Pepper Pad 3 - Web Player / White | List Price: $699.99
Discount Price: $699.99
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Brand: Hanbit
Binding: Electronics
Release Date: 2006-09-30
Warranty: 1 year warranty
Features: - Surf, shop, do research, plan a vacation, check the weather and more
- Seven inch color display with touch screen for beautiful photos, videos and Web pages
- Bluetooth 2.0 device support for use with a full-size keyboard and/or mouse
- 20 GB disk drive, that's hundreds of photos and videos you can store
- Rechargeable lithium batteries plus smart power management
good attempt, but crashes (sw / hw issues) [Posted on 2007-05-13]
bought the device but after minor use, it crashes... vendor says it's hw problem. Replaced it, and the new one still crashed... seemed to be software problem, and re-image the system over the network... seem to work so far, but occasional website surfing could crash due to Adobe flash on Linux doesn't seem to be stable....
Awsome product!! [Posted on 2007-07-02]
The Pepper Pad3 is a really cool product. Was considering purchasing the alternative Nokia 770, but decided to go with PepperPad. 20GB harddrive is great for storing library of ebooks and files. I do most of my offwork browsing and reading on it. Its great for ebook reading also. It's very easy to use though I wish the java front end(Keeper) could be more configurable. There are plenty of ways to hack it assuming you know Linux. Overall, I'd recommend it to anyone!
Pepper Pad 3 -- too hot to handle [Posted on 2007-08-13]
In the few days that I had the Pepper Pad 3, I enjoyed it. However, as it neared the end of a battery charge, and in the early part of the recharging cycle, the area of the case under the right hand on the back (presumably the area over the battery?) became literally too hot to touch. Obviously, the interior heat must have been considerably higher.
This greatly distressed me, because it was uncomfortable, because I began to fear that the battery might explode (in light of recent stories in the tech news), and because that much heat can't possibly bode well for the longevity of a solid-state electronic device. I returned it.
If not for the heat problem, the only complaint I would have had was somewhat short battery life. I would have given it 4 stars.
Great Idea, Terrible Execution. [Posted on 2007-10-16]
My Pepper Pad has been plagued with calibration and crashing issues, and after five months it finally gave up completely--I think the hard drive is dead. What's worse than the product's unreliability, though, is Pepper Pad's terrible customer service. I've made numerous phone calls and sent even more e-mail, but so far I've only received one response, and even then it was only to find out if it still in warranty. Once they found out they were still responsible I never heard from them again. I wonder if the company's going out of business (they certainly should be). All phone calls are going to their voicemail now, and anything sent to their support e-mail is bouncing back. I really enjoyed using my Pepper Pad while it worked--it was great for my specific needs--but now I really regret spending so much on a faulty product with awful customer service.
A mixed bag with a lot of promise [Posted on 2007-12-04]
Pepper Pad 3 - Web Player / White
I've been a fan and user of handheld devices for years. I've tried hand-writing enabled devices and PDAs. The split thumb-centric keyboard of the Pepper Pad is one of the better methods for entering keyboard text, although it would work better if there weren't such a wide split between the 2 halves of the keyboard. A more vertical design with the keyboard below and the screen above would be easier to use. Maybe if this were done, there'd be enough room to use 6 columns of keys on a side, so that, among other things, the 'B' key would be on the left, where I invariably try to find it.
My initial impressions of the device were quite mixed. After unboxing the device, turning it on, and stepping through the initial setup screens, during which the unit connected to my wi-fi, and began downloading its upgrade, all data input froze. I couldn't get the screen to respond to sylus entries, and the keyboard also didn't work. This was quite frustrating as I was in the middle of entering my owner information. At this point I was about ready to send it back.
However, after powering the unit off and back on, everything acted OK. I did have problems with re-connecting to the WiFi signal until I told the unit about the second WiFi network here. Since then I've had no problems with connectivity.
The screen is easy to read and refreshes plenty fast enough most of the time. There are times, however, when everything slows to a crawl. I think this may be in times of high memory useage such as having a large (90 page) PDF file open while surfing.
The packaged applications are good for entertainment use. I particularly like the Radio app for listening to music, althouth you'd better have some speakers nearby to connect to. The included speakers are quite tinny. The ebook reader is also quite legible.
The remote desktop app works for connecting to my WinXP box, although when I connected to a left-mouse account, my default, all I got were context menus when I used the sylus. Some good mechanism for emulating both a Left and a Right mouse click is really needed.
I think there are a few utilities that are strongly required to make the Pepper Pad a really useful device. A file archive reader - since this it runs a Linux variant, .gz and .tar files should be readable and unpackable, and .zip files should be too. There should be at least a trivial spreadsheet application. Since it has a touch screen a sketch app should be supported, and a scribble to text converter would be nice.
The battery life is sufficient. In suspend mode it'll last multiple days, maybe up to a week without being plugged it. When in full time use the battery last 3 or more hours.
In all, I like the Pepper Pad 3, but I'd like to use it more, which I would if it had a few tweaks.
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