HP TO SELL REFURB TOUCHPADS FOR $99 ON 12/11

Starting Sunday, December 11th at 6:00 p.m. Central time, 16GB and 32GB Touchpads will be available on HP’s ebay store. A $79 accessory bundle will also be available, which includes a case, charging dock and wireless keyboard. Look for them in the laptop section. As you would expect, there are some caveats with this deal with the main disappointment being these are refurbished TouchPads rather than the brand new models sold during the first firesale.

The refurbished 16GB and 32GB models will be available in an unannounced quantity. Sales will be limited to just two SKUs per ebay member and PayPal must be used to complete the transaction. All sales are final and the product only comes with a 90-day warranty.

BEST BUY TO OFFER TOUCHPAD WITH HP COMPUTER PURCHASE

Best Buy announced on Monday that customers who purchase an HP or Compaq laptop, desktop or all-in-one computer can opt to purchase an HP TouchPad tablet for an additional $149. The deal, which gives a small breath of life to a tablet that has already been killed-off by HP, kicks off on November 1st. Interested buyers can also purchase the TouchPad for $599.99, the tablet’s initial launch price, without buying an HP computer. As a quick refresher, the TouchPad offers a 9.7-inch XGA display, 32GB of storage, a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and support for 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and NFC.

HP SAYS TOUCHPAD OFFICIALLY OUT OF STOCK

Hewlett-Packard sent out notices today that it is officially out of TouchPads, meaning there will be no more shipments of those popular $99 tablets. The notice says, "As you signed up for updates on the HP TouchPad, we wanted you to know that we are officially out of stock. Some retailers will have some stock available, but our online inventory is depleted."

The only other avenue for getting a TouchPad is Best Buy. The retailer announced today that it will offer a 32 GB HP TouchPad for $149.99 with purchase of an HP or Compaq Laptop, Desktop or All-in-One computer.

HP TO CONTINUE BUILDING TOUCHPAD UNTIL OCTOBER

Hewlett-Packard may have killed the TouchPad, but it’s going to continue manufacturing it for just a little while longer.

With demand for the heavily discounted tablet still running high, HP has decided to produce one one last run before sending it off to a final dirt nap. “HP will be manufacturing a limited quantity of TouchPads with webOS during our fourth fiscal quarter 2011, which ends October 31,” the company said in an update posted to its Next Bench Blog.

Presumably, HP’s upstream suppliers are unhappily sitting atop big piles of component inventory. If the demand is there and the inventory is prepped and paid for, why not produce another run — especially if the company intends to continue to update webOS.
So even in death, the Touchpad lives on thanks to that $99 price point which seems to have ginned up the consumer interest that the $499 device could not.

WHAT DID WE LEARN FROM THE HP TOUCHPAD?

HP announced they are getting out of the consumer hardware business last week. The surprising move came just 2 years after HP paid $2.4 billion for Palm and its WebOS software and just 10 years after buying competitor Compaq for around $25 billion. The purchase of Compaq made HP, at the time, the largest computer company in the world. After just 10 short years they managed to squander that title and their consumer hardware market has slid into oblivion.

What is amazing is that HP has inadvertently shed light on post-PC era and the problem many companies are having as they take on the current hardware leader Apple and its ubiquitous iPad. A lot of critics and tech pundits have lamented that lack of apps leading to HP’s decision to pull the plug on its Touchpad, however what has happened in the last 3 days has proved that to be inaccurate. HP has a vibrant WebOS App Catalog suite for both the Pre series of smartphones but also the Touchpad. The WebOS had a loyal following and dedicated community as well. So what did HP show the rest of the companies chasing Apple? Price point!

Since Apple introduced the iPad, other companies have been trying to duplicate its success most notably with Google’s Android OS. Android has done a good job of creating a number of apps for its App Marketplace and all the tablets combined still trail the iPad. So why are Android tablets trailing Apple’s? There are a few reasons such as marketing, fanboydom, etc., however there is one that is most telling and has come to light with the HP announcement, price point!

All tablet manufacturers have priced their products at the same price point, or close to it, as Apple’s in the misunderstanding that is the “sweet” spot for tablets. It is….for Apple! HP was only in the tablet market for about month and upon entering did what every other company did, priced the Touchpad around the iPad price point. Within a few weeks they dropped the price $100 to help boost sales, which it did, but not enough for HP to continue. When the word got out that HP Touchpads could now be purchased for as little as $99 they flew off the shelves and it is almost impossible to find one. What drove this sell off? Price point!

While it would not be good business to sell quality tablets for less than it costs to manufacturer them, companies need to understand that simply blindly following another company does a number of things, or doesn’t do them as the case may be. One, it just makes the following company a perpetual number 2 since all they are doing is following. Second, it decreases innovation since all future products are really coming from one company with all others just replicating the same thing. Other tablet manufacturers need to understand that in order to effectively compete with Apple’s iPad they need to give consumers a reason to pick their product over the hype of the iPad AND aggressively price their offerings to entice consumers to purchase their products.

HP TOUCHPAD PRICES DROP SIGNIFICANTLY

In a memo sent to HP affiliates, the company issued the declaration to begin liquidating TouchPad inventories, with a price cut of $300 or more:

HP will be lowering the price of the TouchPad beginning Saturday 8/20/11. This is the lowest price ever for the TouchPad so please post it as soon as it goes live.

16GB TouchPad- $99; 32GB TouchPad - $149

The pricing may be set to go live tomorrow, but that hasn’t stopped some retailers. Best Buy Canada and Future Shop have already implemented the new pricing, and we expect others will follow through shortly.

HP KILLS TOUCHPAD, WEBoS AND PHONES; SPIN OFF OR SELLING COMPUTER BUSINESS

In a shocking announcement HP has said it is exiting the tablet computer and smartphone business and either selling or spinning off its PC division. The most immediate impact to consumers is the end of the Touchpad, which was just launched a month ago, and HP branded smartphones, notably the Palm series.

The announcement was a surprise especially considering HP paid almost $2 billion just two years ago for WebOS owner Palm. WebOS has been praised by the tech industry, but generally ignored by consumers.

HP will continue to sell servers and business equipment while it ramps up to become a software and services business.

RUMOR: HP TOUCHPAD TO LACK DOCUMENT EDITING AT LAUNCH

The WebOS nuts at PreCentral have received an anonymous tip-off that HP's imminent slate won't be able to edit Office docs out of the box. As much as we'd like to dismiss this as a retaliatory rumor put out by BlackBerry, it emits an unfortunate whiff of truth.

While HP has previously made a big deal of the TouchPad's inclusion of the Quickoffice app, it has only said it's "working with Quickoffice" to include document editing, and it has never demoed editing in action. The company has recently been trying to boost its app count, but perhaps it should have put more effort into securing core functionality instead.

A glimmer of hope, though: the same tip-off also suggested that at least some editing capabilities will be introduced "via a downloadable update in Q3 2011".

LENOVO SHOWS OFF EYE TRACKING TECH

Controlling a mouse pointer on a laptop can be done in one of three ways depending on your hardware. The most common two ways are with a touchpad or a USB mouse. If you have a ThinkPad then there’s the keyboard nub too. Lenovo has decided to prototype another method, though, using an eye control system from Swedish company Tobii.

Using your eyes as mouse input is not always active to avoid frustration and therefore require some keyboard input to work, but it seems to remain intuitive. Holding down a button shows all the active windows you have open and looking at one while releasing the key gives it the focus. If you want to quickly select an object like an image you can look at it and double-tap the left arrow key to load it.

Lenovo and Tobii have also added a new fold out menu system. It works by sensing when you look just beyond the far left of the screen which activates the menu. Items on that menu can then be focused on with your eyes to either bring up another menu or load that item.

Tobii sees eye tracking as viable in laptops within two years as long as the right hardware partner is chosen. Based on that timescale, and if Lenovo continue to see value in this input method, we could get an eye tracking ThinkPad by 2013.

RUMOR: HP TOUCHPAD COMING IN JUNE FOR $699

BGRis reporting that the HP TouchPad unveiled earlier this week could be with us in June at a price point of $699.

Until now HP has just stated that the TouchPad would arrive at some point in the summer, but refused to say when and how much it would cost. If this information from a trusted BGR source is true, it shows a little of the strategy HP has decided to follow.

While higher in price than the low-end iPad and RIM PlayBook, it does undercut the Motorola Xoom by $100.

HP PRESS EVENT ROUND-UP; VEER, TOUCHPAD AND PRE3

Below is a roundup of HP's press event today. One notable abscense from the event was Palm, which HP acquired fairly recently. Has HP killed the Palm name? Possibly for now anyway.

HP VEER
The very first webOS-based device to bear the HP name alone without Palm's alongside packing Qualcomm's Snapdragon 7230 processor at 800MHz. Other headline specs include a 2.6-inch 320 x 400 display, 5 megapixel EDoF camera, HSPA+ support, 8GB of storage, an accelerometer, proximity and light sensors (as usual), Touchstone compatibility, and mobile hotspot support. Keyboard usability will be a big question that we'll need to have answered when the phone is released this spring. No word on carriers yet, and pricing is set to be decided upon "at a later date."

HP PRE3
Here's to a decidedly Palm-less round three. The QWERTY slider with the all-too-familiar form factor has a 3.6-inch 800 x 480 display (a marked improvement over past Pres), 5 megapixel camera with AF and LED flash, 720p HD video, a front-facing camera for video calling, mobile hotspot, and webOS 2.2. Under the hood? A Qualcomm MSM 8x55 CPU running at 1.4GHz (!), 802.11a/b/g/n 5GHz, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, A-GPS, a 1230 mAh battery, HSPA+ and EVDO Rev A -- yep, it's a world phone -- and the same RAM as the Pre 2 (that's 512MB DRAM). It'll be Touchstone compatible, naturally, and will switch to Exhibition mode when docked to show pictures and upcoming appointments. There's some interesting synergy going on where the TouchPad tablet can take Pre 3's phone calls, and just touching the two devices together will let you share URLs (aptly titled touch-to-share). This one's gonna keep you waiting, though -- availability is this summer with both 8GB and 16GB storage options.

TOUCHPAD
the TouchPad (previously known by Topaz) is shaped almost exactly like the iPad. It tips the scales at 1.6 pounds and measures 13.7mm thick, which is somewhat of a downer for those already put off by the heft found in Apple's slate. As we'd heard last month, HP's shipping this one with its own Beats audio engine, Touch-to-Share (a feature that lets users easily transfer a website, document, song, text or call from the phone to the tablet -- or vice versa -- simply by tapping the two devices together) and a huge reliance on the cloud. Also of note, Jon just mentioned that this is only the "first in the webOS TouchPad family," hinting that the Opal may be just around the bend.

Other specifications include webOS 3.0, "true multitasking," Touch-to-share, instant-on productivity, a 9.7-inch display (1024 x 768 screen resolution), a dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon CPU (!), inbuilt gyroscope, accelerometer, compass and 16GB / 32GB of internal storage space. There's also a front-facing 1.3 megapixel webcam, support for video calling, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, A-GPS (3G model only), "twice the memory of a Pre 2" and a set of stereo speakers. Rubenstein claims that this here tablet is "screaming fast," and the software UI we're seeing looks downright luscious. There's a new paneled email application a Growl-like pop-up notification system, support for Skype calling, compatibility with Amazon's Kindle e-book store, plenty of cal / email integration courtesy of HP Synergy, a slick virtual keyboard, VPN support, wireless printing as well as Google Docs, QuickOffice, Dropbox and Box.net compatibility. One of the killer features that can't be found on a competing tablet right now is this one's ability to talk to the Pre 3 -- so long as there's a Touchstone involved, one can have their Pre 3 and TouchPad communicate, even piping over notifications and texts from the phone onto the slate. It's a brilliant idea, and we're obviously amped to see just how well it's implemented.

OTHER NOTES
HP confirmed it has teamed up with Time, Inc to offer subscriptions to some of its magazines on the TouchPad when it launches this summer. That will apparently include Sports Illustrated, Time and People initially, with Fortune and other Time Inc. titles to follow further on down the road, according to AdWeek. Still no word on pricing, but HP promises they'll deliver an "immersive reading" experience.

HP's decided to end its fireworks-rich presentation on a gorgeous bombshell: webOS is coming to PCs! The company says it's thinking beyond today and intends to take webOS to "other connected devices, including printers, and some form factors you haven't seen before." Aside from the groundbreaking discovery that our next LaserJet might run the same code as the dashing new TouchPad, there are few specifics to be learned, but HP promises to share further details as the year goes on.