Traveling with Pepper

It was great to take a weekend trip - through airports - without my laptop. With my Pepper Pad I had sufficient email and internet access to give me peace of mind and to organize some last minute sight-seeing via the internet.

I appreciate the ease of wireless access, the lightweight and sturdy case, the longer (than PP2) battery life. Cool machine - I'm going to travel with it more and more.

There's so much that it can do - I should say "that it can help me do" ... I'll have to spend some time learning about its many features.

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Cool idea, BUT...

This device has lots of problems. The customer support was not very good either. We had difficulty setting up the wifi access when we got it. Customer support provided no help at all. We finally figured it out on our own. The software constantly freezes, often requiring rebooting. The last straw was today when all of the applications disappeared from the desktop. We'll take our refund and purchase a laptop.

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Awesome streaming device

Pros far outweight the cons.

Device is pitched as "a/v streaming tablet" for kitchen, bedroom, living room, etc. It MORE than delivers on this promise. Email and some bluetooth support is currently lacking (only wireless mouse/keybd currently supported) but this will be fixed soon.

Skype is coming in next few months. Big win there.

Hardware feature:

1. 2-way infrared learning remote.

It's now my primary remote control. Layout are fairly editable but not where it s/be...this is easily fixable though. Unlike what other reviews stated...it is easy to incorporate support for new devices...you can download remote control config files from lirc.org.

2. Backlit keypad

Nice for being in bed at night.

3. d-pad and thumbwheel

Absolutely best way to scroll/page thru sites.

4. 2xUSB, 1xNTSC A/V out

An MMC/SD would be nice...but expandability is there already.

5. 20GB HD and 256MB RAM

As an engr geek...I would like to see more...but for a/v streaming and other tasks this is totally adequate.

6. i386 compatible

This means you can just download RedHat FC4 i386 binaries and they just work. They may not integrate with desktop perfectly...but works great nonetheless.


Software features:

1. Streams darn near EVERY video/audio format. Only esoteric realplayer sites don't work...yet. Everything else (Sirius Satellite, Shoutcast) work flawlessly.

2. Built-in email sucks...but I easily downloaded Thunderbird and it is now where I want it to be.

3. Desktop (tabbed folder) paradigm needs some development...but it is fine for intended tasks (streaming a/v).

4. Support for Java 1.5!! This only means something to geeks and those wanting to stream from sites which have applets (Sirius Satellite). As a java developer...this is just too cool. First time J2SE is on pda form factor.

This is an awesome device that I've been using daily since purchase. I have since CANCELLED my several newspaper subscriptions as I now read/stream from pad....this saves me just under $1K yearly for subscriptions.

The device is so versatile and perfectly sized...you will soon want to take it in car with you and mount it on dash with bluetooth gps, etc. With enhanced bt support coming...you'll soon be doing just that!

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