Updated: HP TouchPad Reduced to $99 and $149 (16GB & 32GB)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 20, 2011 1:37 PM ESTIf you haven't heard by now, HP is significantly reducing the price of the WiFi TouchPad in order to clear all inventories of the tablet. The 16GB WiFi TouchPad will sell for $99, while the 32GB version will be reduced to $149.
The price reduction is supposed to go into effect tomorrow, however a number of etailers jumped the gun yesterday. At this point I don't believe there is a way to order a TouchPad online at either of those prices - nearly all of the online sources that listed the reduced prices are now out of stock.
If you missed the opportunity yesterday, there's always the brick and mortar stores as soon as they open tomorrow.
As we've already reported, HP will cease all webOS device operations by Q4 2011. The TouchPad and Veer won't be made anymore and the Pre 3 has been canceled entirely. HP hasn't announced what it's going to do with webOS, although at this point we're hearing the rights to the OS aren't up for sale.
Given the lack of support going forward, why even consider a $99 TouchPad? The tablet does work reasonably well as an email/browser client, and it's likely that we'll continue to see 3rd party apps developed for it. The big hope is that the homebrew community will keep at it and perhaps someone will come along and actually do something with webOS one of these days. There's also the option that someone will eventually port Android 3.x to it. If that happens, you'd have a high end Honeycomb tablet for $99. Admittedly porting Android 3.x to the TouchPad could take a while.
At $99 I feel like the TouchPad is a good buy if you're fine with taking a risk on a platform that has no guaranteed support going forward. In other words, if you can part with the money and forget about it, it's not a bad idea.
Update: BestBuy in the US isn't discounting the TouchPad in stores. For everyone who bought one at the higher price, BestBuy isn't matching prices but it has extended the return window to 60-days.
Update 2: BestBuy has reversed its decision and will be discounting the TouchPad in stores.
Source: Slickdeals.net
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Arnulf - Saturday, August 20, 2011 - link
If HP has no future plans with WebOS they should opensource it entirely. This would give the community a chance to main decent OPEN system for the portable market. Much like other closed projects that have reverted to public in the past it would have better chance of getting big than by being left forgotten somewhere on R&D's backup tapes.iwod - Saturday, August 20, 2011 - link
I think Android 3.0 could be there faster then we think. The only problem is getting one of these. Ebay are already reselling these for 100% profits.Belard - Monday, August 22, 2011 - link
Considering that they were able to run WebOS on an iPad2... and it ran twice as fast on that hardware, shows (A) there are hardware issues with the Touchpad more than the WebOS itself. (B) Porting this mini-OSes is very easy.tipoo - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - link
I read about that...Wonder what caused it. On paper, the Touchpad should be faster, and even more so for the OS it was made to run.jabber - Saturday, August 20, 2011 - link
Would be fantastic if this was all a bluff and just a clever (though maybe slightly costly way) ruse to suddenly get several hundered thousand WebOS devices out into the wild in a matter of days.Then at the end you have an ecosystem that otherwise would never have happend at $400 a time.
Then you can sell the Mk2 at full price.
I look forward to picking up a cheap Pre 3. WebOS really is fantastic.
ltcommanderdata - Saturday, August 20, 2011 - link
Well I bought one. At that price, it's worth it purely as a media consumption device. I'm not planning on investing significantly in the app ecosystem, what apps there are, since it wouldn't make sense to spend on apps a large portion of the hardware cost of a dead end device. I hope HP will still try to honor the warranty if anything goes wrong with the hardware and try to at least offer security updates and critical bug fixes even if no more features are added.And even if Android gets ported to Touchpad, I'm guessing all the Google proprietary parts like Google Market, and some of the apps and services expected in a pre-built Android device wouldn't work since it's not a Google certified device?
name99 - Sunday, August 21, 2011 - link
"At that price, it's worth it purely as a media consumption device."ASSUMING you can get media onto it. Certainly there were many complaints that the Mac client for getting media onto it was pretty awful and routinely crashed. I don't know if the Windows client suffered the same problems.
johnsonx - Sunday, August 21, 2011 - link
what client are you talking about? You just plug it in to a USB port and copy stuff to it.retrospooty - Sunday, August 21, 2011 - link
"what client are you talking about? You just plug it in to a USB port and copy stuff to it. "He has a Mac, therefore isnt technically inclined.
Apple devices rely on itunes to sync, loading things as its own USB drive like the rest of the planet isnt assumed (even though it makes sense to the rest of us).
Anyhow, back to point, its a great multimedia device if future apps arent a concern. I would ahve gotten one topday if it wasnt sold out everywhere I went.
DanNeely - Sunday, August 21, 2011 - link
Slick deals currently has a few places selling it. Keep checking the thread, they're popping in and out periodically.http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3220...