Ultra-cheap HP TouchPads to hit UK at 6pm In the wake of HP's decision to axe the WebOS platform, the price of the HP TouchPad has been falling quicker than Cristiano Ronaldo in the opposition's penalty box. The $99 offer which has seen hordes of people lapping up the slate Stateside, is about to be replicated in Blighty, with Dixons announcing dramatic price …
It's all very well having one of these. But apart from fondling it, using it as a frisbee or putting it on the mantlepiece as an ornament; what can you actually do with it.
It won't get any upgrades or fixes. It had hardly any apps for the webOS wotsit-thingy that it runs and nobody's going to write any new ones for it.
Now if some enterprising enterprise (or individual) was to port iOS to it, then I reckon $99+VAT would be about the right price for a slab of fondling.
It has the web, email, and will function as a useful media player, which is all it needs to justify the new price considering these are the tasks that justify a tablets existence for the majority of users.
You are correct in that there won't be a glut of thousands of useless tat apps that hold the attention for 5 minutes, and the dozen or so apps that have actual utility that can't easily be replaced by some web page or another.
Well it's got an excellent web browser with flash. It handles video playback, you can Skype, it has a great email client and calendar suite, you can view and edit Office documents, view photos, there are already Twitter and Facebook apps... all of this handled much better than a £200 netbook would manage
what more do you want a sub £100 computer to do?
I'd happily take one at that price. as a WebOS device there *might* be something in it.... with the latest WebOS this tablet behaved itself nicely.... however, if WebOS has no future then theres always eg Android - they've already mainly ported it to that device... that spec tablet for that price with Android = FTW.
For £89 I would, it's a fun toy and there's already work happening on an Android port.
Unfortunately they appear to have already gone from the Dixons site, if and when it eventually loads, and PC World isn't looking too promising in my neck of the woods either...
>On a more serious note, who would seriously consider a heavily discounted fondleslab with no future?
Surely every linux fanbois on here. The sort who would religiously defend all that is linux and slag off Jobs and Gates inbetween gags whilst giving Torvalds a blow job. Those who would hack a toaster so that it could run linux. From some of the comments on these pages lately there must be thousands of pimply nerds living in their mother's basement with nothing better to do.
>> On a more serious note, who would seriously consider a heavily discounted fondleslab with no future?
I would. It's 90 quid ffs.
It's for a bit of light browsing only.
Shame it's not actually available, although the websites (dixons/pcworld/currys) are all carrying the new price, just no availability.
Toodle pip.
There are plenty of people. My sister-in-law is using a 1st gen iPod Touch to look online as it's better than her laptop and she can't afford any alternative (I even gave her the iPod).
She couldn't afford the £89 but we could have given it to her as a present and it would be a huge step up.
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> Seems that dixons site has already gone down at 18:00 ;)
It started playing up at 18:00
I managed to get some tablets ordered - twice - but failed to complete checkout; the site kept sending me back to its home page with my basket emptied.
I wonder if this was just a ruse to get people to register...
Vic.
It was pre-announced that Dixons would be dropping their price. It was also known that Dixons would offer partial refunds following any price reduction (standard DSG practice of price matching for 7 days after a sale).
Therefore anyone wanting a low price Touchpad just had to buy at the full price safe in the knowledge they can request a partial refund for the difference from Dixons once the price dropped.
Buyers that waited until the price had actually dropped had virtually no chance of completing a sale - all the stock had been sold prior to the price drop as the savvy buyers piled in hours earlier.
In many respects it was all a bit of a scam as online buyers who patiently waited were never going to get anything.
I haven't been looking for a tablet but for these prices, I would seriously consider getting it (and tried but was too late). Will work okay as a basic browsing device then it would just be a matter of waiting for someone to port Android or Linux to it.
That price for that hardware is a frikkin' steal!
After trying all the usual places, it looks like anyone who was selling at the firesale prices is now out of stock. So my extensive collection of 'dead' technology will have to do without a TouchPad for now.
Maybe someone in HP marketing needs to learn about price elasticity of demand. At 400 quid nobody wants one. At 100 quid they can't shift them fast enough. Surely there must have been a price point between the two where they could have turned it into a viable business...
Since most seem to use their tablet for surfing and mail reading, and this one has those apps, I figure it has 95% of the usecases covered.
Oh, and this one can show web pages properly, that is, with the flash content...
And for the rest, it's linux, there have been people running ubuntu on it (chrooted) and android, so for the time this kind of hardware lives, it has a bit of future covered.
At that price for the hardware alone it would be worth purchasing one as although WebOS has no future I am sure someone will work out how to root them and install Android or Meego or some other linux on there. And even with WebOS Its got to be better than the £99 Android tablets that you get from china
I was an early adopter of HP tech. The 9826 was possibly the best computer I've ever used. My HP11c calculator, which I bought about 200 years ago, is still going strong and is probably the best engineering calculator ever made. A few years ago I bought an HP laptop and a HP printer and after this experience the only thing made by HP that I'd ever consider buying would be a replacement for the 11c should it get run over by a tank and come off worse (pretty unlikely, I know). Good to see them reaping the benefits of forgetting that it's what customers think that matters.
Someone more savvy than the CEO of HP would have done this as a market-spoiling loss-leader: dump stuff that you're generally unhappy with, retreat, come back in a while with a better offering when everyone is looking to upgrade. Or just stiff the punters on the apps and accessories - it's not as if HP don't know how to do that.
But the CEO will be sticking to his guns. Maybe he'll demand the offer pulled within minutes in order to have a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure: "We couldn't sell any even at reduced price!"
Actually, on second thoughts, that's how Nokia would pull this particular stunt.
It's a good job I don't gamble, but hey, if they can charge double to make a profit they can still sell twice as many at half cost than they've already sold and they will break even. I suspect they'll be selling many more at the lower price but it won't be so catastrophic for them once the accountants have finished.
Big joke, at £89 it's worth a punt, however every one else seemed to think so. Managed to get one in my basket and it stayed there right until I went to pay for it, then it vanished.
Does feel like they only had a few and this was a con to just get more punters through the website. Poor till system as well if it doesn't put a temporary reserve your chosen item(s) so you can actually complete the purchase.
At that price I'd buy one. Well I would if Dixon's site could cope with demand - crashed just before payment for a 16GB one, now says 32GB out of stock.
I don't see what sort of future it needs - the internet isn't going anywhere, it can connect to that until it wears out. Useful lifespan will be the same as any other tablet device and the hefty price reduction makes it the best value product at the moment.
At £89 I'd buy any piece of shit fondleslab. I've used one of these at work and I know they can at least do the basics. Sod the fact they don't have any apps to play with! Let the fire-sale commence!!!
Oh bugger...the 16GB version has already disappeared from the store and the 32GB version is showing as not available. Fabulous :(
Apparently HP ship Touchpad with ridiculous amounts of logging enabled. Disabling some of that gives significant speed-up. I was hoping to get one for my mother-in-law for gmail and music, nothing a full iOS4 gadget is required for.
Hopefully the UK retailers and HP UK are better prepared than the Laurel and Hardy act performed by HP US, HP Canada, Best Buy et al.
Okey dokey, as per guy above I reserved one -16GB- yesterday evening at the Bedford PCWorld 32GB was showing out of stock but 16 showed as available and successfully completed. Confirmation E-mail also received within ten minutes.
Went to the store at 9:15am to be informed it was sold out just right before a guy showed up with notices for hanging on the door! I received the usual attempt at blame transferal with the business manager saying he'd tried calling me and had left a message. Logically enough I'd put my home number into the ONE SINGLE mandatory phone number field,which the manager latched onto criticizing the lack of a mobile number.
Turns out they'd only bothered calling at 8:30 am, when I was out progressing toward PCWorld via gym and Costa. I didn't receive until just now. Even then the message only said it was about my order, not stating anything about lack of availability! Big FAIL on so many counts.
I calmly (no really) addressed all these issue with the two in-store managers explaining my wish to escalate until a satisfactory, touchpad possession, conclusion. All contact details exchanged ( wouldya believe they claimed my E-mail, submitted on same form as phone number and actually checked as still only showing positive order confirmation five mins before proceeding to store, wasn't available to the store, due to some online business separate crap!) All to gain some flannel that there is a further stock shipment due and I only had one guy in front of me!?
Long story just to conclude that there must be a dropped legal ball on their part and would love to know of such ramifications that may apply. I do not recall 'visible' small print or any check boxes / notifications that "reserved" only applied to your new random lottery ticket for the product you'd jumped through hoops for!
Cheers Stuart
so seems the ploy worked, i couldn't find any available on their site now.
i was almost tempted too, but then, there's a very good reason why they're discounting the price so much, so probably a good thing other people got there first before i came to my senses and realised that even at that price, it's a long way from a bargain
The way the web shops were falling over handling the firesale orders made me realise the real HP strategy: this was all meant to push web companies into buy more servers... and guess who makes a lot of servers?
I can see the HP salesmen already at the door of DSG, Carphone Warehouse, etc bright and early tomorrow morning with their quotes and shiny brochures.
DSG offer to price match up to 7 days after sale, so all those that were aware of this pricing policy piled in hours before the price actually dropped, and claimed a partial refund afterwards.
This meant that there was *never* any stock available at Dixons/PC World/Currys (all the same from an online perspective) once the price drop became effective on the online web sites - it had all been sold hours earlier at full price.
DSG scammed a vast number of people by leading them to believe they had a chance of buying a cheap Touchpad online after the price had dropped... they knew savvy buyers were snatching up all the available stock and that there would be none left by the time the price was reduced - one of their managers was tweeting all afternoon about the impending drop, building up interest in something that would DSG knew would be a major fail.
My advice now would be to update your Dixons, PCWorld and/or Currys online account with fictitious name, address, date of birth, and telephone number as you're not likely to need it again, and before you fall victim to identity fraud (as you surely will knowing - from bitter experience - DSG's lax approach to online security and apparent total ignorance of online fraud).
How many did they actually have? It does strike me rather odd that all the companies that discounted them have sold them all within such a short space of time... Apart from us nerds on here (and similar sites), who knew, and who would want one?
Bet they find a few more in the next couple of days, but they'll cost more.
Either that or their websites have a built in "weird sales pattern detected, shutdown" protection to cover them if somebody accidentally enters and incorrect price.
Yes, yes, I know, I have a suspicious mind!
If anyone's interested, Darty seem to have at least the 32Gb model available for €129:
http://www.darty.com/nav/achat/informatique/tablette_tactile/tablette_tactile/marque__tablette_tactile_hp.html
and may also still have 16Gb models at €99:
http://www.darty.com/nav/achat/informatique/portables/tablette/hp_touch_pad_16_gb.pl
amazon had them the 16gb at £89 early this morning (12.15am) , they showed as temp out of stock, but allowed me to buy it. its now showing as not yet dispatched. so fingers crossed.
quite looking forward to it. at £89 its a steal. even if android never turns up, webos seems like a competant system for surfing, iplayer and generall fondle tom foolerly.
My local Comet had price tags showing the reduced prices but no stock, just a display one which they wouldn't sell me. Insisting that was because they were getting more in (date unknown), and that HP hadn't discontinued them. Nothing odd about a 75% price cut, and a customer making a 150 mile round trip to collect one apparently.
I think I'll try to speak to the manager tomorrow.
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When I told the missus about this, she fancied one to play with rather than an iPad, especially at that price. Both the Pc world and currys I tried this morning had never had stock, but they seemed to be satellite branches of belfasts larger stores, so possibly...
Pc world site still shows them as "in stock for collection of home delivery", but when you click on link, they're unavailable and they try to sell you and advent tab. Now I've got to disinfect my eyes.
Argos have stock at full price, cpw have very definitely got no stock, and go so far as to say don't even ring us to ask when we're getting it back in stock, comet don't mention it at all.
Call me suspicious, but yesterday, there were hundreds of thousands of these sitting in the channel. Surely to goodness, they can't all have been sold overnight? Or have they built a temple out of them to sacrifice HP on?
I'll give our local store a try tomorrow, but I'm not holding out much hope, so I guess I'll just have to keep saving for the ipad2 with 3G.
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