HP needs to make another production run. They can price it at $199 and $249 and their loss would be much less, or even close to zero. At that price point, it would be controlled frenzy, rather than total chaos. Even at loss, it creates a large enough base that it would be enable them to get a better price when they sell or license their webos.
HP won't be doing this, but I'm sure their PSG spin-off business will. They'd be foolish to NOT have a tablet in their line of products.
That would not be a good idea. I got the 32Gb, and I can tell you this without a doubt: I can tolerate this device at the $149 price point, but any higher and I would have probably returned it, and if I had been gullible enough to have paid $600 for this thing I would have been absolutely FURIOUS at the half-baked functionality out of the box. Had it had an actual suite of worthy apps, built-in ability to handle wifi access to the home network and streaming, built-in ability to handle lots of different video formats, built-in ability to handle documents and actually get some real USE out of this thing right out of the gate, and if it had a more mature marketplace as compared to the Android market (this is just a guess, but I would say that the WebOS marketplace looks to be about 2 to 5 percent of what the android market is), and if it had a much better 'getting-to-know-your-new-Touchpad' tutorial/getting-started app which could really tell you what all this thing can do, it would have been better. (Heck, I didn't even know this thing had a COMPASS in it until yesterday when I happened to discover a compass app! What ELSE does this thing do that has not been explained well enough?) As it is, I am fine with it now, because I know that it is essentially a red-headed-stepchild of an OS, with likely no real future, and I don't expect anything more than half-baked at this point, and the $150 was a gamble I was willing to take, and I would in fact buy another one if I could get my hands on it, because a device like this seems like it is the type of thing that will work great in dedicated pairs - family members, friends, etc. But if they start jacking the price to try to feed on the frenzy they created before, they will just manage to create another 200,00 pissed-off users. Don't do it, HP. Just take your medicine and do everything you can to get the OS to where it has an actual heartbeat and you can license it out, maybe this could be the start of something pretty cool, a whole new generation of sub-$200 tablets that will slice the legs out from under Apple and Google. But not if they try to bite the people who are clamoring for more of the devices.
It is still worth it. I don't have any problem with the OS not having a future. My huge problems are lack of Netflix, HULU, Cut the Rope (and other cool games), obvious lag problems, form factor etc. But compared to the next best thing a refurb iPad at $299, it has better multitasking, it is a better MP3 player, better browser, faster processing and plays flash. It allows you to just drag and drop files and do all kinds of cool stuff hassle free. So value wise it is not close to 600 but saying 150 is the ceiling is extreme.
It's the extreme for you (hell, for me too) but ebay buyers/sellers are setting the price at around 249/299. Not worth it for us, but others deem it a bargain still.
I have a touchpad and I'd never pay more than $150 for it. When Verizon had ipad 1's on sale for $300 I jumped on that deal and feel its a bigger steal for a FAR BETTER product.
That's based on what you want it for. If you want it for mostly games and you have an iPhone or a Mac, I agree. If the product is stand alone and will be mostly a browser or music player, then Touchpad is superior.
I got a touchpad through the onsale lottery and after playing with it for a couple weeks and installing preware it still feels so inferior to the ipad. I'm not an Ipad owner but I have been in the past and it was much much smoother. I can only imagine how much better an Ipad2 may be. Flash gives the HP browser the edge, though I'll say it feels slower than the Ipad.(I haven't overclocked mine however.) The Ipad app support is through the roof and really adds the necessary touches to make something like this more appealing. But for $99 and a little coffee table browser the HP is a steal. I think that's probably about all it's worth anyways. I'd trade mine for an Ipad any time without blinking.
Anyone not satisfied with their touchpad and want to sell it to a needy college student? Let me know. :grin:
Both the browser and the music player setup on the Touchpad are horrible. Amazon's music streaming service is more useful on the TP. Both the ipad and the 'main' Android offerings are superior right now (imo Tab and Transformer). But still...100 bucks is 100 bucks.
Well that just different opinions. I still think it is a better browser setup on the TP. How is the music player horrible? What specifically irks you about it?
your first lesson in economics...understanding current supply and demand a 32gb touchpad is now selling for around $230 Got mine yesterday. Installed all the preware and overclocked it. I like it, but not nearly as much as my iPad 2. However, it was about $375 cheaper. It's worth the $150, but certainly not worth what they were originally asking for
The music player works decently enough I guess, just another software to deal with in HP Play. USB mode works better but you lose anything extra like album art. It's just pretty barebones (no store, no recommendations, no podcast availability) so that I dont' see where it's really superior to anything else. The browser though...I don't see how anyone could say it's better than what iOS or Android offer. I mean you have to fix it's speed and responsiveness with hacks, and then you have to fix it's horrible caching with hacks, before it's really even decent. Then you still have just a mind blowingly dumb lack of basic features like being able to organize your friggin' bookmarks. Flash is fine, I guess, but after using Hulu (which I also had to hack) and HBO Go it's just clumsy and and I'd far prefer the functionality of a dedicated app. And as much as I like WebOS' multitasking, using cards as browsing tabs is just needlessly pointless. Still, like I said though, it's well worth the 100 bucks. It's just not hard to see why the reviews were so critical and why this thing failed considering how HP shipped it.
I think 200-250 bucks is a great price point for a desktop capable browser, decent movie player (w/ 7 dollar app), with casual webmail and word editing. Some of the comments here are the usual jaded internet hindsight b****ing. Shoot, I bought a nook color for 250 and thought it was okay for what it was at the time, a hackable tablet that can use android. What, the TP will get Android sooner or later? And no crap I'd trade mine for an Ipad...except I didn't buy one because I'd have to trade 6 TPs for a freaking Ipad 2. If you were lucky to get a TP wayy below cost, love it for what it is. If you also have an Ipad2, congrats for being affluent, brainwashed, or financially irresponsible enough to buy one. If you're the latter and b****ing about how not as good the TP is, why not auction off your TP to pay your snowballing CC bills or buy more Apple wares to help out the Church of Steve Jobs.
