HP TouchPad To Be Liquidated At Fire Sale Prices 368
Hugh Pickens writes "According to an article by Tony Bradley, news is spreading quickly online that HP is going to clear out its vast TouchPad inventory by dropping the price to an offer you can't refuse. Rumor has it that beginning Saturday the 16Gb TouchPad will be $99, and the 32Gb TouchPad will be a measly $149. 'It is actually a fairly capable tablet. It's just not an iPad 2,' writes Bradley. 'For $500 it was a joke. For $300 it was still a shady deal. For $99 it's a steal.' HP has learned the hard way, and quickly pulled the plug on its tablet, proving that HP never had a solid tablet or mobile strategy and that it was really just looking for an excuse to get out. 'The reality is that my Best Buy is swimming in unsold HP TouchPad inventory,' adds Bradley. 'I went out tonight and picked mine up at the regular $400 price to beat the rush. Situations like this are why they invented price matching. I can just go back with my receipt once the fire sale starts and get the price adjusted and the difference refunded.'"
Can't price match the tablet (Score:5, Informative)
From their price matching FAQ:
Does the HP TouchPad tablet qualify for the Price Match policy?
No. The HP TouchPad is on clearance and we will no longer be selling the units so we will not offer any price matches. We do offer a 60-day return/exchange policy for this product.
Oops (Score:5, Informative)
Should have read a bit more closely there, buddy:
The Guarantee does not apply to: Our competitors' website prices, offers that include financing, bundling of items, free items, pricing errors, mail-in offers, competitors' service prices, items that are advertised as limited-quantity, out of stock, open-box, clearance, refurbished/used items, BestBuy.com Midnight Sale and special hour sale events, BestBuy.com Outlet Center and Marketplace items, and items for sale Thanksgiving Day through the Monday after Thanksgiving.
Emphasis mine. I'm 100% confident that the HP tablet will be marked as both "limited-quantity" and "clearance".
Oops. Oh well, at least you beat the rush!
To be liquidated... (Score:5, Informative)
To be?
More like was, and in the blink of an eye. Every place around here is sold out and Best Buy took 'em all off the shelves to send them back to HP. I imagine there will be some slow firesales from HP later as they arrive.
Not worth even $99 (Score:2, Informative)
So it's a tablet with an operating system that nobody develops for (WebOS), that puts all my stuff "in the cloud", that looks as locked down as the iPad without any of the benefits of the iPad. I mean, seriously, what in the world am I going to do with this thing?
Ubuntu and Android (Score:4, Informative)
See:
http://liliputing.com/2011/08/hp-touchpad-afterlife-hackers-bringing-android-ubuntu-to-hps-tablet.html
Links in the article
Re:Not worth even $99 (Score:4, Informative)
What the hell are you doing on slashdot because you clearly aren't a geek! It'd be worth it just to carry around programming reference pdfs.
Re:cheap yes, but can it be rooted? (Score:5, Informative)
Try WebOS first. It's actually a really good OS. It's linux. Rooting it is as simple as typing in the Konami Code to put it in Developer Mode (root).
There are a lot of homebrew apps for it, with their own Homebrew appstore, PreWare. Well, not an appstore really because it's all free there.
Palm's problem was they had crappy hardware for it, and insanely bad advertising. HP hasn't done anything much with it since they bought it a year ago. Sad. A very intuitive and good looking OS. The one thing you will miss out with on the TouchPad is the gesture area that is on the phones. They make task switching pretty awesome when you are multitasking a lot of things. Another bad move by HP to leave that off the TouchPad.
Re:Apple isn't about product anymore. (Score:2, Informative)
How many Android phone were sold to people who wanted an iPhone but couldn't get one? How many Android phones are sold by wireless companies that want to sell iPhones but can't? How many Android phones are built by manufacturers that want to build an Apple product but can't?
It is Apple versus the world. Android is their weapon of choice. But nothing is beating the iPhone. It just so happens that every competitor has the same OS. To say that that OS is made by Google so Google is beating Apple is like coloring an apple orange and pretending to compare oranges.
I can't answer those questions and you can't either. You have provided no proof that manufacturers want to build iOS devices. No proof whatsoever. You can split hairs all you want that does not detract from the fact that when it comes to OS marketshare Android is way ahead of iOS in smartphone OS marketshare.
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1622614 [gartner.com]
I know... Facts are a bitch when they don't fit your world view.
Re:Oops (Score:4, Informative)
Office Depot employee: People were lined up before we opened. We had no idea what it was about.
All gone. :(
Re:Price Matters (Score:3, Informative)
> ICultists wont touch it with a 10 foot pole at any price because it's
> not made by Apple and everyone else that's on the fence is going
> to see the identical price and buy the Ipad because either they saw
> it on TV more / their ICult buddy recommended it and since they're
> priced the same might as well get what everyone else is talking about
I am SO FUCKING SICK of all this "it's all because of fanboys/marketing/cultishness" shit! EVERY SINGLE MAJOR REVIEW of the TouchPad says it's barely in the same league with the iPad 1 and not even CLOSE to the iPad 2.
And because someone is bound to post a reply asking for proof, here are two major mainstream ones:
"... the TouchPad doesn't come close to being as complete or mature as the iPad or the best Android tablets..."
"Bottom line:
And if you think the big sites are just dumb and/or Apple whores, how about some tech sites, like Ars Technica or Engadget?
We all wanted the TouchPad to really compete, to give us a compelling third party to join the iOS and Android boxes on the ballot. But, alas, this isn't quite it... The shortage of apps is a problem, no doubt, but that will change with time. What won't change is the hardware, and there we're left a little disappointed. Holding this in one hand and either an iPad 2 or a Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the other leaves you wondering why you'd ever be compelled to buy the HP when you could have the thinner, lighter alternative for the same money. Meanwhile, the performance left us occasionally wanting and, well, what is there to say.
The HP TouchPad, if it were less expensive, could be an extremely strong, if slightly less polished, alternative to the iPad. But like other recently-released high-profile Android tablets, it's determined to take on the champ. And just like those Android tablets, its hard to recommend over an iPad at the same price.
That said, I would have snapped one up for $99 but it's now Saturday afternoon and there are none to be found. (I went to bed early last night and was out of the house first thing in the morning. Dammit!)
> Non Apple Tables are priced roughly $200-300 too expensive. Get
> them around $199-$299 and they'll sell like gangbusters just like it
> did for Android phones in the mobile market.
There is not magical "make it cheap" dust that can be sprinkled on non-iOS devices. The fact that the OS is free really doesn't amtter much at all. (Remember when everyone thought Linux would take over the desktop because it was considered to be as good as Windows?) Believe it or not, Apple is being DAMN price competitive on the iPad. Do you think multibillion dollar companies are spending billions of dollars to bring tablets to the market and then watching them fail just for fun? No, they're selling them for that much because they HAVE to in order to make any profit at all, and they're failing because they just aren't as good. You CAN NOT MAKE a tablet as good as the iPad for less. It has a good looking, responsive touchscreen, the best battery life out there, and it's within 1mm of being the thinnest as well. Lightest of all the 10" tablets, too, AFAIK. Cheaper tablets have screens that are worse looking and/or less sensitive, they're thicker, they're heavier, AND they have worse battery life.
There ARE cheap Android tablets out there (especially if you include things like the Pandigital Novel and B&N Nook Color) and they ARE NOT SELLING anywhere
Re:Can't price match the tablet (Score:2, Informative)
Your "knowledge and experience" are sadly limited. Probably to the consumer arena. I support just over a thousand users on HP desktop and mobile equipment and their business support is second to none. I open a ticket on the case management website and a replacement part is overnighted to me, often the same day depending on when I put it in. Usually with no questions asked and definitely no "diagnostics" from script reading call center drones, The old part goes back in the same box and returned prepaid. Failure rates are about the same as pre-Lenovo Thinkpads.