Buyers snap up Hewlett-Packard's discounted TouchPad tablet

US buyers have been snapping up HP's defunct TouchPad tablet for $US99 per unit Source: Supplied

HEWLETT-PACKARD'S defunct TouchPad tablet has virtually sold out in the United States after its price was slahed from $US499 to $US99.

HP's decision to drop the price to as low as $US99 touched off a weekend buying rush that the company called "overwhelming."

The sudden interest came after HP said it was discontinuing its tablet and smartphone efforts, after disappointing sales and unfavourable reviews.

HP cut the price of its least-expensive 16 Gigabyte TouchPad to $99.99 from $499.99. The price on a 32 Gigabyte version was reduced to $149.99 from $599.99.

The Palo Alto company said it is still exploring alternatives for webOS, the well-regarded software that powered the TouchPad.

HP's decision to jettison remaining inventory at rock-bottom prices instantly became the talk of the technology press in the US on the weekend.

Blog posts were quickly published with rolling updates containing lists of stores and online sites where the device was still available.

Demand was so heavy that by Sunday, the website slickdeals.com was filled with "sold out" notices in red next to such popular retailers as Amazon.com, B&H Foto, Fry's Electronics, Target and Walmart.

A saleswoman at a Best Buy store in San Francisco said all the TouchPads in the Bay Area were sold out by Saturday night.

Eager customers scouring retailers turned their attention to stores that hadn't yet dropped the TouchPad's price, and reported multiple calls with sales representatives and methods for getting the price reduced.

"If you buy at full price, they will price match in 10 days to their own store if price drops," a person wrote about Barnes & Noble Inc.

The retailer still was charging $407.95 for the TouchPad, of which slickdeals estimated there were 14,000 in stock. Barnes & Noble wasn't available for comment.

Other consumers debated whether the device was good value even at the lower price.

"They are utterly worthless now," a person commented on a cnet.com article about the sale. "Amen," responded another.

Others disagreed, starting a Twitter campaign called "#saveWebOS" with pleas to keep the platform going and tweets from customers who had been awaiting H-P's next generation smartphones and tablets.

"My dreams are dashed," said a Twitter user who called herself Cheryl. "Thanks (for nothing) @HP."

HP's Latest Fiasco: The Vanishing $99 TouchPad

It wasn't quite the seen you'll find for the iPhone 5 debut, but about 30 or more bargain hunters showed up at San Francisco's Best Buy hoping to snatch up a cheap HP TouchPad on Saturday. Internet reports indicated that the TouchPad devices had sold cheaply in Canada, and other big box stores like Fry's had sold out. The going price: $99 for the 16 GB version, $149 for the 32 GB TouchPad.

Most of the crowd had seen the notice on Best Buy's door indicating that there had been an error, and the TouchPad wouldn't be sold at all. Yet they waited to hear it from store workers. Sure enough, at 10 a.m. the outer doors opened, the crowd moved toward the door, and an employee clad in the usual Best Buy Polo shirt informed everyone that if they were there for the TouchPad, they were out of luck.

A disappointed group turned in mass and headed back to their cars.

It wasn't just the size of the group that differed from an Apple product launch. Most notably, there wasn't a Millennial to be found. The average age of the crowd seemed closer to 40. A swarm of German and Japanese luxury cars slowly left the Best Buy parking lot.

Discussions in the cars probably centered around whether they could find the device selling cheaply elsewhere, and about how HP had made yet another implosive mistake in its handling of the WebOS device shutdown.

HP TouchPad now cheaper than the iPad

HP has slashed the price of the TouchPad so that the budget model is now cheaper that the budget iPad.

And it’s a hefty price cut of $100.

The $100 price cut sees the 16GB Wi-Fi TouchPad go from $499 to $399, with the 32GB WiFi model now at $499. Compare this to the iPad, where the 16GB WiFi model is at the original price of $499.

According to HP senior vice president Stephen DiFranco the reason for the price cut is that HP was ‘pleased with customer response’ to a $100 instant-savings promotion that it had recently run.

My guess here is that HP is looking to boost sales rather than profit in order to make the platform more attractive to developers - more developers means more apps, which might lead to more interest from the buying public. Apps are what’s missing on the TouchPad’s webOS platform, and without buoyant sales, developers are likely to stay away, which is bad for the app ecosystem.

I still think that the iPad is the best tablet out there, but the TouchPad is now fast becoming a worthy rival. If you’re not a fan of Apple, then you might want to take a look at it.

That said, a TouchPad price drop is unlikely to affect iPad sales that much … boost in TouchPad sales is likely to come at the expense of Android sales.

HP TouchPad as portable blogging machine

I am always trying different gadgets as part of my mobile tech blogging, and one of the criteria that determines if a particular gadget works for me is how well I can use it in my job. That means how well a device can function as a portable blogging machine. My testing of the HP TouchPadhas surprised me that it fills that role nicely.

A portable blogging machine must be easy to carry most of the time. It doesn’t do much good if I have to leave it in the office a lot. The best blogging system is the one I have with me. The TouchPad is such a gadget, I find it easy to take along for most outings, making it available should a writing opportunity present itself.

The Wordpress app on the TouchPad is very good compared to other versions, and those with a simple blog on the network will be happy. Our blogs on ZDNet are very complex and require a special backend to support this publishing environment. That usually means writing in the browser editor. This works on the TouchPad browser to a degree, but I find it falls short in handling the entire blogging process from writing to publishing.

I have settled on a method for blogging that utilizes the TouchPad as a writing machine only. I write articles using a text editor on the TouchPad, and then finalize them back at the desktop for publishing. This method works well, even better than I expected, and has benefits as a result.

TapNote for the TouchPad is a simple text editor that makes this system work well. It provides me with a blank screen for entry, which allows me to focus on what I want to say and not the vehicle for capturing it. This has turned into a great method for me as it allows my creativity to flow. It works equally well with the onscreen virtual keyboard and the Bluetooth keyboard I occasionally use. The TouchPad onscreen keyboard is really good, and I can do a lot of entry using it. When I have big articles planned I bring the wireless keyboard along to get busy.

TapNote can automatically sync with my Dropbox account in the cloud, and this makes the process work for me. I enter a new “note” and it instantly appears in my Dropbox storage. This makes it available on every computer and gadget I use, so my work follows me as it should. TapNote saves each note to Dropbox as a simple TXT file, making it easy to incorporate into blog posts via simple copy and paste. This system works so well that I am using it more often than I anticipated.

Once I’ve written an article in TapNote while on the go, I can create a Wordpress blog post at any time back in the office (or on a laptop anywhere). I bring the text into the blog editor and then edit it as usual for publishing. I have come to appreciate the extra proofreading I do on both the TouchPad and the desktop, as I catch almost all typos.

This system won’t be appropriate for everyone, after all we are all different. It works marvelously for me, and I can be productive at a moment’s notice almost everywhere.

HP offers $50 credit to TouchPad early adopters

Hewlett-Packard is trying to make the sting of paying full price for the TouchPad a bit less painful for early adopters.

Over the weekend, HP announced that it would be offering some customers a $50 credit for the company's application marketplace, the App Catalog. The credit is available to those who bought the TouchPad in the U.S. between July 1 and August 4.

HP's TouchPad has been having difficulty competing against the leader in the tablet space, Apple's iPad. Last week, the company announced that it was offering an "instant rebate" on the TouchPad of $50, dropping the price of the tablet down to $449.99 and $549.99 for the 16GB and 32GB models, respectively.

That was quickly followed by a $100 discount off the original launch price from Friday to Sunday to help spur demand for its device.

However, by dropping the price of the tablet, HP caught some flak from customers who were displeased by its decision to drop the price of the TouchPad so soon.

But HP hasn't been the only company trying to put out fires over pricing. Earlier this month, Nintendo apologized to early adopters of its 3DS portable after announcing that it would drop the price of the device from $249.99 to $169.99 starting on August 12. To make it right, Nintendo said that it would offer early adopters 20 free games from its Virtual Console.

HP's App Catalog credit is good through the end of the year. Customers who bought the device before the price cut will receive details in an e-mail from HP on how to use the credit.

HP TouchPad price cuts, tablet price war now on?

With a flood of Android tablets and more on the way from Amazon, Sony, HTC, Huawei and others to join those already on sale, along with the Playbook and the iPad, HP’s TouchPad has a lot of company.

Although Amazon, Sony, HTC, LG, Samsung, Huawei and Lenovo are yet to release their latest tablets in Australia, at least, with HP not yet launching locally until August 15, there brand name tablets on sale from Apple, Asus, Acer, Motorola, Toshiba and RIM in Australia.

That doesn’t even count Microsoft which does have Windows 7 tablets out there by various manufacturers, nor its highly anticipated Windows 8 tablets due next year.

But it’s the iPad 2 that all have to beat, with its popularity propelled by 100,000 apps and its previously hard-to-get nature that undoubtedly still helps every iPad shipped sell quickly.

Meanwhile, other tablet vendors aren’t exactly falling over themselves to declare how successful their various tablets have been – or at least, not yet. 

Already Acer and Asus have 16GB Android Wi-Fi tablets on sale at prices that nicely undercut the 16GB Wi-Fi iPad 2 in Australia, and HP’s TouchPad hasn’t even launched yet locally, not that it’s the only company still to bring product to market.

In the US, where HP’s TouchPad has been available for the last three or so months, “temporary” price cuts have surfaced, probably in an attempt to see how successful they were at stimulating sales.

HP’s own price cut was meant to expire on the 7th of August, so we’ll just have to wait and see whether new “price cut specials” arrive or whether the price cuts suddenly become permanent.

After all, a tablet and OS needs users to grow – you can’t have a thriving ecosystem without end-users, or webOS might end up a $1.2b control system to drive the LCD screens on HP’s printers.

With Android tablets expected to see fierce price competition towards the end of this year, HP will need to do everything in its power to ensure that TouchPads touch the lives of as many people as possible.

With the end of 2011 drawing ever closer, especially with all the global worry about GFC Mark II possibly having hit, that tablet price war is surely coming – if not just to clear stocks to make way for all those 2012 models yet to come!

HP TouchPad: webOS has lots of room for improvement

The webOS-powered HP TouchPad was released in the beginning of July and after spending over15 minutes with one at Best Buy I was planning to skip this tablet. HP then had some crazy deals where you could find the 16GB model for $300 and a Twitter buddy found a deal on Craigslist so I jumped on one for $325. After spending the weekend using the TouchPad for several hours, I have to say it is better than the RIM BlackBerry PlayBook, but even at just over $300 I still can’t recommend this tablet to anyone and the iPad is all I can tell people to buy when they ask about 10 inch tablets.

Hardware

The HP TouchPad is not an elegant tablet and is a chunky beast with a super glossy back.It makes up for some of my hardware concerns with the rounded corners, decent stereo speakers, and very slick Touchstone charging dock. The iPad and iPad 2, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, and even the Motorola Xoom are all better hardware. I don’t understand why HP couldn’t have released a tablet with a slimmer profile, especially after they saw the first generation iPad and knew another would be coming soon. The TouchPad is 0.54 of an inch thick while the iPad 2 is 0.34 and the original iPad is 0.5. The TouchPad also weighs in at 1.6 pounds compared to the iPad 2 at 1.3 pounds. I am not too bothered by the weight since a 10 inch tablet is going to have some heft to it, but the thickness bothers me when compared to my sleek iPad 2.

The display is the same size and resolution as the iPad (9.7 inches at 1024 x 768 pixels) and is comparable in quality. However, I am not sure if it is webOS or the display, but the touch experience was so incredibly frustrating this weekend that I almost threw the TouchPad against my concrete patio. On multiple occasions the display became completely unresponsive to swipes and touches and the device just sat there. I couldn’t tell if something was processing in the background or if I wasn’t tapping or swiping in exactly the right manner so I tapped and I tapped and I tapped. Eventually, the display became aware of my presence again and at times performed multiple tap actions as the OS tried to catch up with what I was doing for the last 30 seconds.

Apple excels at the touch experience and I have yet to find a phone or tablet manufacturer that can mimic the responsiveness of iOS devices. I am not expecting HP to live up to the iOS level, but there should NEVER be a time when my tap or swipe doesn’t register on the display and HP needs to get this figured out ASAP as the experience is very frustrating at this time and this alone kills my desire to even use the tablet.

Operating system

webOS is a very slick UI with a great multi-tasking design through the cards and I do like it on the HP TouchPad, but even with just a few apps loaded up I have been seeing “too many cards open” errors and am beginning to think that Apple and Microsoft may have multi-tasking better designed for today’s mobile devices. iOS and Windows Phone 7 multi-tasking essentially freezes the background apps when you go elsewhere and I find double-tapping and selecting an open app on the bottom row of my iPad to be a much more efficient means of jumping between apps.

I love the way that webOS integrates so many services into the OS with Synergy, much like the way Microsoft does with Windows Phone 7 Mango. It is especially handy with the messaging app and photos, although I really don’t see too much need for messaging on a 10 inch WiFi only tablet since I tend to use messaging services when I am out and about on my phone a whole lot more than when I am sitting on my couch at home with a tablet.

The integrated contacts app is good, but the calendar is not as good as the one on the iPad. Email is about the same on both the iPad and TouchPad with a universal inbox and support for all the typical email clients you would expect. iOS does better with dates and addresses in email messages, but HP may get webOS updated to include this too in the future.

The web browser is great and similar to what I saw on the BlackBerry Playbook. I have seen people argue that you don’t need apps when the browser is so good and I myself made that argument when I had my BlackBerry PlayBook. However, I personally find apps that are optimized for certain experiences to be better than a fully functional browser.

The keyboard is easily MUCH better on the webOS-powered TouchPad and Apple could take a few cues here in IOS 5. I LOVE the dedicated number row and the way the letters switch between capital and lower case as I enter text, just like it should on all virtual keyboards. It’s also pretty slick how you can switch to extra small, small, medium, and large keyboard sizes on the TouchPad.

3rd party apps

HP has a rather lame launcher with four tabs for Apps, Downloads, Favorites, and Settings. The default apps are found in Apps, ones you download in Downloads, those you drag and drop into Favorites, and your device preferences in Settings. I have been moving those I use most into Favorites, but would love to be able to create my own tabs for Games, Work, Media, and such and think this should be a fairly easy fix in a future OS update too.

After over 2 years of webOS existence there are still only something like 3,000 apps for the platform. In the HP App Catalog you can see apps with “For TouchPad” attached to them that are optimized for the large screen tablet. I am not sure how many there are and the ones that are available are generally quite good. There are quite a few games, but many of them cost a few bucks and if you have a smartphone version you still have to buy the tablet version.

I would like to see a filter to just show my TouchPad apps since I don’t care at all for the way HP lets you use smartphone apps in a small window, much the way the iPad lets you run iPhone apps. I did find a couple of my Palm smartphone games, like Cronk, actually play well in full screen even though they are not TouchPad optimized.

I know when a new form factor or OS launches that there won’t be a large number of apps available, but I also don’t understand the apparent blind faith that so many people on Twitter put into HP releasing a ton of TouchPad apps. As I stated above, after 2+ years we only have 3,000 webOS apps so what makes people think there will be developers releasing thousands more apps soon for the TouchPad? Is this just the hopes of die hard Palm enthusiasts or can we really expect developers to jump on a platform that falls under “other” in every smartphone market share report?

TouchPad staying or going?

I started my mobile life with Palm in 1997 and as many times as they have stumbled over the years, I still have a special place in my heart for them. Since I was able to pick up my TouchPad for just over $300, I am going to keep in and see where HP goes with the platform. James mentioned the webOS homebrew community and I am going to try out some of those patches on my new device to see if tweaking it can improve performance and maybe even address the lack of touch response.

When friends and family ask me what tablet they should buy, I am still going to recommend the Apple iPad because I think it is still the leader in the tablet market and there are so many apps and services available for it that there is very little it cannot do. HP’s webOS is my 2nd favorite though and I see more potential and desire to improve it than I do with RIM and the PlayBook.

If any of you have an HP TouchPad I would love to know what apps you recommend I try out so please send them along or leave your suggestions in the comments