HP Reviving the $99 Touch Pad On December 11th

Frankie70 writes "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. The caveat with this deal is that these are refurbished TouchPads rather than the brand new models sold during the first firesale."

Comments

Er, no.

[irregular_hero]

As a famous jerkwad once said: "Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

Re:Er, no.

[apcullen]

while I appreciate the brilliant quote, I don't get it. Something is wrong with a chance to score a tablet for $99? Did HP do a bait and switch last time around? OTOH, I guess we should be skeptical of a company that's abandoning the tablet market and webOS selling these at must certainly be a loss.

Re:Er, no.

[irregular_hero]

Just speaking as a person who tried and failed multiple times to get orders in for one of the firesale units with multiple vendors -- and went to multiple retail stores in search of one... only to be shut out by the douchebags who bought dozens at a time. And whose attempts to get orders in with a certain few vendors ended up tying up charges against my credit cards for weeks as, slowly -- one by one -- each vendor admitted "yeah, we just don't have enough. sorry for sitting on your cash."

Have fun, all you wild-eyed bargain hunters. I'll just sit this one out.

Re:Er, no.

[Krojack]

Doesn't hurt to try and I will try. If I don't get one then oh well. No lose on my part at all nor will I be butt hurt either.

Re:Er, no.

[need4mospd]

You can only get these at one place, the HP ebay store, with a two purchase limit. Happy shopping.

Re:Er, no.

[misexistentialist]

The "professionals" will have set up 5000 ebay accounts each...

Re:Er, no.

[RightSaidFred99]

Yeah, going to a website and trying to order something is _such_ an ordeal!

Re:Er, no.

[RightSaidFred99]

Your rambling is nonsensical. A tablet is indeed a toy for simple use in limited situations, I agree. It's worth $99 to many people. It's _not_ worth $500+, I agree with you there and you're an idiot if you spend $500 on a iPod XL.

As for software, you are clueless. Of course you can sell software for a loss. If I spend $50k on developers to make a piece of software then sell it for a penny, expecting to sell 10000 copies, I have sold the software at a loss. It's really not complicated to understand.

Re:Er, no.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

My mother-in-law ordered one from HP and was met with silence. For the entire month she put up with it, they'd charge her account $150 every friday and then return it. Effectively this meant she was missing $150 even though she didn't have the item. Additionally, she had typo'd her address when she submitted it. When she called to correct it, surprise surprise, they couldn't. All she could do was cancel and resubmit the order... which would have meant no Touchpad for her. While technically her fault, why the call center she talked to couldn't modify her order is beyond me.

My experience was a little better. I didn't mind the $150 disappearing and the address was correct when I submitted it, but HP was TERRIBLE about telling me wtf was going on. On their web page the order status was set to something bizarre like "ORDER COMPLETE" or something that made it sound like my Touchpad was right here. It wasn't. When I tried to email them I was given a generic answer about how I'd get my order within a few weeks and they're very sorry and it took three paragraphs to explain these two simple concepts. It was definitely a source of frustration.

I wouldn't say it "doesn't hurt". It may not hurt enough, but unless they've dramatically improved their customer service, it likely will hurt some.

Re:Er, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. It's a tablet. If you don't think there's something wrong with that, something's wrong with you. It's a form factor, whose only purpose is to be a giant e-penis for the hipster and PHB crowd. All its use cases can be fulfilled by a good mobile phone (more portable) and a real computer (programmable and actually usable for real work). That doesn't mean that a touchscreen or a pure consumption device is generally bad. A touchscreen is a good secondary input device or useful for kiosk-type devices. And a pure consumption device is not so much bad as it is just plain pointless, since any such device has to be a full computer in the first place, which would then have to be intentionally crippled. So why cripple it in the first place?

The thing is, I base my purchases on my criteria, not yours. I don't even agree that there's "something wrong with me", let alone that you are good at judging that.

Re:Er, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the current jerkwad opined, hopefully I can get in on this deal so I can travel to all 57 states.

Re:Er, no.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

It's a form factor, whose only purpose is to be a giant e-penis for the hipster and PHB crowd.

Remember two years ago when everybody was saying this and suddenly stopped?

P.S.: How in the world would "selling" software ever be a "loss".

It costs money to produce. If it's never recouped then it's a loss. Look up the phrase 'no free lunch'.

Re:Er, no.

[irregular_hero]

HP is one of the vendors I tried to buy from who sat on my $150 for 3+ weeks, renewing the hold every Friday like clockwork until finally canceling it with no attempt to reconcile with me as a customer.

Re:Er, no.

[hawguy]

Just speaking as a person who tried and failed multiple times to get orders in for one of the firesale units with multiple vendors -- and went to multiple retail stores in search of one... only to be shut out by the douchebags who bought dozens at a time. And whose attempts to get orders in with a certain few vendors ended up tying up charges against my credit cards for weeks as, slowly -- one by one -- each vendor admitted "yeah, we just don't have enough. sorry for sitting on your cash."

You should have brought that up with your credit card bank - most merchant agreements don't allow merchants to charge your card before they ship the product (unless you agreed to it ahead of time). At the very least, they won't make you pay the charge while you wait for the merchant to refund it.

Re:Er, no.

[thsths]

> Something is wrong with a chance to score a tablet for $99?

Not at all, and now you have the advantage of getting an Alpha of Android, too. Not from HP, mind you.

Re:Er, no.

[residieu]

These are refurbished models. I bet they're making more refurbishing them and selling them than they'd get throwing them in the dumpster.

Re:Er, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

How fucking cheap are you? And how little do you value your time?

You spent many many hours trying to buy a product that was discounted to a few tens or (just about) hundreds of dollars cheaper than its competitors. Why not just suck up the money, value your time more, and just buy one on eBay or a similar model at full price?

Idiot.

Re:Er, no.

[hedwards]

That's something people forget about. At some point it starts to make more sense to just pull some overtime or get a second job than it does to run around trying to save a few bucks.

Re:Er, no.

[Ferzerp]

Not really. Selling at a loss means that you're selling each item for less than the cost to produce that item. It has nothing to do with making up your investment to create the product (R&D time in the case of a physical product) and is based entirely on manufacturing/distribution costs. For software to be sold at a loss, that would mean for less than the price of the box/media and the distribution of the media, or less than the price of electronic distribution.

Re:Er, no.

[Hijacked Public]

The entire point of the post to which you replied is that sometimes it does indeed hurt to try.

Re:Er, no.

[cayenne8]

Hey...did they ever hack these things to get cyanogen running on them?

I've been looking around and don't see much about it. I thought I'd read after the initial firesale, there was a lot of headway made to root and install it on these HP tablets, but not much is coming up with searches now...

I found this: alpha release announcement, but is there anything more out there?

Re:Er, no.

[Migraineman]

Doesn't hurt to try ...

... unless you value your time.

Re:Er, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

And here I thought the quote was, "fool me once, shame on you... fool me twice, shame on Wu!"

Re:Er, no.

[Anubis350]

The alpha 3 release is pretty stable, just a few small kinks. I don't use it that often though, really like webOS :-)

Re:Er, no.

[Anubis350]

That's not HP's fault, that's the fault of how holds on credit cards work (really want to get angry about such things? buy gas with a debit card!). She authorized them to put a $150 hold on her card when she bought the device, it wasn't permanent until the device was ready though. Also I can BS on every Friday, I had the same thing, they did it once every 3 weeks or so, and the Slickdeals and Palmcentral threads about the touchpad are full of people asking about and explaining the recurring the charge.

For the record, I got my touchpad when they made the second batch, and while I wish I had instant gratification it's not like HP didn't send it to me once they made the second batch, and I'm happy to have it!

Re:Er, no.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

(This really isn't a reply to your post... it started off that way but I'm just enjoying ranting about HP right now... please forgive me.)

I got mine on the second batch, and it's okay. I have an iPad and a Galaxy Tab also and I think it's the weakest of the three. That said, I'm reasonably happy with it. I just wanted it as a always-by-the-couch tablet. So hopefully you'll see what I mean when I say 'instant gratification' wasn't the problem.

I was probably a little too brief in my last post, there was an important detail I missed. While placing the order the servers were overloaded, a bit like you'd expect on Black Friday. I submitted mine on a Sunday morning. A few days later (after trying to inquire a few times...) I finally got a mass-email saying "All orders placed before Monday will get theirs by the end of the week." Two weeks went by, silence. I had to prod them about that and I was told it'd be six to eight weeks. Apparently "you will get it if you ordered before a certain date" really meant "you might get it if you ordered by a certain date." I wouldn't have minded except I had to ask them that instead of being told.

If I were to sum up my complaint about the process into as brief of statement as possible, I'd say that HP's customer communication was terrible. Maybe I'm spoiled by Amazon, but throughout my professional life I've found it's better to be up front about delays than to play the 'we hope they don't notice!" game.

Re:Er, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

I buy gas with a debit card every week and I've never had them hold or charge any more than the exact purchase price.

Re:Er, no.

[Nikker]

You know it's not only that but the big problem is these guys only produced a very small number of these devices to begin with for dirt cheap and now they got so many back that they can hype another sale??? Doesn't that just sound a bit off to anyone else?

Re:Er, no.

[dcherryholmes]

That is exactly what I did. After going through the gyrations and trials detailed by posters above, and failing, I just grabbed one off Craigslist for $180. Still a great deal, and I'm happy with the purchase, although my status as a pre owner and webOS fanboy may cloud that a bit. My BeOS-oh-who-I-love-thee tablet is perfectly fine for now at sub-$200, and sometime early next year it will be running ICS. I haven nothing really to bitch about.

Re:Er, no.

[4phun]

I agree, you should certainly not try to buy any of these. Err, you should also tell all of your friends not to as well. .>

Hello, I am going to tell everyone whom I don't particularly like about the HP deal.

Every political insider who calls me for my vote or a political donation will hear about this bargain for their staff this weekend.

Re:Er, no.

[Anubis350]

I'm tempted to go out to the gas station down the block and take a picture of their sign about holds on debit cards, but I'll settle for a link to This article instead, 'cause I'm lazy, my tea will get cold, and I'm replying to an AC anyway. My bet is either you're paying inside, you're lucky that the gas stations you use don't do the holds that many do, you don't check your account's balance often enough to notice, or you're putting enough in that the difference between the hold and the amount you're *actually* paying doesn't exist.

I've been burned by the above issue though personally, so I can definitely vouch for it, and since I haven't seen a gas station in a long time that has a difference in price between debit and credit at the pump I either pay in cash or use my credit card for gas these days.

This is the most lively, dead tablet platform.

[captainkoloth]

I can't wait for them to start with the 7" tablet death march.

Re:This is the most lively, dead tablet platform.

[philpalm]

True it is lively, and this Friday announcement by the HP CEO, Meg Whitman will most likely show how HP will work on WebOS in the future. HP employeees will get first shot at purchasing a Touchpad, there were rumors of a 7in Touchpad selling on Ebay and sales will be limited to 2 per eBay paypal person account.

chances of scoring on?

[jaymz666]

So, what do you think the actual chances of scoring one are? Geeze, this is gonna be a free for all

Re:chances of scoring on?

[synaptik]

Well, if you want to get technical about it, it'll actually be a $99-for-all...

Re:chances of scoring on?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm betting I won't get one, but I'll be damned if I don't try. I already got one during the Firesale for my mom; I should have bought two. I want one for Android development (and to make tech support easier) now.

No Love for the Touch Pad?

[vigour]

It's been discussed to death, but for that kind of price they really are a steal.

Re:No Love for the Touch Pad?

[gmuslera]

Even if you dont want to hear of WebOS (i like it better than Android) you have Android to install on it, a $99 android tablet with such specs is a gift.

Re:No Love for the Touch Pad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, it's far better than the Woot prices have been, and while it's not going to be active development for a live product, it won't be completely without some support.

And for those who just need something to check their mail, browse a bit of web, and play angry birds, it'll be as good as anything you can get for that price, and probably better than most of the cheap Chinese tablets found in places like Big Lots.

I'm not sure I'll be on their site working to nab one, I got one from the initial sale for my Mother, she uses it since it's easier for her to understand than a computer. Not so good at writing on it, but she mostly just gets pictures which she then calls whoever sent them to her to talk about.

Pretty good for that purpose.

HP isn't exiting WebOS

[caywen]

I think their initial intention was to throw WebOS and the TouchPad overboard, but consider that tablets are already racing to the bottom. HP's firesale pricing happens to already be there, and maybe a better strategy is to become a strong #2 in the market so they can upsell you to a more normally-priced $149 tablet next year. That would make more sense that just pulling the cord.

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[Compaqt]

Yeah, this. The whole dump-WebOS thing was Apothekar's idea, colossally dumb. Might as well stick with it.

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[oodaloop]

Considering the multi-billion dollar loss WebOS has been so far, merely selling a few more next year at a slightly higher price doesn't seem like a winning strategy to me. I would love to see it completely open-sourced and become a competitor to Android as a truly open-source OS for phones and tablets, and even netbooks. The brand-name recognition and goodwill generated from that would be worth something to HP if they used it right. That being said, I highly doubt it would happen.

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[JiffyPop]

Where is the "-1 - Navel Gazing" moderation option?

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[TheGreatOrangePeel]

I've been speculating that they're trying to flood the market with WebOS so they can tell companies who are considering using the platform on their product product things like, "X WebOS devices are currently in use with an estimated user base of Y. Based on sales of WebOS devices from 2011, a projected increase to a user base of Z is expected by Q4 2012." Where X, Y and Z are impressive and rather inflated numbers. Similar to how their server/network hardware support makes them more money than sales of hardware itself, I would expect there to be a lot more money for them in selling and supporting the WebOS platform to 3rd parties.

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[Rogue Haggis Landing]

Considering the multi-billion dollar loss WebOS has been so far, merely selling a few more next year at a slightly higher price doesn't seem like a winning strategy to me.

There's a bit of a false assumption here. The money that HP has lost on WebOS is a sunk cost. It's gone and it's not coming back, no matter what happens. HP should be thinking entirely of the future at this point. Can WebOS generate a worthwhile profit from today onward? If so, they should hold on to it, even if it never makes back the initial investment.

People often don't think this way. If I lose a ton of money on an asset I'm likely to get rid of it, even if it stands to be mildly profitable in the future. HP shouldn't be thinking that way. (I should point out that I have no idea if they actuall are or not.)

That said, I'd love an open source WebOS, if only to keep Google honest.

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Not gonna happen. HP needs to exit the non-Windows tablet business now that their corporate masters in Redmond have commanded them to get into the Windows Phone 8 Tablet business. Tablets from HP, Dell, Acer, and Lenovo will be all Windows, all the time.

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, considering that the TouchPad has a $318 BOM, it makes total sense to sell a bunch at a $219 loss, then sell more next year at a mere $179 loss. Profits can't be far behind using that strategy.

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[Anubis IV]

Tablets are racing to the bottom? How do you figure? They sold the TouchPad at a loss just to get rid of their inventory, and the Kindle Fire is the only other data point of a credible tablet under $200. And by all accounts, it feels like a tablet that's under $200, which is not a good thing. There's a reason the decent tablets cost at least $400-500. It's because you can't make a good one that's cheaper with the technology that's out there now.

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[Anonymous Coward]

...Windows Phone 8 Tablet business.

So such thing. Microsoft want Windows 8 on tablets. Windows Phone 7 is an OS *just* for phones.

Imagine if Apple ignored the success of the iPhone, and launched the iPad with Mac OS X with multi-touch stuck on top. That's Windows 8.

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[Anonymous Coward]

That works both ways, though; they can easily get the attitude of "well we spent this much on making WebOS, we'd better use it" when in fact cutting it loose might be best for them.

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[oodaloop]

True. But making more tablets at only $149, as the parent to my original post indicated, where the original price was $399 isn't only profitable, but probably continuing a massive loss. The Kindle Fire, made to lower specs, costs almost exactly as much as it is sold, $200. The Touch Pad must have cost much more than $149 to make.

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[mrchaotica]

Hey, it worked(?) for the PS3!

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[nine-times]

It depends on how much these things cost to manufacture. Considering that they were originally supposed to be around $500, I wouldn't be surprised if they cost more than $150 to manufacture.

Whenever the subject of Touchpads come up, someone starts to argue, "Well they're selling a ton of these now, so they should ramp up production and they'll make tons of money!" It kind of fails to acknowledge, though, that they're selling them really cheaply because they're trying to ditch inventory, and supposedly selling them at a loss. Selling tons of devices at a loss isn't a viable business model.

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[drsmithy]

Imagine if Apple ignored the success of the iPhone, and launched the iPad with Mac OS X with multi-touch stuck on top.

Uh, iOS *is* a stripped-down version of OS X with a touch-optimised UI stuck on top...

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[Anonymous Coward]

"Stripped-down" are your key words. Windows 8 isn't missing anything; Metro is just glued to the top.

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[drsmithy]

"Stripped-down" are your key words. Windows 8 isn't missing anything; Metro is just glued to the top.

I'm pretty willing to bet that the Windows 8 installed on the average tablet isn't going to have all the stuff the Windows 8 on the average PC does.

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[larry bagina]

There's a reasonable chance that the Windows 8 ARM tablet version will be metro only

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[larry bagina]

Kindle Fire: $200.
Nook Color: $200
Nook Tablet: $250
Novo7: $100
Blackberry playbook: $199

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry. Forgot about the Nook. Otherwise, as I said, it's the only credible tablet. The Playbook is being sold at a loss after it started several hundred dollars more expensive but failed to take off like RIM expected it to. And the Novo makes for a crap user experience.

Re:HP isn't exiting WebOS

[sciencewhiz]

All 7 inch tablets, which are significantly cheaper then a 10 inch tablet like the touchpad.

Should I buy one?

[pclminion]

I already have an iPad2, and I also have the MS BUILD tablet (the thing with Windows 8 on it), but the low price is tempting. Should I get one?

Re:Should I buy one?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Since you are in doubt, you probably don't need it. Prices are dropping really fast as new and better models are released. I would bet that within 6 months we'll see great tablets for nearly the same price.

Use that $99 to treat your girlfriend to a nice dinner instead.

Re:Should I buy one?

[David_Hart]

I have both the Touchpad and the iPad 2. I like the Touchpad interface better than the iPad interface.

That being said, you have to understand that there are a limited number of Apps for WebOS. So you won't be able to find WebOS versions of your favorite apps. But it is a great for browsing, email, twitter, facebook, and can be used as a picture frame / photo viewer as it has a slideshow mode when plugged in. This alone is worth the $$.

You currently have the option to dual boot to an older version of Andriod (Cyanogenmod) that has been developed. It's still in beta, so there are bugs to be worked out. On the horizon is the pot-of-gold at the end of the rainbow, Ice Cream Sandwich. It is anticipated that a version of Ice Cream Sandwich for the Touchpad will be available before March of 2012. This opens up the Touchpad to the Andriod marketplace and makes it a cheap modern table.

Re:Should I buy one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should I *try* to get one?

FTFY, and btw, yes... they're excellent hardware for the price (and WebOS is also interesting, even if you end up throwing android on it)

Re:Should I buy one?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I invest the money in the touchpad until I get a girlfriend, how long will until either venture is pointless?

Re:Should I buy one?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an iPad. I have a Touchpad. I'm not a big app buyer. Browser, maps, play back videos I download to the Touchpad (it acts like a flash drive when connected to any operating system), email, VPN, some light typing, YouTube. All the flash in a browser you'd want. Once you learn how to close a window (just toss it off the top of the display) you're good to go. Within two days of getting my Touchpad I've stopped using my iPad. Literally. I haven't gone back. What about music. Come on, is that what you'd use a tablet for? OK, it has booming stereo speakers and I listen to Internet radio and podcasts, too. It's good enough even without apps (though I'm eyeing the app to make a bluetooth connection with an automobile monitor to have instantaneous display of MPG and other car functions). Do I have to say it? For the price.... come on! Your iPad is a sunk cost. You're only paying to free yourself (I can now do the crossword on a newspaper's web page, see those special report videos, and find out what I was missing). For the price, the hardware is thrown in for free.

Re:Should I buy one?

[ThatsNotPudding]

.This opens up the Touchpad to the Andriod marketplace and makes it a cheap modern table.

So... they will soon be for sale at Ikea?

Re:Should I buy one?

[Anonymous Coward]

You had me at Ice Cream Sandwich delicious chocolaty wafers wrapped around a core of vanilla ice cream...

so tempting

[ZorinLynx]

I'm so tempted to get one of these as a toy. Also, they run Android REALLY WELL, apparently. So even if WebOS isn't to your liking they're still quite useful.

Re:so tempting

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really well, they run it okay. There are many issues including sleep of death, short battery life, and my unfavorite WiFi kickouts. Some nights I can go without the WiFi dropping at all, other nights it will drop out every 15 minutes or so and I'll have to toggle it on and off again. And when you toggle it on and off, you have the chance of it not connecting and going through the "scanning, connecting, disconnected" loop, which requires you to toggle the WiFi yet again until it connects.

Re:so tempting

[Anonymous Coward]

All of those issues have been fixed - http://forum.cyanogenmod.com/topic/33227-alpha-cyanogenmod-7-for-the-hp-touchpad-v710-alpha-3-22-nov-2011-dont-link-directly-to-files/ Been running on this release for 10 days now. Not a single issue with Wifi, no "sleep of death," better battery life, etc. I was happy with the original release, but this latest one really hit a home run. And they future releases should only get better.

AARRGGG!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does everyone feel the need to link to a XKCD comic when it is NOT related to the discussion / article?

Re:AARRGGG!!!!

[hawguy]

Subject: Oblig XKCD

Why does everyone feel the need to link to a XKCD comic when it is NOT related to the discussion / article?

I think he already answered your question - Oblig is short for Obligatory: Required by a legal, moral, or other rule; compulsory

How could someone *not* post an obligatory XKCD link?

Re:Oblig XKCD

[oodaloop]

WTF, was that just a random xkcd?

this may be an unexpected lesson

[v1]

to the evolving low end consumer electronics market. You can try to sell these at a good margin and turn enough volume to make a fair profit, or you can go the walmart route and make a cheap product, and set your margins very low and make up the same bottom line in volume. Or maybe a smaller bottom line, but profit is profit. At the end of the year, if you clear a thousand or clear a few million, you're still ahead either way, and your effort was worth your while. Obviously it's better to clear millions, but any profit is profit.

Considering the amount of publicity alone they've gotten off this, HP may not have come out nearly as bad with their "tablet fire sale" as a lot of people are thinking they did.

And consider the post-sale baggage on most products - phone support, warranties, etc. By this being a fire-sale, they may escape a lot of the usual post-sale expenses of the other more normal product cycles. So we can't even really tell what the final outcome of this was for a few years to come. It may continue looking better months from now long after all the touchpads are sold.

Re:this may be an unexpected lesson

[Pope]

Except this ain't profit, this is dumping inventory at a loss, like the first time.

Re:this may be an unexpected lesson

[jo_ham]

So, your master plan is to make up the profit in volume of sales?

So, the volume price is $99, the manufacturing cost *per TouchPad* is $318 (http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/HP-TouchPad-Carries-$318-Bill-of-Materials.aspx).

So, HP "make" -$219 per TouchPad. I can see why they need volume sales to make up the profit... ;)

I'm not sure where the myth that these sorts of devices cost buttons to make and are just sold at crazy high "all gravy" margins? Oh wait, it's what they think Apple are doing with the iPad. Even the really good Android competitors to the iPad are only $100 or so less - so still in the $400 range.

Selling them at $99 does not make for a sound business plan unless you plan to make up the money by some other channel (like having your games console as a loss leader, for example). A $219 loss per tablet is a pretty steep loss leader though, by anyone's measure.

Re:this may be an unexpected lesson

[m50d]

I'm not sure where the myth that these sorts of devices cost buttons to make and are just sold at crazy high "all gravy" margins? Oh wait, it's what they think Apple are doing with the iPad. Even the really good Android competitors to the iPad are only $100 or so less - so still in the $400 range.

Sure, but it's easy to perceive those as being crazy-high margin too. The specs of many of these things are comparable to a sub-$200 netbook - does a touchscreen and better battery life really cost that much?

/has a transformer and loves it, but still can't help wondering if he's a mug for buying it

Re:this may be an unexpected lesson

[jo_ham]

Well, the touch driver chip in the HP unit is $11, the display is $60 and the touch input device itself is about $50 - it all adds up. There's $60 you don;t need to spend while building a netbook.

Re:this may be an unexpected lesson

[ankhank]

> So, your master plan is to make up
> the profit in volume of sales?

It's HP.

Think inkjet printers.

They're going to be selling you e-ink every couple of weeks, somehow, some way.

Just wait.

Re:this may be an unexpected lesson

[ejasons]

Well, the touch driver chip in the HP unit is $11, the display is $60 and the touch input device itself is about $50 - it all adds up. There's $60 you don;t need to spend while building a netbook.

Most "decent" tablets also use an IPS display (display angle is IMO more important on a tablet, as you're more likely to use it off-axis), while most netbooks have pretty crappy displays.

Re:AARRGGG!!!! Obligatory xkcd

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does everyone feel the need to link to a XKCD comic when it is NOT related to the discussion / article?

http://xkcd.com/16/

Grrrrr...

[Oswald McWeany]

I've read about this sale on 4 different sites toda and it isn't even noon yet.

I think it fair to say if it is getting this much publicity- no matter how hard I try- I will not have any success trying to get one.

What

[MoronGames]

Did they find more hidden in a closet somewhere?

Re:What

[Overzeetop]

These are refurbs. And they're refurbs of an EOL'd tablet that they're not making any more of, and won't have spare parts to fix (since they're using all the spare parts to make as many as possible to reduce the bath they're taking by scrapping the product). Pretty questionable purchase, but for $100 maybe it's worth it.

My sister has two - one for each kid. The games they had seemed fun, and if they break it it's not like it's a $600 iPad.

MEG!

[Thud457]

"HP's ebay store" == HP's garage sale.
Maybe this is a good sign that HP's returning to their roots.
At least ebay has a chance of keeping up with the load, as opposed to HP's shopping site. oh, how embarrassing for a wannabe "services" company...

Re:Oblig XKCD

[LandDolphin]

http://xkcd.com/221/

Quick!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's my pepper spray?

I'm gonna try to buy one.

[rickb928]

For obvious reasons:

- The TP is rooted, sort of, so the OS is no longer an issue. If Cyanogen is working on it, do not bet against them. You will lose. And there is another team working on this.

- For the money, even stock, it's cool.

- Even a 90-day warranty should give you time to find out if it's a lemon.

- There will be a support community out there.

Now HP is right to toss these refurbs out for several reasons:

- Most of these came back from people too lazy or stupid to follow instructions and resolve their issue.

- If HP can't repair defective units, by whatever means, then all you TP owners have tablets that are just as dead as Elvis, it's only a matter of time. I'm trusting these were either repaired or reloaded.

- No point in keeping backstock of refurbs beyond the warranty needs.

- HP could be deciding that the end of the TP debacle is the day they have NO TPs available. Period. And the sooner the better.

So stop yer whinin' and get in line.

Oh, and all you crybabies out there with your sad tales of trying to buy one back when - I've heard all the complaints. All par for the course. Bad things happen during these closeouts, and resellers are often either morons or thieves. Caveat Emptor. Same as it ever was.

Re:I'm gonna try to buy one.

[na1led]

The HP Touchpad for $99 is a hell of a deal compared to the Kindle Fire. I have Android installed on mine and I love it. I was lucky that I had hookups with CDW in my company so we ordered 6 of them.

Re:I'm gonna try to buy one.

[Hawk-ML]

I was able to get one of the 32GB models for $150. I've been running the CM Android on it for a couple months now and it's pretty good. It's called an alpha, but so far the only big issue I've had was with WPA on the alpha 2 release (wifi going into sleep mode didn't wake up properly, had to forget the network and reconnect). I use it for music, web surfing, Netflix, and a little ebook reading. For $150 that's a pretty good deal, if you can get one.

Re:I'm gonna try to buy one.

[AdamJS]

Even if it's a bit defective or scuffed, this is still a cheap, decent tablet.

Far better than a bloody BlackBerry one, that's for sure.

Re:Refurbished stuff has

[gregthebunny]

I've purchased dozens of refurbished consumer electronics, and I know other people who have as well, nearly all of those devices are still working just fine months and years beyond their warranty expiration. I've seen maybe 5-10% failure rate on refurbs, which is about the same as my record with "brand new" consumer electronics. YMMV, IANAL, KTHXBYE

US Only

[tlhIngan]

Perhaps an important point - the HP eBay store only ships within the US via UPS. So even if all you wanted was the accessory kit, if you're outside the US, you're SOL.

Those outside the US will just have to bid on them after arbitrage.

And the site's open to HP employees on the 11th. General public is on Monday ,the 12th.

Only good part is it's 2 per customer.

Ebay Crashes!

[na1led]

I can almost bet that at 6PM CST the HP Ebay store or maybe even Ebay itself will come to a screeching halt! The site will be flooded with millions of requests, I seriously doubt they can handle this! Remeber when HP's site was down because of the first fire sale?

Re:Ebay Crashes!

[jeffb (2.718)]

eBay at its quietest times probably handles an order of magnitude more traffic than HP's site at its busiest. If eBay could cope with the iPad and iPhone releases, I'm pretty sure it can handle HP's barrel-scraping.

McRib?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this HP's version of the McRib strategy?

Perfect

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't have summed it up more perfectly.

Re:PayPal

[MightyYar]

I know we like to hate everything on Slashdot, but it might help to include your specific grievance.

Re:Oblig XKCD

[Thud457]

Nah, it's dumber than that. This guy's been spamming the same xkcd to what appears every story.
He should at least show enough initiative to write a bot to pick a xkcd relevant to the story. And then post the corresponding goatkcd (W:G).

why not December 7?

[k6mfw]

That is a the day which the giant Microsoft was awaken and launched IE.

Re:Refurbished stuff has

[Xeranar]

Most consumer electronics that are factory refurbished end up with completely new parts simply because the parts aren't repairable in the traditional sense. They whip in a new part and solder it in. So the refurbs are as good as the originals.

Fool me?

[nurb432]

For 99 bucks its a deal. Even if its a non product at this point it will still do what it does now for a while.

More stupid HP BS.

[Anonymous Coward]

They should retain a few of these for the HP developer program they foolishly allowed to sell out to non developers. As a developer (with an app published in their store, and at this point probably in the top 5% of sales), and only owning a single touchpad, the idea that I need to pay ebay prices for one while all my users are scooping them up at $99 isn't exactly making me happy.

.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Gonna be fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Last Fire Sale the irish people collectively DDOS'ed the elara site lets see what ebays hardware can take when everyone starts presses f5 on dec 11 at 6 :)

Re:Oblig XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah. This is random xkcd.

Lame.

[Volund]

Ebay melted under the load.

I signed in right before the sale started, and clicked "buy it now" as soon as they dropped the price. This took me to a sign-in screen again, and as after signing in again, the next page timed out.

After about 20 minutes of hitting reload to try to get the payment page to load, the listing was removed. Then I moved on to the 32GB version; when I tried to buy it, it would give me a database error every time I tried to buy one. If I hit refresh on the listing, I could see the number go up on the purchase history, so other people were buying them, it just wouldn't let me.

Finally, after about 45 minutes, I managed to get through to the check out, and went all the way through the checkout process with Paypal, only to have it tell me the item was no longer available on the last screen, after I'd already confirmed everything.

Now it doesn't even do anything when I click "buy it now" or "ad to cart."

Lame.

Re:Lame.

[Lost Race]

Same story here. Ebay fails.

Re:Lame.

[Oyjord]

Same here, buy button does nothing.

Re:Lame.Ebay handling of the HP Tpad sale

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted this earlier, but it doesn't show up in any listing at Slash-dot. Here's the link to what I posted
http://slashdot.org/submission/1876956/ebay-locks-up-on-hp-touchpad-refurb-sale

Here's the text. Basically I was on Ebay even before they changed the price to the sale price. They actually started their sale about 35 seconds late. But I was NEVER able to get either the "Buy it Now" or "add to cart" to respond correctly. Wasted a lot of time while Ebay was clobbered and some how apparently some people managed to make purchases. VERY DISAPPOINTED IN EBAY over 25 minutes to refresh a page in response to the buy it now button??

My earlier post text
"Not sure how many of you tried to buy one of the HP touchpads refurbs being sold at 6pm cst today, but if so it most likely was a frustrating experience. First HP set this up showing the original list Price late this afternoon. The only hint of the sale was that the items at $499 & $599 were not available for sale til 6pm cst. And then at about 35 seconds late the item price was changed to the sale prices $99 & $150 respectively.

BUT that's where it got to be less than fun. Clicking on Buy it now or clicking on update cart did not get anything. For the next 25 minutes, I was unable to get even the buy it now to go thru to its next page. And then finally the cart showed "red banner from Ebay saying item #.... was either a wrong number, not available or sold out.

"The item you requested (170746761819) is invalid, still pending, or no longer in our database. Please check the number and try again. If this message persists, the item has either not started and is not yet available for viewing, or has expired and is no longer available."

Looks like Ebay can't handle a popular item very well. I'd figured it would be popular and that I might not get one. But I never figured Ebay could not handle a big sale and that they could not even refresh their pages any faster than that.

Did anyone get one of the tablets? The links still showed valid when I started typing this.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-TouchPad-Wi-Fi-32GB-Refurbished-FB359UAR-ABA-/170746761819?pt=US_Tablets&hash=item27c14cd25b :-("
Finally at 10:35 pm the items page said "no longer available".

Re:Lame.Ebay handling of the HP Tpad sale

[Osiris Ani]

Did anyone get one of the tablets?

"Thank you for your purchase of HP TouchPad Wi-Fi 32GB Refurbished | FB359UAR#ABA. We are processing it to arrive as quickly as possible."

Yep; I managed to snag one while I was doing a bit of work in Photoshop. I can imagine that it might have been very frustrating were I not actually also occupying myself with something else while sitting in front of the computer.

Did the firesale actually happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've gone on HP's ebay store but can't seem to find it (nor any indication there even is/was one).

Did anyone actually pick one up?