Toshiba Thrive - a non-technical user review

Toshiba Thrive

Yesterday evening my husband brought home a new 'toy' from his office to try out - a Toshiba Thrive. We've both been wanting one for months, since we first heard Toshiba was developing them. Since I'm currently the only human awake in our home, I'm trying it out.

I don't have an iPad, but we both have iPhones so I'm pretty familiar with IOS. This uses the Android system. There are a few differences I've found so far. For one thing, I've realized how much I rely on autocorrect while using a mobile device.  This does not have the same aggressive autocorrect feature. I do like the typewriter sounds as I type, and the emotion key. I'm still working out how to move the cursor around. I made it work perfectly once, but since then all I can do is select text.  I'll get there!

Like the iPad, the Thrive has both front and rear cameras. The picture quality is amazing. I'm not used to seeing such large pictures on the screen. Unlike the iPad and other tablets, this one has LOTS of extra ports. USB, SD, others I don't know what they are... But I do know that a SD card will let you expand the device memory as needed, and also makes for simple photo importing. A USB port lets you....almost anything.  Printer, mouse, external hard drive, keyboard, a toilet bowl speaker...

 I want to spend more time playing with the Thrive, to see what all it can do. I can't download any apps since it doesn't belong to us, but I did look at the Android market. I know there are many more apps than I could find, but I am not familiar with that market at all.

Color options

One feature I am very interested in learning about is the ability to create/manipulate Office documents (Word, Excel are my main focus) without compatibility issues. I would love one of these tablets for work. It would be so much easier to carry around than even the netbook I currently use, and even though the screen is a similar size, netbooks don't have the ability to enlarge and move what is displayed on the screen. (There are also different colored backs available which I LOVE.)

My overall first impression is I WANT ONE! But I would have a lot to learn to fully use the tablet. I did get frustrated halfway through this post and switched to my laptop (thank you Blogger autosave!) but I know with practice (and instructions) I wouldn't have a problem.