First Impressions of the Toshiba Thrive Tablet

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My First Impressions of the Toshiba Thrive Tablet Computer Posted by Ron Schenone on Jul 25, 2011 | 0

On Sunday evening I was in the area of our local Best Buy and stopped in to see the latest product from Toshiba. The Toshiba Thrive is a tablet computer which uses the Google Android Honeycomb operating system and features the latest bells and whistles. I have used Toshiba laptop computers for the past seven years and personally wouldn’t use any other brand. So before trying out the Toshiba Thrive, I had to put my prejudices in my rear pocket.
The first thing I noticed when I picked up the Toshiba Thrive was that it is somewhat heavier and bulkier than other tablet computers I have tried. But one must consider that since the Thrive comes with more hardware such as USB, HDMI, and memory slot, the unit would need to add a little weight and heft. With this being only a minor point of contention in my observation, I liked the plastic backing that makes the unit easy to handle. My wife has a similar textured sleeve I bought for her Apple iPad and which makes the iPad easier to handle.
Hardware-wise, the Thrive is superior to the Apple iPad as are other tablet computers from HP, Samsung, Acer, and Motorola. Google Android seems to be the operating system of choice for all of these clones with the exception of the HP models, which uses its own webOS. This, I believe, is where some of the major issues lie with the clone tablet computers from other companies. Android is sluggish on some of these clones — including the Thrive — when compared to the performance of the Apple iPad tablets.
In researching the experience of users, I found that there is another issue with the Thrive in that it freezes sometimes when coming out of sleep mode. Toshiba has acknowledged this problem and is working on a fix. The unit I tried did not go into sleep mode since I was using it constantly while trying it out so I did not experience this issue. Since the Toshiba Thrive uses the Android operating system, there was nothing to distinguish the device from other Android powered tablets I have used.
Apple still has the premiere tablet that others are striving to compete against. Thus far, none of the other companies have a unit that actually equals or surpasses the iPad. Just my two cents.
 
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