Dis-APP-ointed

After 4 months of waiting for the new Toshiba Thrive tablet to make its debut, I finally had the opportunity to make my purchase this afternoon.  You know that feeling you get when you visit a new bakery, order an incredibly gorgeous piece of cake, dig in to take your first (what's sure to be amazing) bite...and then...your taste buds suddenly revolt as the taste of the cake pales in comparison to your mouth's expectation?

I'm sad to report that after a couple of hours playing around with the Thrive that I have almost the same shocking taste in my mouth as that terrible piece of cake...and this is almost enough to make me want to shed a small tear :(  I have been looking so forward to the day I would be able to bring this little technological baby home with me that I'm quite unsure what to think now...except, maybe the iPad2 is for me.

The Thrive has a most impressive list of hardware features that I was really excited about...in addition to the ability to run Flash websites, it seemed like a no-brainer.  However, after a small bit of experience, this is what I've discovered:

1 - very slow to download & install apps from the Android Market; a few of them literally took over 10min, then wouldn't open, and had to be redownloaded & installed
2 - seems to only pick up 1/2 the wifi signal that my laptop picks up while being the exact same distance away from the router
3 - no Netflix streaming - either through the Android app or through the Netflix website
4 - scrolling through webpages is not near as smooth as my iPhone4
5 - no "home" button - when the screen locks, you must click the power button on the top/side of the device, which is a bit awkward to click each time
6 - terrible Android game apps - I downloaded a word search app & it literally took up only 1/4 of the screen, showed up at the very top of the screen, was hard to see, and since the font could not be changed, had tee-tiny print...definite fail!

Even after all of the research I've done, there is nothing better than testing devices for yourself to see which ones feel the most natural...so I guess all of this brings me to one conclusion...I must be an Apple girl.  While I never set out to become one of "those" people, it's happened!  Now the only decision left to make is whether or not I think I need an iPad2 or if I think I can do everything on my iPhone.  One of the biggest reasons I was looking at a tablet in the first place was to use as a multi-app e-reader.  I enjoy reading from Kobo, Nook, iBooks & even Kindle....all of which are apps on my iPhone, but having a tablet device just makes the pages a little bigger & allows a fuller news page reading environment as well.

So, now I'm going to bed...feeling very dis-app-ointed...and wondering if I'll bring home a new iPad2 tomorrow to fill my sweet tooth that has yet to be satisfied.  Tomorrow is open for discussion...and hopefully, a better day in my world of technology.  Until then, I leave you with sweet iPad dreams :)