So I’ve got one of the now-coveted HP TouchPads that were on sale Saturday for $150, the 32GB model. I like it. I really like the good deal I got on it, so I wanted to bring this situation to your attention, so you might also be able to benefit.
This whole HP mess started last week when stories broke that the HP TouchPad wasn’t selling as good as HP wanted it to. They dropped the price a couple of times to try and stimulate sales, but they were probably still unsuccessful. All of their tablet woes came to a head when Best Buy wanted to ship back 700,000 unsold TouchPads to HP because they couldn’t sell them. I think publicity of the Best Buy return attempt was probably the straw that broke the camels back for HP and they announced late last week that they were discontinuing the HP TouchPad, only almost two months since it was released. Nothing new there, just another huge swing and a miss for a tablet manufacturer trying to compete with Apple’s iPad.
What changed my opinion about this tablet was jumping on Reddit.com, my favorite social bookmarking site, Saturday morning and seeing someone post a picture of an HP TouchPad going for $99 on eBay. This got me wondering: how much could I get one? Turns out, pretty cheap. Office Depot had 1 32GB TouchPad for $150 bucks when I showed up first thing Saturday morning to try and buy one. Now I have it and I’m trying to figure out where the change of mind happened.
It has to be the price point. If HP lowers the price to $150 and they fly off the shelf, they just had them priced too high. The reports I’ve read this morning is that there was a mad rush to buy them up and they sold out before noon on Saturday. The only difference was the price to consumers, so this has to be what opened the flood gates for sales.
Another issue I’ve encountered that may have discouraged usage of the laptop is the general slowness and lag of the tablet in its default configuration. Luckily, I was able to find a hacked firmware called Preware that runs quicker and gives me more customization than the out-of-the-box setup. This is a sad reflection on HP if hackers are better with their hardware than they are.
The App Store is definately lacking in apps, but I’m really only interested in web surfing and email with my tablet, so that doesn’t matter. I was able to get my accounts setup in the email app and surf pretty much every site I went to without flaw. The TouchPad even allows for Flash content, so I can do more than the iPad can! I’m pretty excited about the great deal I got on the tablet and I look forward to reporting my experiences with it along the way. If you want one of your own, they’re currently sold out. HP setup a site to notify interested people when they become available here:
http://h41112.www4.hp.com/promo/webos/us/en/tablet/touchpad.html
So sign up and you just might get one yourself.
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