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.

P.S. The only one of these ever sold was on eBay a month or so ago for over $700

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.

Personally i thought Dell had the right idea with that convertible netbook/tablet but screwed up with the choice of chip and the price which was too high for an atom based unit. Make it an AMD E-50 so it has enough power to do 1080P over HDMI, it'll also play games and even let them run their Windows programs, and price it for around $350 and the things would sell like hotcakes. Sadly american companies have all looked at Apple and see iMoney and frankly just won't accept 5%-8% profits on sales anymore as they all want to be Apple and make mounds of iCash anymore. But there is only one Apple and if this past year and a half has proved anything its that if you set your price equal or better than the iPad people will go with the more recognized brand. But if they were to target the masses with a machine that's "good enough" at the right price point there isn't any reason they can't make good steady profits year after year.

The Kindle was NEVER made to make money on the unit, it was clear from the start Amazon was going for the razor and blades model because they make out like a damned bandit on Ebooks. If one wanted to go that route with a tablet one clearly could but i believe that by shopping around and doing as Cook did (which i give that man credit, it was a brilliant move) and locking in chips at a set price point one could easily make a profitable sub $200 tablet with decent performance. i mean Asus was selling E-350 12 inch EEEs for just $300 before the flood and making money on every single unit so I don't see why changing the screen to resistive would raise the price above $350 while keeping the same profit margins. BTW the EEE series now comes with Expressgate built in which actually has a nice appstore and ebook sales and reader so i have no doubt Asus is not only making profits on the unit but on sale of games and books as well.

In the end though American companies are just too greedy. Look at Lenovo which has made money year after year on the business IBM threw away, or how the last CEO of HP wanted to get rid of the #1 selling PC division because it was making "only" 7% profits. If you are moving a hell of a lot of merchandise that 7% profit can still be a seriously fat number and even on smaller sales you are making a good steady income. But just as so many companies destroyed themselves in the 70s by ignoring good markets to try to beat IBM at its own game so too are companies lining up to shoot themselves in the head dreaming of iMoney just like all these idiot game publishers that try to beat Warcraft and end up going tits up. In the end there can only be one Apple and they have spent 30 years building themselves up to be the Prada of home electronics and I don't care how good the specs are competing with Apple at the same price point is suicide. to use a /. car analogy it would be like Ford thinking they could compete with Ferrari by putting out a souped up Mustang at the Ferrari price point. Stupid is as stupid does I suppose and its pretty clear that if any of the HP board had an original thought they would probably have their head explode.