Tag Archives: HP TouchPad
#3 Rich’s Random Podcast Generator: HP TouchPad Fire Sale, WebOS’s Future
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Were you one of the lucky few who found and picked up a “couldn’t give ‘em away a week ago” HP TouchPad tablet for $99?
Well, people all over the US went crazy this past weekend trying to track down and acquire the elusive 16/32GB tablets which had been retailing for $399/$499 respectively.
There had been some price drops the weekend before but nobody really saw this one coming. By late Friday night here in the US, folks were abuzz with the prospect of a fire sale. By 
Saturday morning, they were roaming the aisles of their local big box stores looking for the bargain tablet, or as one person said, an early Christmas gift.
Were you able to lay your hands on one? Were they all sold out? Are you still looking? Well, don’t despair. We suspect there are more stashed away somewhere.
HP TouchPad / WebOS: 28 Day Experiment – Day 14
I had no idea when I started this series of posts two weeks ago, that the events of this weekend around HP and the WebOS would cause this much upheaval. At the end of my last post (Day 11) I came to the conclusion that if the price of the TouchPad dropped to below $200, it was worth buying. I had no idea of what was to come.
By Saturday AM, I awoke to a bunch of emails and tweets (some from you all) alerting me to the fact that some retailers had dropped the price of the 16GB Touch Pad to $99 and the 32GB to $149 here in the US. The race was on! I looked online but found that most sites were already out of stock. There were some rumors that local stores had some in stock and so I headed out to find them. No luck there either! I gave it about an hour of searching and figured the hunt was over. What was there, had already been taken.
HP TouchPad / WebOS: 28 Day Experiment – Day 11
It’s been a busy couple of days since Monday and I haven’t used the TouchPad as much as I had the week before. I had thought I would sit down tonight after the Home Tech Podcast was recorded and drop a few notes about the weeks usage. It turned out to be a much more interesting day than that.
At about 2pm I got wind from a co-worker that HP had announced it was going to effectively scuttle the WebOS platform for the future.
Gina Smith over at Byte.com said this:
In a sharp tactical reversal, Hewlett-Packard today killed its WebOS-based HP TouchPad tablet and smartphones.
Earlier this year, HP unveiled its Palm-designed WebOS family of phones, tablets and PCs with great fanfare. Find coverage here.
The HP TouchPad, released in June, was yet another competitor struggling in vain against the Apple iPad. Recently, HP slashed prices on the tablet. And another one bites the dust.
I guess I was a little shocked that a company that spent $1.2 billion last summer on acquiring Palm and its WebOS would give up on it so quickly. In the same announcement, HP also announced that it was moving away from it current PC business as well. They are currently the #1 PC manufacturer in the world. Huge surprise.
HP TouchPad / WebOS: The 28 Day Experiment – Day 7
I didn’t really get a chance to work much on the TouchPad on Saturday. I’m finding that when I am at home, the TouchPad has a hard time competing with my 24” monitor and PC. Today was filled with a bunch of PC maintenance and file clean up. I also had to edit and post two podcasts and well as do some updating to the website (hope you noticed?). Nothing I would ever try to do on a tablet.
Since the weekend means I use the TouchPad less, I thought I could use it to talk about the applications that are available. Maybe I should have said, the lack of applications. When I left the Palm ecosystem a year ago, I really thought that more apps would get written while I was away. In the first week with the TouchPad, it sure doesn’t look like it!
HP TouchPad / WebOS: The 28 Day Experiment – Day 5
Well, I’m back on the WordPress app in WebOS and even using the on screen keyboard to write this post, I can’t say its the fastest way to write a post, but it is doable. Spell check is very helpful in some cases and maybe too helpful in others. I would try to write like this all the time. That wireless keyboard can really be handy.
If you read day 2 – Saving Draft Now!
Okay, that didn’t work like I thought. When I selected Save Draft, I expected it to just save and allow me to keep going. Instead it saved it and closed out the post. Not very helpful if you are saving your document on a regular basis.
When typing using the screen keyboard, its really hard to see the screen. I find myself watching the keyboard and not the screen.
Another drawback is that every touch means something gets typed. It takes a bit of getting use to. You kind of have to hover your fingers over the keys. That would get a bit much for a long document. That being said, I am still going on the screen keyboard.
