HP to liquidate TouchPad tablets for as little as $99

Best Buy Canada

HP launched the TouchPad tablet on July 1st with a starting price of $499. Tomorrow you’ll be able to pick one up for just $99.

Following news that HP plans to exist the webOS hardware space, the company will begin selling off its existing tablet stock at prices that are far below cost. Best Buy Canada is already showing listings fora $99 HP TouchPad 16GB WiFi tablet and a 32GB model for $149, and HP affiliate websites received a note tonight indicating that the tablets will go on sale for the same prices at HP.com tomorrow.

There’s currently no indication that the new 64GB model will get a price cut — which means that you may have to pay an extra $450 to get a slightly faster processor and a little extra storage space. But I suspect we’ll see that model go on sale soon as well, even if it only officially launched today.

Now that HP is discontinuing the TouchPad and the future of the webOS operating system is unclear, it would be hard to recommend that anybody buy the tablet at full price for $399. But for $99? Sure you may not be able to find many third party apps, and you shouldn’t expect any software updates or improvements. But if you’re looking for a cheap device for surfing the web, reading eBooks, or watching movies and you don’t particularly care about third party apps, the TouchPad is starting to look pretty good again (or for the first time).

Update: The new prices are live at HP.com and a number of online retailers — but they’re having a hard time keeping the tablet in stock at these prices. I suspect there will also be a rush at bricks and mortar stores this weekend. In other news, it looks like the first serious effort to port Android to run on the HP TouchPad is getting started.

HP TouchPad

Buy from$276

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key specs
reviews • 81
prices

Form factorTablet
Operating systemPalm webOS
Screen size9.7 inches
Storage typeInternal storage (16 GB, Flash)
Maximum battery lifeUp to 8 hours
Dimensions9.45 x 7.48 x 0.54 in
Weight1.63 lb
Discontinued08/18/2011

see all specs →

Posted on Friday, August 19th, 2011, 8:04 pm by Brad Linder

Anon

Can it be modified to run Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Android?

That would be key. As then you would not care if you got WebOS updates (security updates) etc? I think that the Kubuntu netbook GUI is ready made for touchscreen use.

Brad, do you know of anyone who has taken the HP TouchPad and put on of the above OSs on it?
http://www.liliputing.com Brad Linder

I haven’t seen anything yet… but it’s probably just a matter of time. The new $99 price will probably help move things along.

Right now there probably aren’t very many Touchpads in the wild. Once the price drops I suspect they’ll sell rather well — especially among hackers and early adopters on a budget. Hopefully some of them will work to port Android or other operating systems.
http://www.liliputing.com Brad Linder

For what it’s worth, there definitely seems to be plenty of interest in porting Android to run on the TouchPad…

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1224540

I haven’t heard from any developers about the feasibility of the project yet though.
bearKing

im gonna pick one up, just because i know in a month or 2 someone will root it to run androind or linux (meego, ubuntu, whatever the fuck the other one is called) … either way its gonna happen, and then ill have a 10 inch tablet that i picked up for 100 bones that because it has a better os on it i could sell for 300 on craigslist… or just keep, just looked up how to get the nookcolortoandroid to run netflix, so thats what im buyin for a tab for now
http://www.howardwen.com Howard

I’ve bookmarked direct shopping links to the TouchPad on several online store sites, including HP.com, to see if I can score one for $99 tomorrow. (I might wait until the clock turns midnight EST to see if the prices go down.) There is certainly going to be an instant online rush for these tablets at $99.

And I predict that soon hackers will figure out how to root the TouchPad and port Honeycomb to it. Maybe even by the end of next week. Things are about to get interesting.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/OHX3QYSWZHBZFVNBUQTMPJBE5M D.

thank you brad linder, i am no longer tabletless thanks to you! i just bought the 16gb hp touchpadlet ~ an hour ago at the south keys futureshop (owned by best buy) in ottawa & am so glad i have now ended up with a non-apple tablet. hope all sorts of linux-based OSs can be loaded onto it shortly; its internal hardware hardly seems exotic. so far liking the feel of it, was going to wait for a good 5-7″ android tablet up until now but even though its heavier than i would prefer i’m sure it will work well for how i want to use it.
Re-Elect Obama 2012

Good God, I hope I can snag one.
Nards Barley

Just for curiosity I went to the Canada site and U.S. site for bestbuy.com . The canada site showed the $99 price, but has it sold out. The U.S. site has it for $399 but shows it as sold out too.
Ink

This is really great! That is truly affordable for a very awesome sevice!
http://www.mylifeslittlesecrets.com/positive_motivational_quotes.htm Positivemotivationalquotesv

No doubt HP laptops as well as tablets are remarkable.It gives a very awsome feeling working on it
Faheydm

isn’t webOS supposed to be a competitive operating system?
David Alastair Hayden

I suspect HP will get more of them in stock on their website since Best Buy is doing a lot of returns.
David Alastair Hayden

Maybe they should have just sold them at a huge loss earlier to get people to try them once it was obvious sales were bad.
WTF $99

“64GB model will get a price cut — which means that you may have to pay an extra $450 to get a slightly faster processor and a little extra storage space.”
What? 16GB and 64GB have exactly the same processor. Only difference is storage space.
http://www.liliputing.com Brad Linder

Nope. The 64GB model has a 1.5 GHz processor. The 16GB and 32GB versions have 1.2 GHz chips.

HP to liquidate TouchPad tablets for as little as $99

HP TouchPad

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