: to decide whether to weigh on the same scale the great nation-builders at one end and the hugely successful, hugely rich professional persons at the other," Mitra wrote. "The only way out is to abandon altogether the Republic Day awards."

Officially, Bharat Ratna recommendations are made by the Prime Minister, Vice-President and the leader of the Opposition, and the President makes the choice.

wow!!

Have a look at this video guys its interesting!!

https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=2165087856385&oid=200003136696696&comments

Ethical Hacking!!

In common usage, a hacker is a person who breaks into computers and computer networks, either for profit or motivated by the challenge.^[1] The subculture that has evolved around hackers is often referred to as the computer underground but is now an open community

Types of Hacking

1) Inside Jobs – Most security breeches originate inside the network that is under attack. Inside jobs include stealing passwords (which hackers then use or sell), performing industrial espionage, causing harm (as disgruntled employees), or committing simple misuse. Sound policy enforcement and observant employees who guard their passwords and PCs can thwart many of these security breeches.

2) Rogue Access Points – Rogue access points (APs) are unsecured wireless access points that outsiders can easily breech. (Local hackers often advertise rogue APs to each other.) Rogue APs are most often connected by well-meaning but ignorant employees.

3) Back Doors – Hackers can gain access to a network by exploiting back doors�’administrative shortcuts, configuration errors, easily deciphered passwords, and unsecured dial-ups. With the aid of computerized searchers (bots), hackers can probably find any weakness in your network.

4) Viruses and Worms – Viruses and worms are self-replicating programs or code fragments that attach themselves to other programs (viruses) or machines (worms). Both viruses and worms attempt to shut down networks by flooding them with massive amounts of bogus traffic, usually through e-mail.

5) Trojan Horses – Trojan horses, which are attached to other programs, are the leading cause of all break-ins. When a user downloads and activates a Trojan horse, the hacked software (SW) kicks off a virus, password gobbler, or remote-control SW that gives the hacker control of the PC.

6) Denial of Service – DoS attacks give hackers a way to bring down a network without gaining internal access. DoS attacks work by flooding the access routers with bogus traffic (which can be e-mail or Transmission Control Protocol, TCP, packets).

Distributed DoSs (DDoS5) are coordinated DoS attacks from multiple sources. A DDoS is more difficult to block because it uses multiple, changing, source IP addresses.

7) Anarchists, Crackers, and Kiddies – Who are these people, and why are they attacking I your network?

Anarchists are people who just like to break stuff. They usually exploit any target of opportunity.

Crackers are hobbyists or professionals who break passwords and develop Trojan horses or other SW (called warez). They either use the SW themselves (for bragging rights) or sell it for profit.

Script kiddies are hacker wannabes. They have no real hacker skills, so they buy or download warez, which they launch.

Other attackers include disgruntled employees, terrorists, political operatives, or anyone else who feels slighted, exploited, ripped off, or unloved.

Sniffing and Spoofing – Sniffing refers to the act of intercepting TCP packets. This interception can happen through simple eavesdropping or something more sinister.

Spoofing is the act of sending an illegitimate packet with an expected acknowledgment (ACK), which a hacker can guess, predict, or obtain by snooping.

Aptitude

Hi guys preparing for a competitive exams ?? placements?? Wanna enhance ur analytical,verbal and technical skills??

Its a fantastic platform to work with...

visit www.indiabix.com

Use of Internet affecting our memory, finds study

New York, July 15 (ANI): Researchers have found that the widespread use of search engines and online databases is affecting the way people remember information.

To know whether people were more likely to remember information that could be easily retrieved from a computer, Betsy Sparrow, an assistant professor of psychology at Columbia and her collaborators, Daniel M. Wegner of Harvard and Jenny Liu of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, staged different memory experiments, reports the New York Times.

In one experiment where participants typed 40 bits of trivia, the team found that the subjects were significantly more likely to remember information if they thought they would not be able to find it later.

"Participants did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statement they had read," wrote the authors.

A second experiment was aimed at determining whether computer accessibility affects precisely what we remember.

"If asked the question whether there are any countries with only one colour in their flag, for example," the researchers wrote, "do we think about flags - or immediately think to go online to find out?"

In this case, participants were asked to remember both the trivia statement itself and which of five computer folders it was saved in. The researchers were surprised to find that people seemed better able to recall the folder.

"That kind of blew my mind," Dr. Sparrow said.

The experiment explores an aspect of what is known as transactive memory - the notion that we rely on our family, friends and co-workers as well as reference material to store information for us.

The Internet's effects on memory are still largely unexplored, Dr. Sparrow said, adding that her experiments had led her to conclude that the Internet has become our primary external storage system.

"Human memory," she said, "is adapting to new communications technology." (ANI)

Beware of Tendulkar, say ex-England captains

Sachin Tendulkar has been in scintillating form for the past few seasons and even after 22 years on the road in international cricket, former England captains Michael Vaughan, Nasser Hussain, Mike Atherton and Graham Gooch feel the talismanic batsman will pose the biggest threat to the Englishmen in the much anticipated Test series that begins next week at Lord's.

"Sachin's a different player now from 2007; the best players in the world change little things about themselves to keep themselves in the game."

"In the last two years he's become more aggressive, he's gone back to his old way of trying to score when for a period he tried to survive," Vaughan told The Cricketer magazine.

"Chris Tremlett bowled well against him in 2007 and he's a miles better bowler now. But Sachin doesn't have any weaknesses although every batsman is vulnerable on and around the off stump early on. England might go aggressive at him, test him with a few short balls, I've seen people do that over the last two years and it hasn't affected him," Vaughan added."

Hussain, on his part, felt that Tendulkar has managed to rediscover his aggressive instincts, even after two decades of international cricket.

"Technically and mentally Sachin has changed little over the years but he has changed his game plan."

"He began as a flamboyant, extravagant stroke- maker who had all the shots and simply loved the game. Once the records and the hundreds started to be racked up, he turned into a run- machine."

"The Indian public became driven by his stats and consumed by a Sachin infatuation."

"His priority was his wicket. Once Sehwag arrived, he was happy to let him tee off."

"In the last couple of years he has rediscovered his flamboyance and is playing shots again," Hussain said.

Another England captain and astute batsman, Atherton, recounted how dropping Tendulkar proved to be an expensive and unforgettable experience.

"I dropped him in the gully at Trent Bridge (in 1996) and he went on to get a big hundred."

"He's not a man you want to put down early on. He was calm at the crease, difficult to get out of his bubble."

"There weren't any flaws. He was just a very solid, orthodox player."

"One of the most remarkable things is that he has hardly changed at all, exactly the same set- up, very few changes to his method. He's trusted in his technique and power all this time." "He's stayed true to his game."

Gooch, who saw the Mumbai batsman blossom as a youngster, said: "No one had ever seen him in 1990. As a 17-year-old it was evident that the lad had great skill, great balance, great timing, an eye for the ball."

"You could see he had all the attributes to make a top player."

For one so young he had a poise and composure about his batting."

"You don't often get that in young players; you get the talent and the stroke-making but poise, authority and composure normally come."

Reproduced From Mail Today. Copyright 2011. MTNPL. All rights reserved.

• 
  
  

Infosys gives its employees ‘a voice’

Infosys Limited may not be your friendliest neighbour or the most employee-friendly IT company around. But they sure are making amends.

'Infy Bubble', their recently launched internal social networking site is supposedly a platform for disgruntled Infoscions to vent on. The site mirrors Facebook and allows employees to connect across borders with colleagues as well as bicker about anything they want, said Nandita Gurjar, Vice President and Group Head, Human Resources, Infosys Limited.

She added that the site doesn't encourage personal attacks but it does welcome negative feedback about their bosses and peers. The site also allows them to share photographs and other stuff just like they do on Facebook, thus giving them a platform to engage themselves with other employees.

This is one of the internal PR exercises Infosys is conscientiously indulging in to salvage their image. The company has been battling severe criticism and high attrition rates lately.

And, despite rising wages hurting the IT bellwhether's profit margins, it isn't stopping its hiring momentum. Infosys that plans to hire 12,000 employees this quarter has already added 9,992 employees this year.

When asked if this would further affect their revenues, the management strongly responded by saying that they are going as per their yearly target of 45,000 new additions. With the improving business sentiment and revival in IT spends , IT firms are stepping up hiring to meet demand for their services.

The company today posted a 15.72 per cent jump in consolidated net profit to Rs 1,722 crore for the first quarter ended June 30, 2011. During the first quarter, Infosys and its subsidiaries saw over 7,000 employees leaving.

As we know, with increased hiring comes a high rate of attrition. But the company isn't really worried about it. Gurjar says, "This is the quarter when we normally expect employees to go for higher studies. 30% of the employees who have quit cited this reason."

She says, the company can't stop employees from pursuing higher studies. However, they are pondering on how to get them back with acquired skill sets. Gurjar says, "95% of the employees who quit to pursue higher studies actually want to come back. But since we have a structured process they have to undergo the complete interview cycle in the campuses. So may be in the near future we might have a policy where an employee can come back after getting MBA degrees or something else without getting into the complete interview cycle.".

But there is an interesting bit of information that Gurjar revealed. "34% per cent of our total employee workforce is woman. So in this quarter 32% of the woman employees who quit didn't cite any reason for quitting the job. They just wanted to take a break. Now this is something that we want to review."

While they ponder on what's working and what's not, the company is also planning an Infosys radio service through which the management will regularly interact with the employees. Looks like the company is engaging in some serious PR exercises with employees to build a few bridges. But will it curtail attrition? In true Infosys management lingo, "We might have to wait for the next quarter" for an answer.

HP TouchPad review

As things get older they tend to get bigger. It's the same for people, corporations, models of cars, budget deficits... and so it is for webOS. As Palm was in the process of being subsumed its great mobile operating system was being eyed for much broader things, far bigger than the little phones it had previously been flashed on. Things like printers and desktops and laptops, but for its first proper foray outside of a phone it has a tall task: compete in the brutally vicious tablet space.

Its weapon is the TouchPad, a 9.7-inch tablet from HP that got official back in February and will be available July 1st (if you don't manage to find it earlier) -- $499.99 for the 16GB model, $599.99 for 32GB. That's exactly on parity with the WiFi iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab 10.1, current kings of the tablet court. Does this plus-sized Palm progeny really have what it takes to hang at that price point, or is this just a chubby pretender that's outgrown its britches? Read on to find out.

HP TouchPad, unboxing and comparison

Hardware

The TouchPad slides out of its cardboard box with a lot of resistance, a precise paper seal creating a vacuum that does its best to keep its tablet firmly ensconced within. Keep pulling and the pressure equalizes, the box yields, and you're granted access to what can only be called a somewhat chunky tablet. It weighs in at 1.65 pounds (750 grams), heavier than the 1.3 pound (600 gram) iPad 2, heavier than the 1.26 pound (570 gram) Galaxy Tab 10.1, and heavier even than the 1.6 pound (730 gram) MotorolaXoom -- which is itself hardly a delicate flower.

Its back is black plastic, glossy with a piano-like finish. It's reminiscent of the early, similarly sheen PS3 consoles -- cool to touch and nice to look at, but an astonishingly effective fingerprint magnet. A concave shape makes it comfortable to hold for those of us with bigger hands, more so than the flat profiles of those more slender machines mentioned above, but that comes at the expense of it feeling a bit hollow. The iPad or the Tab give impressions of solidity, of devices with not a hint of room to spare (despite that not necessarily being the case), but the TouchPad feels like there's plenty of space in there for, well, more stuff.

That said, the tablet's dark, simple design doesn't make room for many externally defining characteristics, making figuring out which way is "up" a bit of a challenge. But, get it turned the right way 'round and you'll find a petite chrome power button on the right side of the upper edge. A similarly bright volume rocker lies just around the corner, and if you move further down the right edge you'll find a little blanked-out spot that could make room for a SIM in future iterations.

Continuing clockwise around, a micro-USB port divides the bottom edge, while on the left two inset speaker grilles lurk beneath holes cut from the side of the case. They do provide comprehensively good audio for a tablet, meaning all that Beats talk Jon Rubenstein gave us wasn't completely PR fluff. That said, the sharp ridges left around these recessed tweeters aren't exactly friendly to the hands. No, the TouchPad won't leave you with bloody palms (which would be delightfully tragic) but literal rough edges like this are surprising on a device that's been in development for this long.

Back up top again you'll find the 3.5mm headphone jack on the left side, while a small microphone sits between that and the power button. Around the front is a 9.7-inch, 1,024 x 768 display, matching the iPad and, again like Apple's tablet, that display sits above a small Home button. It's in almost exactly the same place and serves almost exactly the same functionality: push this to pop out of your current app and get back to the system menu, but more about that in a bit.

Performance and battery life

We're having a bit of a hard time quantifying the performance of the TouchPad because, well, it should be fast with its 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor paired with 1GB of RAM, but too often left us waiting. Bootup, for example, takes 1:15, which is an eon compared to 30 seconds or so on both the Galaxy Tab and the iPad 2. Similarly, we ran our freshly-booted TouchPad through the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark and netted a 3,988ms result. That again compares unfavorably to a 2,213ms on the Galaxy Tab 10.1, and a nearly identical 2,173ms on the iPad 2.

But numbers aren't everything, unless you're a mathematician or an accountant or an astrologist. So, how does the TouchPad fare in real life? Browsing is reasonably snappy most of the time, but we encountered some pages that just seemed to take a particularly long time to load. Our site, full of graphics and Flash, loads quickly. The Gmail site, however, takes ages and ages... and ages. Online video plays in the browser, but rarely well.

Most apps are quick to load and responsive enough, but some, like Weatherbug, are very slow. It's easy enough to blame the developers getting to grips with new hardware at this point, but ultimately we never felt wowed by the performance. Sure, flipping between tasks is quick and snappy, but changing from landscape to portrait is occasionally sluggish and, after about a day or so, we found we had to give it a reboot to regain optimum performance.

We're told that an OTA update is in development that will help to address some performance concerns, specifically with web browsing and orientation adjustments. However, we're not sure exactly when this update will be hitting the airwaves.

Battery life according to HP is 9 hours for continuous video playback, and in our test (WiFi on, Bluetooth off, video looping) we came close to that: just over eight and a half hours. That puts it slightly ahead of the Motorola Xoom but again behind the Tab and iPad 2. Ultimately this means the tablet will comfortably give you a day of serious use, or multiple days of more casual tapping.

	Battery Life
HP TouchPad	8:33
Apple iPad 2	10:26
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1	9:55
Apple iPad	9:33
Motorola Xoom	8:20
T-Mobile G-Slate	8:18
Archos 101	7:20
RIM BlackBerry PlayBook	7:01
Samsung Galaxy Tab	6:09
Dell Streak 7	3:26

Display / audio

As we said earlier, it's a 9.7-inch, 1024 x 768 IPS panel up front that matches the iPad 2 pixel-for-pixel and doesn't disappoint when it comes to other important aspects of viewing. Contrast, viewing angles, and brightness all impress, delivering plenty of light for bright or dark rooms and angles wide enough to make sharing with a friend a cinch.

The speakers likewise impress -- as you'd hope given the cavernous cut-outs they receive on the side. HP stopped short of slapping a Beats logo on the device but makes no qualms about talking up its branded inclusion in marketing materials. In most ways the speakers deliver, offering (relatively) full sound compared to the tinny mess we're used to. That said, we were surprised to find maximum volume to actually be lower than what the stereo slivers on either side of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 can manage.

Software

Finally, webOS on the big screen -- or bigger anyway. The TouchPad is HP's first device running webOS 3.0, a more tablet-friendly version of the little mobile operating system that we've come to love over the years. If you're familiar with earlier versions on perhaps a Pre or a Veer you'll be quite comfortable here because, on the outset, not a lot has changed, particularly when it comes to our favorite part of the OS: multitasking.

Either tap the physical Home button or just swipe up from the bottom of the screen and you'll get into the patented webOS card view, which has been often imitated but never quite duplicated. Each app gets its own card and, should that program spawn a new window (a new browser instance, say, or a new email) that additional card joins a stack. You can then shuffle through the cards in any given pile, drag them around, or just flick them off the top of the screen to send them to the big garbage collector in the sky.

As ever, navigating apps like this is genuinely fun; there's something very satisfying about literally throwing away a window that you no longer want cluttering up your screen or your RAM. And it's all helped by everything in the OS being generally snappy and responsive -- even if the applications themselves are occasionally rather less so. Cycling through running programs and swiping around is quick, but the experience is less gesture-heavy than previous phone versions.

HP TouchPad apps

In fact, you'll really only be using gestures to switch between tasks. The Gesture Area (the spot on the bezel beneath the display on webOS phones) is no longer there for things like going back and forth in the browser. You'll need to use the buttons in the menu bar at the top of the window for that sort of thing, which is a bit pedestrian and boring. You can still flick up to get the card view, or tap the home button once for that, twice to bring up Launcher.

The Just Type feature, where you "just type" to find contacts or documents, hasn't been significantly tweaked, letting you start pecking away at the on-screen keyboard to look up contacts or enter in web URLs. It's a little less instant feeling since you first need to tap on the "Just Type" section of the screen -- unless you pair an optional keyboard -- but it's still handy.

Other tweaks include notifications that appear in a top status bar. You'll see an alert should you get a flurry of new emails, and you can quickly flick through them before tapping one to view it in the dedicated app. You can also get quick access to toggling the device's various antennae, and of course get the time and a remaining battery life. There's a screen orientation lock here, but we were wishing for a physical switch as we found the TouchPad to be hugely, well, touchy when it came to flipping from portrait to landscape.

Finally, there's the unlock screen, which looks a lot like what you'll find on Android Honeycomb. Just grab the lock and drag it away to get in to the tablet. The screen will give you some information about what notifications are waiting for you behind the screen -- the sender and subject of an email, for example -- but rather curiously there's no way to jump right to those items from the lock screen.

Email

The integrated email application is easy and effective, relying on what HP calls Synergy -- a means to tie together multiple accounts and show them all in one view. It'll work with Google, Exchange, Yahoo!, MobileMe, and good 'ol POP3 / SMTP out of the box. We attached our Gmail account and, within a minute or two of watching a spinny indicator do its thing, all our labels appeared as folders and all our emails as, well, emails.

This is probably the best demonstration of the moveable panes UI concept that HP is pushing with the TouchPad. By default, along the left you get a list of folders, in the middle a list of messages within the current folder, and on the right a view of the selected message. But, you can tap below the messages list and drag left to hide the folders, making more room for reading, or tap below the email and drag left to bring that full screen. You can then drag back when you want your lists again. It's intuitive and it works -- except when it doesn't, as we'll see in the Facebook app in just a moment.

Ultimately, heavy Gmail users will miss some features available on Android, but this is among the best simple, mobile email clients we've yet sampled.

Calendar

The Calendar app is similarly easy, again pulling in any related Google information should you be using it. Like with email, Synergy lets you sync with many places, including Facebook, Exchange, and Yahoo!, though we found a few selections in the Catalog that bring their own data to the party -- including a Formula One schedule that's particularly handy with all the back-to-back races this season. Ultimately it isn't particularly more or less exciting than, say, Calendar on Honeycomb, but the ability to easily aggregate multiple calendars from disparate sources makes it a useful addition here. At least, for people who have things to do at set times.

Browser

The loss of the Gesture Area means you won't be swiping to go back and forward here. You'll instead rely on a rather more traditional looking bar full of buttons. The app will also load the traditional, desktop versions of pages for the most part.

There's no tabbed browsing as such, instead you get carded, each new instance added to your stack. You just tap to get to the one you want, or of course flick the ones you don't want off to oblivion. Flash 10.3 is pre-installed and overall browsing performance is reasonably good, but we did notice some odd stops and starts and delays in loading some pages. Full-screen HD video plays, but not particularly smoothly. The same videos were far creamier on the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Once loaded, pinching to zoom is quick and responsive, cruising around pages is snappy as can be, and you'll find the familiar "bounce" effect should you try to drag beyond any edge of the screen. In fact, things are very bouncy here.

Keyboard

The on-screen virtual keyboard is reasonably roomy, giving you the full QWERTY experience with a full row of number keys in either landscape or portrait. The symbol key gives you access to your usual array of special characters, though many of the more popular ones are available right there on the number keys as well. You're also given buttons for each of six smiley faces, including, tragically, the sad crying face and, rather more excitingly, the OMG face. There's also a <3 button, welcome addition for the particularly lazy typist.

The TouchPad is quite good at fixing many spelling mistakes and the like, subtly auto-correcting as you go and alerting you when a fix has been made with a small prompt above the word. That's definitely nice, but we do wish the keyboard would automatically insert apostrophes when typing things like "wont" or "dont." HP did, at least, put the apostrophe key right there on the front so you won't have to go digging for it.

Facebook

The TouchPad gets a custom Facebook app that is better than the Facebook apps on most other mobile platforms because, well, there aren't many that are optimized for tablets -- at least not until that mythical iPad entry launches. This one certainly is optimized and it looks good -- as it should considering that HP handled the development here.

Naturally it's focused on giving you a view into the happenings of those you've chosen to indicate you're friendly with on the service. You're given two perspectives: a traditional list view and a less symmetrical grid arrangement that presents boxes of varying sizes corresponding to the size of the update posted by your associate -- and possibly to the volume of their hubris.

Both rely on the same sort of sliding panes used in the email application, but when you're in list view here the sliding pane inexplicably doesn't fill the screen after being dragged left. It just moves left, leaving a blank spot on the right. Not the end of the world, but something of an obvious bug.

The app also lets you quickly browse through your catalog of associates, view all their birthdays in one handy list, and of course peruse your photo collection. It's a solid addition to the tablet, making social networking easy.

Twitter

Though you'll get a highly polished Facebook app out of the box, you're left to your own devices if you want to tweet. You can, of course, use the web interface, but serious users will immediately start trawling through the App Catalog to see what's available -- and sadly it's rather slim pickins. We found only one Twitter app that was fully-functional and optimized for the TouchPad, a beta of an app called Spaz HD, and we must say it's reasonably good.

It offers a similar multi-column view that's configurable to list your feed, your mentions, a search, direct messages, you get the picture. These columns lack the dragability and resizeability of the other custom apps, but can at least be rearranged, ala TweetDeck.

Bing Maps

Google Maps and Earth are definitely two of the most usable apps on Android; here it's Bing Maps attempting to offer the same experience, and doing a reasonably good job at it, too. The app gives a topographical view to start, but you can of course pop over to a satellite imagery view or the service's Birds Eye angle, using multi-touch gestures to get a good view on that potential vacation destination. (Car propped up on cinder blocks out front? Bad sign.)

You can save locations, view traffic conditions, and get yourself directions too. We're told the mapping functionality has been exposed to TouchPad devs who want to add a little cartography to their apps, but at this point we're not seeing anybody take Microsoft up on that offer -- including the Weatherbug app, which renders its own maps using Google data and, sadly, offers some of the worst performance we saw on the tablet.

QuickOffice

As was rumored, the TouchPad is unable to create or edit Office-like documents out of the box. It does ship with QuickOffice pre-installed, but that offers read-only views into your pseudo-productivity files, and even that was a feat it couldn't manage for long. After a few days of use the app inexplicably stopped working. It would just never load. Ever. We're told a fix for that is coming "soon" and that document editing will be available by "mid-summer."

Epicurious

Epicurious brings its culinary delights to the TouchPad with a clean, easy to use app that takes advantage of the surface area here to display recipes, ingredients, and lots of beautiful food photography, ensuring that if you weren't hungry when you tapped the Epicurious icon you will be before you sling it off the top of your screen. You can also create a shopping list if you like directly from any recipe's ingredients, but this tablet's a little too big to be dragging along to the grocery store.

Printing

Given that the TouchPad is manufactured by a company that earned a lot of its consumer cred by becoming nearly synonymous with the word "printer," it should come as no surprise that the TouchPad supports printing out of the box -- assuming you own a compatible printer. But, it should, perhaps, also come as no surprise that the number of printers that are supported is somewhat limited. Any HP-branded network-connected PCL-capable ink jet or laser machine can be connected and printed to by the tablet. This covers the vast majority of HP printers sold over the past five years, but if yours is a little older or, perhaps, a little more generic, you might need to start looking for alternatives.

Video calling

Skype support is built in to the TouchPad and webOS 3.0, which is good, because otherwise you'd havenothing at all to do with that 1.3 megapixel camera up front. All the contacts on the device are Synergy'd together, which makes for a bit of a mess if you just want to Skype somebody. Also a bit of a mess: what you'll look like to whoever you call. We tried multiple video chats and, while the video going down to the tablet looked okay, that going out looked generally awful despite sitting on a solid 802.11n connection. Just rolled out of bed? No worries, you're good.

App Catalog and Pivot

The selection in the App Catalog is quite good, but the subset of apps actually optimized to take advantage of the full display here is quite slim. HP pledges to have 300 TouchPad-optimized apps available in the Catalog in time for the launch, and a further 6,200 from phones. Those apps will be mostly unable to make use of the resolution, running in a small picture of a phone, which is a little quaint but also disappointing, especially since you can't even rotate that faux phone from landscape to portrait.

Those few apps that have been optimized are good, and the curated Pivot magazine definitely highlights some of the better ones, but ultimately we didn't really find anything here that made us want to hang up our iPad and shut down our Galaxy Tab. That HP-developed Facebook app is really the only piece of software that's genuinely better than what's available elsewhere, and we think we could make do without it.

Touch to Share and Pre 3 compatibility

It's perhaps a little early to get too excited about what the TouchPad can do with the Pre 3, given that it'll be awhile before release. But, should you find yourself in possession of one of HP's next portrait QWERTY sliders rest assured that it'll happily talk to your TouchPad.

The two pair over Bluetooth quickly and, once suitably synched, can exchange contact and messaging information. Getting a call on your phone? You can pick it up on your tablet and use it like a gigantic Blueooth headset. Want to send an SMS? Don't squint at the little, rubbery keyboard tucked within the Pre 3, tap away at the expansive, glossy one in the TouchPad.

But, of course, the biggest news here is Touch to Share, which allows you to open a webpage on your phone, tap that phone against your tablet, and have the tablet bring up that page. You can also send URLs the other way or, indeed, swap by just having the browser open on either end. In this way there's obviously not a lot of smarts behind this functionality -- either device just pushes addresses when proximity is detected -- but there's a fair amount of elegance to the process of exchanging information here.

Camera

We've often downplayed the importance of high-quality rearward-facing cameras on tablets because, well, holding up a big slab of a gadget to take a picture of something is far from easy and equally distant from anything rewarding. That said, we certainly don't hate the things and having one is a standard feature on modern tablets -- and so we're a bit perplexed by the complete omission of a rear-facing camera here.

You do get an 1.3 megapixel front-facing shooter, which at this point can only be used within the integrated video chat application -- Skype. Because of this we're unable to give any accurate description of the capabilities of said sensor, simply because we couldn't capture the output from it.

Accessories

HP TouchPad accessories

Touchstone Charging Dock

The Pre wowed us with its inductive charging built-in, and the TouchPad continues that tradition with its Touchstone Charging Dock, which too features wireless charging and sets the tablet into Exhibition Mode. In the settings you can tell it to display a fancy looking clock, your current agenda, or cycle through photos and videos. Other apps will be available down the road that you can select as well.

The dock itself is of a simple construction, with a swivel-out stand that lets you situate the tablet at just about any angle you like, and rubberized feet to keep it from slipping flat. At $80 it's a lot for a glorified dock, though the original Touchstone wasn't exactly good value when it launched for $50.

Wireless Keyboard

For one to embrace the true post-PC world one must, naturally, give up one's PC. That means the PC's keyboard too, and if writing every last email on a touchscreen doesn't sound particularly utopian you'll want a keyboard. HP would like you to use this one, a $70 wireless unit that connects quickly and easily over Bluetooth and gives you access to a full QWERTY layout plus a number of special keys. Each key is flat, well-spaced, and the feel is almost exactly the same as Apple's wireless keyboard. In fact, almost everything is exactly the same as Apple's unit, which isn't a bad thing.

You can turn the tablet's screen on and off with a dedicated power button, switch between apps, adjust the screen brightness, and, most importantly, Just Type by just typing. If you're a heavy tablet user it's very, very nice to have, a light and slim design makes it easy to pack, but a $70 price tag makes for an expensive accessory.

Wrap-up

Oh, happy day, when one first receives a device that's been eagerly anticipated for months. Sad, sad day when that device fails to live up to one's expectations. We all wanted the TouchPad to really compete, to give us a compelling third party to join the iOS and Android boxes on the ballot. But, alas, this isn't quite it.

The shortage of apps is a problem, no doubt, but that will change with time. What won't change is the hardware, and there we're left a little disappointed. Holding this in one hand and either an iPad 2 or a Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the other leaves you wondering why you'd ever be compelled to buy the HP when you could have the thinner, lighter alternative for the same money. Meanwhile, the performance left us occasionally wanting and, well, what is there to say.

If the Pre 3 were out today and if the TouchPad were $100 less we could maybe see giving it a go, if only to root for the underdog. But, as it is, you have to put your heart and two decades worth of Palm obsession ahead of any buying rationale. With such compelling alternatives readily available, that's asking rather a lot.