10 Minutes with an HP Slate 7

My new born child has taken over my Nexus 7.  We use a really nice app to track his sleep, feedings and other things.  We also stream Pandora over Bluetooth to a Bluetooth speaker in his room.  This has left me without a tablet.  I decided to buy a tablet just for him.  I needed the cheapest Android tablet that has two key features: it has the Play Store and it supports Bluetooth.  I drove to Microcenter and the cheapest tablet that fit those requirements was the HP Slate 7.  At $130 it seemed like a good buy.  I tried it in the store for about 5 minutes.  It seemed ok.  I decided to buy it.

When I got it home, I took the tablet out and plugged it into my Targus APA21US USB charger.  The tablet wouldn't charge on it.  I tried another charger and the tablet acknowledged the charger, but refused to charge on it.  I took out the charger that came with the HP Slate 7 and the tablet charged fine with it!

This is where I claimed shenanigans.  It is my opinion that the HP Slate 7 doesn't support USB charging.  It makes use of a proprietary charger that happens to look like Micro-USB.  I didn't even bother turning the device on.  I returned it to Microcenter immediately.  When the Returns desk asked why I was returning it, I said because the device is crap and won't work on my chargers.  He laughed and happily gave me my money back.

What is funny was my wife commented about how I hate HP products.  I personally never owned an HP.  My hatred stems from her HP laptops that always had issues.  Her mom was visiting and she also had tons of issues with HP laptops.  When I dislike a brand for technical reasons, I do try to give that brand another chance every few years.  It looks like HP still doesn't fail to disappoint.

And that was my 10 minutes with the HP Slate 7.  Five in the store while trying it out, and 5 at home trying to charge it.