Death is Very Becoming to the HP TouchPad

<— Photo of what I saw on the HP website this weekend.

Anyone get an HP TouchPad this weekend? If you did, you either paid $149 for the 32GB version or $99 for the 16GB version. And you’re lucky.

One day before Hewlett Packard announced they were killing the TouchPad after disappointing sales following its July launch (yes, last month), I was at Costco looking at this mountainous display of TouchPads. Shiny! All very pretty and Costco-y, they were $499 for the 32GB version and I thought it might finally be the tablet for me. Our Multiple Listing Service, to operate correctly, requires that any computer or  tablet utilize Adobe Flash. Alas, Apple hates Adobe , so no Apple products support Adobe Flash and I haven’t bought an iPad for that very reason. If I can’t use a tablet to search for San Diego homes easily, with no “work around” or some make-do fix, I am not interested. The tablet has to be for San Diego real estate first and foremost.

The Motorola Xoom seems too narrow to me, like the size of a slim yet jumbo phone. The others that got released this summer blew by me in a blast of nothingness.  The TouchPad had caught my eye though. Mainly for the large screen and Flash capabilities.

When the announcement was made by HP, the stock took a hit and I thought about the mountain of TouchPads at Costco. Fast forward to Saturday, when retailers in Canada started selling the 16GB for $99 and the 32G for $149 at the direction of HP. Best Buy in the U.S. followed suit, as did Office Max, Wal-Mart, Staples and a few other big box retailers. These stores sold out online almost immediately, then people were 4o-deep on Sunday morning to get into all these stores. The stores sold out almost immediately, too. I went to Costco to investigate since they don’t take phone calls (!). Talked to a guy who explained about the missing mountain. He says to me: “They’re gone.” Yes, I see that. Where did they go? He says: “We sold them.” Ha! Funny.

Me: That’s probably not possible. Him: “All I can say is that they’re gone.” Odd encounter to be sure. I wandered to the other side of the store to sample some fizzy juice…where the guy tracked me down! He wanted to apologize for being vague, but the truth was, he said, that HP called all Costco stores and said “ship them back – now.” Not sure why this was top secret information, but as these shipped back TouchPads arrive back at HP headquarters, HP will have more to sell.

HP Online sold out over the weekend too. The HP lady on Twitter is going crazy trying to be only “the messenger” of all things TouchPad and not get yelled at too much.

This is my favorite article so far on the topic. And don’t bother to click the link at the bottom to get signed up for a notification when more are for sale. That link is temporarily crashed.

If I can get one, yes I will. I will get one for me and one for Kerry. Why? Because at minimum that’s a great price for a reader with a big screen. There is some debate about the webOS software that runs the thing. It won’t be supported by HP in the very near future but I don’t really care. I think this fire sale is about a month over due. Were they too pricey for the public to care? I suppose.

So death turns out to be very becoming on the  HP TouchPad and I want one – cheap!

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