The (self-given) gift that keeps on giving?

Once upon a time, I brought home a shiny, almost-firesale-priced 16GB HP Touchpad, with the desire to get in on the tablet game and, hopefully, have a useful media-consumption device that anybody in the family could use.  I went through a WebOS phase, believing that it Kept It Simple Stupid(tm) while also allowing functionality approximating that of a true multi-user implementation.  And indeed, the little-tablet-that-could saw its fair share of Castle and Young and the Resless (the former for me, the latter for the significant other).

And as support waned for WebOS, I tinkered with Android – and Android eventually preempted WebOS, the latter of which saw its use decline drastically once an issue popped up that made it inconvenient to apply community homebrew patches and updates.

But the device soldiered on, and it continued to be a media-consumption device – although my heart-of-hearts still yearned for a true multi-user solution, particularly one that would allow me to move seamlessly between my personal Android phone and the Android tablet.

Said Android version was pegged at 4.0 for  many months, until the plunge was made to install 4.1 – if only to gain some speed and newness, if not multi-user capability.  Ultimately 4.2 was the goal, and with it the realization of true multi-user support.

Meanwhile, other factors conspired to reduce the Touchpad’s daily handling; it became more relegated to spending its days basking in the electric warmth of its Touchstone charging base.  The onslaught of Plex and Roku spelled the introduction of have-it-your-way TV consumption, enabling dead-simple large-screen (and small-screen) viewing as well as the ability to resume playback across multiple devices.  But even Plex and Roku had to play second-fiddle to the ever-increasing demands of two active and highly-inquisitive young boys.

So what of the Touchpad today, and the myth of one needing a tablet?

Well… I’ve never believed that one needs a tablet, but I’ve always believed that there is real utility in the device.  And despite the explosion in phone screen sizes in the past year – such that even yours truly will likely go 5″+ on my next phone upgrade – my experience with the Touchpad has spoiled me.  When at home, there is simply no doubt in my mind that a larger tablet can offer a more immersive, more productive and rewarding experience than a smartphone.  And to substantiate that claim, I recently played with a Nexus 7 for the second time in my life, except this time I came away thinking that nothing short of a 10″ display (or perhaps 8″…) makes any sense.  The Nexus 7 quite literally felt like a phone – and worse yet, one with a horribly-large bezel.

(can I just say that there are way too many hyphens in this post…)

What I like about the Touchpad – and probably any other 10″ tablet – is that it is big.  And again, given that my idea of the ideal tablet use-case is for media consumption in the home, mobility does not enter the equation.  Would a 12″ tablet be better?  Perhaps, but a 10″ is Good Enough(tm) while a 7″ – in my mind – is Too Little, Too Late(tm).

So with the kids in bed and Plex/Roku beckoning, what sort of media consumption can a tablet really provide in my household?

Not a difficult question to answer – the portable kind.  But more importantly, there’s enough of an overlap between a tablet and smartphone – in concept and software – that all of the things I use my smartphone for at home can easily be done on the tablet, and with a larger screen to boot.  The benefits are twofold; again, the larger screen – and critically, the abundant battery that doesn’t need to be sufficiently charged if I need to go on the road for some unknown reason.

Basically, I can put down the phone (or more likely, slip it in my pocket) and do everything on the tablet instead.  My digital existence is “in the cloud” (both private and public), and the holdouts are being likewise relegated.  This allows choice – and boy do I love Choice(tm) – with the decision being completely dependent on which device I feel like using rather than what tasks I want to perform.

This is what multi-user enables.  I am the only person who uses my phone, but the tablet is intended for anybody in the family.  Even if WebOS had a wicked-awesome Plex client, the card-stacking metaphor that I invented previously would not allow for the seamless shift between personal smartphone and family tablet… when it came time to access my digital existence.

Sooooo…. more than a year after being welcomed into my home, the trusty old Touchpad is finally starting to fulfill its destiny.  It’s now sporting an alpha 4.2 ROM – and with it, true multi-user capability.  It’s a liberating experience; yesterday evening, my smartphone was at 99% charge by bedtime simply because it had been on the charging pad all evening, yet I read more Pocket(tm)’d articles, flipped through more Distro mags and trundled through more videos in my Youtube subscriptions than on any evening in recent memory.  And in a counter-intuitive twist, I fully expect that that level of consumption will not continue; not because the “fad” will wear off, but rather, because there are no barriers to getting that stuff done.  There are no battery concerns, there’s no weird logging-in to be done (aside from selecting my user profile on the lockscreen and unlocking with my preferred security method).  There’s no pressure; there’s just this relaxing knowledge that the decision to do that stuff is based solely on Time and Desire; once those technology-unladen conditions are met, I can wash dishes and watch Top Shelf, or lean against a wall and thumb through mail, or recline on the couch and catch The Daily Show.

Or I can defer to another day or time, knowing how easy the decision will be to choose the Right Device(tm) for the Right Time(tm).