My Touchpad seems to have died.

[LandSurveyor]

Can't think what the problem is. One day it was working fine. Next day totally unresponsive. Tried recharging with no result.

It was one of the $100 Touchpads so dollar-wise no great loss. Since it's a dead-end development, I can't decide whether it's worth trying to see if I can get it repaired or not.

But it kinda throws doubt on my plan to get an e-ink reader now. I really would rather have one than a tablet but that's when I had a working tablet.

I rather thought of tablets as not really necessary devices, not good as a "real" computer and not as portable as a smartphone. I have used e-reader apps on the Touchpad and it's certainly better than a phone but the battery life was disappointing. Plus, it was heavier than I like and much more so than, say, a Kindle. Still, for light browsing, tablets are pretty convenient.

I was wondering whether I should just go on with my original plan or find a newer tablet as a compromise reader/bedside browser. Maybe a Nexus 7? Or is there a better alternative?

[jigwashere]

Have you held the power button for 30 secs or so?

[LandSurveyor]

No, but I'll try. Is that the reset?

[jigwashere]

Sorry, I have no idea. On Android devices, pressing the power button turns off the screen. Pressing and holding the power button actually turns off the device. Also, when my PC freezes, I sometimes press and hold the power button to turn it off. I just thought I'd throw out a wild guess.

P.S. I read on one site that holding the power button for 40 sec or more might do it. If not, try holding the Home key and Power button.

[Hook]

Does it have a removable battery? If so, pull it. Otherwise, it should still be under warranty and I think HP would honor it. I think a $100 investment is worth the trouble.

[scjjtt]

It has happened to me twice. Try holding down simultaneously the power button, volume down button and the big HP button for 30 seconds.

-- Sent from my TouchPad using Communities

[r0k]

As suggested by scjjt above, and from the HP forums...

The reboot solution that I found to work all the time is to;

Simultaneously hold the power button, volume down button and the big HP button for 30 seconds.

Good luck!.

Assuming a reset doesn't work, the Nook Color, Nexus 7 and (maybe soon to be announced) iPad mini should all make excellent replacement devices (in increasing order of price). I've owned an iPad since Day One, a 7 inch crappy Sylvania Android tablet and a Samsung GP5. While I enjoy tinkering with the others, I like my iPad best. I use it most often for reading ebooks in the Kindle app. I use iBooks mostly for free books. I prefer to pay once read anywhere and "just on my iThings" doesn't quite meet my read anywhere requirement.

[LandSurveyor]

Thanks all. Tried it with the power and home buttons (hadn't gotten the other posts at the time).

The first sign of life was illumination of the home button. It must have 2 LEDs because it lit up with a left-right oscillation pattern. Never saw that before. Gave it some more charge time and it came back to life as if nothing had happened.

All in all I would have to say it's stable because that's the first time it's needed a reset.

I'm relieved. Didn't want to have to deal with warranty support and certainly didn't want to shop for another tablet yet.

[scjjtt]

 LandSurveyor, I'm so happy to hear that it worked. I personally love the TouchPad and find myself using it a lot. I have had 4 of them in my possession. All of them were 32g. Mine I bought used and it already had CM7 installed. I only boot into that occasionally to watch Netfix. I bought one for my mother who is semi confined to a chair. She can do email, Facebook and internet searches easily on it. I got one this summer for my wife as she was traveling and didn't want to lug her laptop with her. Neither one of those did I install Android OS. My daughter wanted to get her husband a tablet for Father's Day. I found a sale for 32g refurbished ones with a HP 90 day warranty for $199. I encouraged her to get one. She did and I set it up and installed CM9 on it. I don't think he has booted back up into WebOS since. Right now that is the beauty of the TouchPad. A 10'' tablet with 32 g running at 1.5 dual GHz (I know it is stock at 1 GHz but HP deliberately underclocked the processor which can easily be reversed) can run a great OS in WebOS or if you don't like that you can boot up into CM9 (some have already put CM11, Jelly Bean, on - but it is very limited).

Good luck with your TouchPad.  The Nexus 7 looks like a great value if you ever have to change.

-- Sent from my TouchPad using Communities

[jigwashere]

I'm so glad you got it working!