HP TouchPad Go: $99? 146
redletterdave writes "The HP TouchPad Go, which is a smaller version of the company's signature TouchPad, may go on sale for $99 like its predecessor. The tablet features a 1023 x 768 resolution display, runs on webOS, and also has a removable cover with soft-touch coating to minimize fingerprints on the 7-inch screen. HP's new tablet also comes with a removable battery, 32GB of storage, a 3G radio, a five-megapixel camera and LED flash. HP designed the TouchPad Go around the same time as the larger model, but it failed to reach production stages when the company decided to kill off all devices running on the doomed webOS. If the tablet indeed sells for $99, it would be the cheapest tablet in the world besides the Aakash tablet, which was released by the Indian government for $35."
Sounds good to me (Score:3)
I'm still annoyed I missed the fire sale on the 'full size' model.
Re:Sounds good to me (Score:5, Insightful)
I missed the first fire sale, and that's fine because I didn't know about it. I'm pissed off about the Ebay sale, though, because I clicked "Buy it Now" the exact second the sale started (and kept trying for half an hour) and still didn't get a damn thing!
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Dear HP, why do you hate money? (Score:1, Troll)
It's called capitalism, here's how it works:
1) download the Android 4.0 ICS source code from http://source.android.com/ [android.com]
2) integrate any missing driver from the WebOS Linux kernel to the Android Linux kernel;
3) compile & install;
4) sell the damn thing at $250-300;
5) profit!!!
You're welcome.
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So because it's open source and has more apps, everything else has to die? I have an n900 with maemo, it rules. I can't stand android. It makes me feel like I'm using a microwave. Maemo feels like a computer. That fits in my pocket.
I can also just copy source from my computer and build them on my phone/tablet without issues, and have them run natively without having to "port" them.
But to each his own; I see no point in KILLING stuff that's different; it's healthy. I totally disagree with your point. WHY sho
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I, too, missed the first sale... Only because I didn't have $100 at the time.
When it came back around with the refurbished models on eBay I was surprised (read: pissed) to find that they did not ship to Canada.
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Considering I live in Canada, why the f--- would I be protesting Wall Street?
I have a job. Two if you count my side-job of web design.
I also have a family I have to feed, and spending $100 for something I really didn't need at the time was a no brainer.
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Fake, eh?
Considering Canada is larger than the USA.
Go f--- yourself. Fascist asshole.
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Don't be - same res on 7" gives you the same amount of "screen area" in a package that should fit in a decent sized jacket pocket.
I'd get it (Score:2, Informative)
I have one of the firesale Touchpads. I think it is a great product. I mean how many Apple or Android tablets let you run vanilla debian? I'd get the Go in a heartbeat.
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I have one but the plastic has cracked in a couple of places and I'm pretty careful. I like it otherwise.
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I have one of the firesale Touchpads. I think it is a great product. I mean how many Apple or Android tablets let you run vanilla debian? I'd get the Go in a heartbeat.
"Let you" is a little vague. It's more like webOS "doesn't stop you" from doing it, like iOS or Android would. Either way, it's not very simple. And it's not like webOS devices come with an "Install Other OS" option like the PS3. Oh wait...
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It's the darn bootloaders, closed-source drivers, dreadful reverse-engineering and lack of schemata that's causing the issues with running other OS
All non-Windows x86-tablets (like the Wetab) have official or unofficial methods (e.g. writing 'magic bytes' at the beginning of a USB stick) to get them to boot from it and run any desired OS.
Re:I'd get it (Score:4, Informative)
My Evo 4G running Debian would like a word with you. Most rooted Android devices can install a Debian or Debian-derived (like Ubuntu) distro with ease following the exact same method as I used, and I assume there's probably a similar option for other distros as long as there's support for the appropriate processor for your device (usually ARM). I haven't tried, but I'll bet I could get it running the exact same way on my iPhone 3G that dual boots with Android 2.3.
Im in !! (Score:4, Interesting)
i wasnt gonna buy a tablet, but, i can buy this without any considerations that it will be a waste.
Re:Im in !! (Score:5, Insightful)
Such a good price/performance tablet was LONG overdue.
Yeah it's amazing what a company can do when it doesn't factor in what it costs to manufacture a product but is simply trying to clear out inventory.
But if you're implying this would be a sustainable business model - you're delusional.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Im in !! (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the problem is everyone is dreaming of iMoney and thus making them overpowered and thus expensive. I mean think about it, what does the typical consumer do with a pad? They check their email, play Angry birds, and watch video. Now the video could be easily taken care of with a broadcom chip which is cheap, especially when you are buying in bulk, I doubt Angry birds is that big of a CPU hog, and email and webpages aren't gonna need much if you disallow flash support.
So I don't see why someone couldn't make a really nice tablet in the $180-$200 price range and make around $10-$15 a unit on them. A dualcore ARM CPU in the 1GHz range isn't that high and resistive will work fine for the screen as long as the OS is tweaked for it instead of just using a vanilla OS unoptimized for the platform like many are doing with android now. So while $100 might not be doable I don't see why sub $200 while still doing the tasks folks want a tablet for couldn't be achieved.
I believe there is something like this already. It's called the Amazon Kindle. Oh, and by the way it's most likely sold at loss. [ibtimes.com]
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Archos 101 g9 at 279 euro for 1 ghz model isn't bad but it runs honeycomb there is an 8 inch version for around 40 euro less. There are 1.2 and 1.5 ghz versions around now.
To be honest if HP have done the hardwork building the hardware why not flash android on the devices and sell them at a fair price, about 300 euro would be enough.
If they are open then debian webos and android could all be choices for 0S
They don't really have anything else in this space so surely they can make money from this.
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I'm not a shill for Merimobiles but they seem to have the cheapest price. I'll buy one as soon as they get back in stock.
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However you'd have to live with resistive displays (not on all models), low-powered CPU's, low-resolution LCD panels, not-too-great battery life (3-6 hours) and sometimes unusable audio outputs and some devices tend to break down after a few weeks (check forums for issues i
Re:Im in !! (Score:4, Informative)
^ This.
I fail to see how a tablet can't be a lot cheaper than a netbook:
- Capacity touchscreen instead of keyboard
- simple case instead of clamshell
- Cheaper ARM CPU instead of Atom
- smaller battery
- No OS license
That should easily amount to $50 less than a netbook.
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Simple.
"- Capacity touchscreen instead of keyboard"
A capitative touchscreen costs more than a keyboard.
"- simple case instead of clamshell"
In volumen the case is about $5 for one and $3 for the other. The molds are expensive and frankly making a good tablet case is harder than a clamshell netbook because it is expected to be a lot thinner and just as strong.
"- Cheaper ARM CPU instead of Atom"
Probably. I have no idea what OEM pricing on Atom is but I bet it is pretty dang cheap.
"- smaller battery"
But for a t
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Probably. I have no idea what OEM pricing on Atom is but I bet it is pretty dang cheap.
There are several knock-on cost savings in using a SoC instead of Atom + chipset. Atom needs a second chip, it needs motherboard traces run for connecting the two, and it needs motherboard traces run for connecting the RAM, while ARM chips often come in package-on-package configurations so the RAM chip just slots on top of the SoC. All of this adds to the complexity of the Atom board, which adds to its cost.
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True but how much will that come too. $5 per machine? $10? the touch screens add a lot to the cost of the device. That is why the cheap tablets cheap out on the touch screen.
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Misleading title/summary (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Misleading title/summary (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes, but as with the TouchPad, they could have issues with parts and vendors, in which they are trying to go with what results in the least loss. (For example, contract cancellation fees with their suppliers)
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Look, other people get to dream about Newt Gingrich getting the Republican nomination for President. Others fantasize about about Tom Cruise spiriting them away in a DC-9.
What's so wrong with us drooling over the possibility of a $99 touchpad? As these things go, it's pretty harmless.
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Others fantasize about about Tom Cruise spiriting them away in a DC-9.
Sounds like a nightmare to me: the DC-9 was never among my favorite airplanes, and the newest of them is almost 30 years old. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
The final DC-9 was delivered in October 1982.
As for Tom Cruise... I'd fly in a DC-3 to avoid the dork.
Someone is missing a pixel (Score:2)
Re:Someone is missing a pixel (Score:5, Funny)
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Imagine how cheaply they can buy the screens with up to 768 defective pixels.
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Let me introduce the new feature: "The pixel replacement column" whenever you see a dead pixel, click on it and it will be shifted to the replacement column
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1023? Not 1024? Cheapskates ... (Score:4, Funny)
The sheer nerve.
Re:1023? Not 1024? Cheapskates ... (Score:5, Funny)
They had to cut something to get it down to a hundred bucks.
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It's their New Year's Resolution.
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Note they didn't spec 1023 x 768 *contiguous* pixels.
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That actually covers 768 bad pixels... yuck!
Not the cheapest (Score:5, Informative)
There are plenty of very low-end chinese tablets that are under $99. They're typically terribly slow, but you can get them.
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OLPC is ruggedized, though, the Chinese tablets aren't.
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The issue is with the cost of the OLPC. They could have taken some off-the-shelf reference design, maybe with a processor that didn't suck but anyway, and all they'd have had to do was make a case. Instead they went full-custom and drove up the price.
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Also, when the OLPC project started, they actually had to go full custom to do what they wanted, IIRC - the closest to what they were doing was either more expensive or SIGNIFICANTLY slower.
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You could do that, but the OLPCs still provide a much better learning environment, and the community around them has done a much better job at providing minority language support (or making it easy to roll one's own).
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I suspect you haven't looked into how the OLPC foundation has done this enough, WRT the language.
There was also value in the OLPC foundation getting the laptops to kids a lot earlier than now.
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Now, the 9.7" Impression i10 I got at Sears for $230 - THAT's a freakin' schweet Android tablet.
Non-story (Score:5, Interesting)
A story speculating that devices may or may not exist that HP may or may not sell at a price which might or might not be $99, without so much as a hint that there is evidence suggesting they ever actually *made* any production-level product beyond pre-release testing and evaluation units. Given the Touchpad Go's schedule probably wouldn't have had it in mass production at the time HP killed the product line, it seems unlikely that they would have gone forward with production, unless their supply chain already had them over a barrel (which was allegedly the cause of the second wave of firesale, the third being to flush out returns). The problem is any thinking right now is merely speculation.
I'd probably take the plunge and get it if offered just for a WebOS device to play with (I have a few Palm Pres, but it's hard to justify playing with them when my Android phone has much better hardware in every way (bigger, higher resolution screen, faster processors, 4 times the ram, a camera that actually focuses, etc) and actually has support for things like Netflix.
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Screw Standard Resolutions (Score:5, Funny)
1023x768??? This a really good plan.
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Price (Score:5, Funny)
1023x768??? This a really good plan.
Come on, you wonder why this is the only tablet that can be sold for $100? It's the extra pixel that makes all the difference. The guy who owns the patent on pixel 1024 has been licensing it at an obscene markup to manufactures, it's good to see someone finally put a foot down and stop the madness.
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Actually ... that would be an extra 768 pixels. ;-P
Re:Price (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure if this is an attempt to be funny... or your a fucken idiot
Whose the idiot when you don't even know about the 1024th pixel patent!
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Linkbait headline on TFA (Score:5, Informative)
TL;DR: "There was going to be a TouchPad Go, but it never got produced. Film at 11."
Article is trolling for page hits (Score:5, Interesting)
... the fact that this tablet will never see the light of day puts a rather large damper on the party.
P.S. The only one of these ever sold was on eBay a month or so ago for over $700
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And they paid tooooo much for it. If you have a little bit of patience, you're going to see more firesales for decent tablets that also hit the wall of reality-- and soon, IMHO.
$99 TouchPad 2 (Score:1)
I don't see why HP should not revive the TouchPad Go (renamed to TouchPad 2, the other one renamed to Touch Pad Classic). There's a market out there, and they can make money other than on the hardware; (licensed) peripherals, App Catalog sales, there's already a Kindle app, perhaps also introduce a Nook Reader app and get a percentage of sales through that from B&N. Wouldn't that be cool, Kindle and Nook on one device?
Disclosure: I have a WiFi-only (= no GPS) TouchPad (32GB, $149) and use it as an e-rea
Re:$99 TouchPad 2 (Score:5, Informative)
I don't see why HP should not revive the TouchPad Go (renamed to TouchPad 2, the other one renamed to Touch Pad Classic). There's a market out there, and they can make money other than on the hardware; (licensed) peripherals, App Catalog sales, there's already a Kindle app, perhaps also introduce a Nook Reader app and get a percentage of sales through that from B&N. Wouldn't that be cool, Kindle and Nook on one device?
Disclosure: I have a WiFi-only (= no GPS) TouchPad (32GB, $149) and use it as an e-reader about 75% of the time; unfortunately I have to convert everything to pdf as I haven't taken the time yet to use the alternate installer (for which I believe there is a proper reader that handles epub, etc.).
Somehow you truly believe selling a tablet at a price point that's hundreds of dollars below the manufacturing cost is a sustainable business model. Tell me, how much have YOU spent on extra apps, peripherals, etc. for the TouchPad you own? And, if you've bought peripherals - do you believe they cost nothing to manufacture?
I really don't get how some of you can be so disconnected from reality.
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Can't you run the kindle app on the Nook Color already?
Either way, it's missing the point. The color products are for watching movies and doing interactive stuff (and reading in the dark). If you're serious about the reading, you get the e-paper ones. Which, with B&N at least, complements your tablet nicely due to the inter-device page syncing.
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they can make money other than on the hardware;
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah
no.
The tech industry as we see it now proves you've got to put out good product first THEN make it cheap. Not make cheap hardware now THEN make it good product.
Re:$99 TouchPad 2 (Score:4, Informative)
Oh hey and you can do that on both the Kindle Fire, Nook Color and Nook Tablet for $199-249 by sideloading apps or on the Kindle Fire by just downloading it from a direct link. Amazing how they can do that for half the price...
Trial balloon? (Score:2)
Though I have to admit that it's pretty good bait.
can you get the Aakash tablet in the US (Score:2)
I'd buy one (Score:3)
If it can run ICS or Honeycomb and has both WiFi and Bluetooth, I'll buy one even at $250. I want an Android tablet for one purpose: to run Torque via an ODB-II adapter.
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Indeed. I want one for this very purpose. Something I can toss in the glove box without caring too much, and velcro flat on the dash to use as a HUD when I need those extra gauges.
Of course, being able to do other stuff with it, as well, when it's not acting as a performance gauge HUD, would be a benefit.
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Ironically, I'm waiting for webos to be released and ported so I can buy a cheap android tablet and stick webos on it.
No bluetooth? (Score:2)
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Most of the OBD-II interfaces are either bluetooth or wifi.
http://www.amazon.com/OBDLink-Bluetooth-Multiprotocol-OBD-II-ScanTool/dp/B003XNADSA/ref=sr_1_11?s=automotive&ie=UTF8&qid=1325175467&sr=1-11 [amazon.com]
http://www.amazon.com/ELM327-Bluetooth-Diagnostic-Scanner-Scantool/dp/B0051CAE1C/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1325175347&sr=8-4 [amazon.com]
http://www.amazon.com/Soliport-Bluetooth-Diagnostic-Scanner-wireless/dp/B004KL0I9 [amazon.com]
1023 pixels wide? (Score:2, Funny)
Were they afraid Apple would sue them for 1024?
Summary is crap. (Score:4, Informative)
1023, really? I'm betting it's 1024x768, but that's from the article -- worth a [sic] IMO, but I'll let it go.
As the article says, "many wonder" if it will be firesaled for $99, but there's no new reason to suppose any significant stock exists; it remains the same baseless speculation it's been for months.
And as for second-cheapest tablet, a dozen cheaper ones [dealextreme.com] beg to differ.
I like the tablet and this is good news, but
NOT the cheapest (Score:2)
Eken M009S can be had for ~55$ and available to anyone, list pricing.
See pandawill.com
Nope. Not the Cheapest (Score:2)
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For something closer to home, you could go to CVS and get the craig. It's regular price is $99, but it is frequently on sale for $75-$80. Here is a review and info on rooting:
http://reviewhorizon.com/2011/05/how-to-root-install-custom-roms-and-add-android-market-for-cvs-craig-cmp-738a-75-android-tablet/ [reviewhorizon.com]
none (Score:1)
WebOS just doesn't want to go away yet (Score:1)
I wish HP would figure out a viable business model for these devices... These constant rumors only peak interest in these products and what could have been. If they sold for around $200-250, I'm sure more people would have bought them. The capability is also there to develop an BOOK/EBAY/AMAZON/ITUNEs style of market to bolster sales of these products...
Sounds good... (Score:1)
But is it square? Apple's gonna sue them...
well, you can get 7" android tablets for $80 (Score:2)
From quite many sources.
Cheapest I have seen have been about $65, though I did pay $108(inclusive shipping) for mine to get capacitive screen, a 8gb internal storage, 1.5ghz processor model.
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Could be, but I am sofar(few weeks) very happy with my $108 one.
Have no personal experience of the cheaper ones.
TouchPad != Other Android Tablets (Score:1)
Most people agree that Amazon is either just breaking even selling the Amazon Fire, or perhaps selling it at a slight loss (at $200 USD).
So it's obvious that even a 7" HP TouchPad Go, let alone a 10" model is being sold below cost at $200.
Remember HP added feature that are not included in the TouchPad Go like:
- higher resolution screen
- GPS
- twice the storage
- twice the RAM
- front and rear facing cameras (including flash)
- better CPU (a TI OMAP 1GHz dual-core
it was a pretty good product (Score:2)
There arent any tablets under $99? Really? (Score:1)
I think the OP should have a look at the hundreds of tablets selling for under $99 and realize that this touchpad would be a good long ways away from being the cheapest tablet on the market. Maybe if you kick out all of the chinatabs, the cheapies sold at toysrus and so forth.
Re:How does "Go" relate to "Go Corp?" (Score:4, Informative)
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That's entirely true. Almost no-one is on such slow connections. To transfer an entire byte on a 30mbit/sec connection, you'd need over 4 seconds.
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> So what would they be selling? A handful of prototypes?
Pagehits on the the linked sites.
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iPad = a rock? Well, if you put it that way, I have to agree!
Ya doofy n00b, there's nothing Android about the Touchpads. Did you miss the... and the part about the...? And the big firesale... and then the open...? (*sigh*)...
Yeah, I guess you did.
Do ya live under that rock^h^h^h^hiPad?
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee....