Touchpad updates break music playback

The latest updates to TouchPad WebOS added a few new things, but they also seem pretty buggy... I talked about the brightness issue... There's also a sound issue where the general sound just randomly goes all "tinny" and weak, like after turning it on from sleep mode. Sometimes turning the screen off (sleep mode) and on again will fix the issue, but often it requires a full restart to get the sound back to normal.

The most recent update added a nice video function: now when you tilt the TouchPad portrait or sideways the other say, video will also shift to accomadate the new view (this is also a feature found on the Blackberry PlayBook) It's not something I've been screaming for but it can be handy to reposition the side-mounted speakers so they're facing up instead of down. The problem with this new feature is that when you tilt it out of the TouchPad default video mode (landscape with the power button facing left) there will be some coloured flashing lines along the bottom and right side of the video. Very distracting, kinda renders the feature almost useless in some cases.

But I just discovered the latest bug-- while playing music and browsing, sometimes while a website is loading it sill cut the music off. The music suddenly gets paused and you have to go into the music app & hit the Play button again. I don't know if it's a memory issue or what but I don't recall many problems with listening to music while web browsing before this latest update 4.0.5.86.

I actually wish that whoever is issuing these updates, I assume it's HP-- would just give us the CHOICE of whether we want to update or not. With HP washing their hands of WebOS, there is probably much less quality control with firmware updates than when they were invested in it. Obviously I like new features, but I like even MORE that features already in place don't get broken. If I have to choose between the two, I'd go with having a stable device rather than a buggy one that has a few new features. This is the dilemma facing all gadget owners and a universal problem of most devices nowadays.

And I typed up this post using my TouchPAd, the first time I beldive I've done this. Looking at ghe ghypos you can see wht a togal BUGGER it is. I'm leVing this paragraph uncorrected so you can see what sort of problems I face. It's hard to type the letter a without capitalising ig bdcause ghe shift kdey is so close. But just typing on a virtual keyboard is a pain.. And of course there's no Arrow keys so moving between type is more trouble than it should be.


later
don