Pepper Pad

Every year or so another Internet appliance comes along that promises to make Web and multimedia access truly portable and user-friendly for the non-techie user. This year, it is Pepper Computing's Pepper Pad, which you might call an oversized PDA or an undersized Tablet. Either way, this underpowered and overpriced unit is more trouble than it's worth and leaves us wondering who it's for.

The Pepper Pad is a handheld wireless unit with an 8.4-inch touch screen running at a readable 800 x 600 resolution. It not only surfs the Web from your lap with 802.11b connectivity, but its thumbpad keyboard on either side of the screen allows for text input into an e-mail or instant messaging client. The built-in Internet radio tuner streams radio stations, and the 20GB hard drive and multimedia software play music, videos, and display photos. This is all wrapped together with a proprietary icon-driven interface running under Linux and using a much-modified Mozilla browser.

In theory, this seems like a neat device for multitasking couch potatoes, and the Pepper Pad does do some cool tricks. The built-in remote control function connected easily to our home theater and became a handy universal remote. The Internet radio finds and streams a good selection of stations through decent stereo speakers. At 2.3 pounds, the Pepper Pad is lighter than most Tablets and ultraportable notebooks, but not by much.

The battery drained pretty quickly under normal use, so we couldn't imagine getting more than a couple hours of runtime. Web browsing is acceptable, if not very swift using the 802.11b connection, and the browser had trouble with CNN videos, both in getting a decent stream and working with the Windows Media format. One very nice feature for newbies is the ability to save a Web page or an image for later use with a single dedicated button.

Unfortunately, the basic hardware here is outdated. The Intel XScale 624-MHz CPU slogs through most operations, with noticeable lag in simple tasks like calling up a Help screen or switching between functions. The startup time is ridiculously long, up to a couple of minutes in some cases. We experienced anomalies with our test unit, such as the fully charged Pad refusing to boot unless it was plugged in. With decent Celeron notebooks going for $800, we expect more horsepower, flexibility, and reliability from an $849 alternative.

Pepper Computer is positioning this device as an easy-to-use alternative to a Windows machine, but the interface is disorienting. It was cumbersome to navigate the unit's many drop down menus and tabs, let alone figure out what each of the icons meant. There were no pop-up descriptive labels.

The thumbpad is a nice idea, but even a tech-savvy preteen found the keys too small and unresponsive to be practical. The touch-sensitive screen had only fair responsiveness; you can use the included stylus for more accurate button and link pushing, but we found double-clicking less than optimal. Despite the stylus, the Pepper Pad does not support handwriting recognition.

Keep in mind that you can't use the wireless connection to browse and share files on your PC. You'll need to use the USB 1.1 port (again, outdated technology), a proprietary desktop synching application, or an SD card to transfer files.

The Pepper Pad is clearly intended for entry-level computer users, but we don't think it has enough speed or ease of use to justify the investment. A slightly heavier, but much more competent wireless notebook would give you a lot more bang for your buck. Perhaps the Pepper Pad makes sense for someone, but it isn't anyone we know.