It would seem HP has finally found the right price for its tablet! The HP TouchPad is now priced at $99 for the 16 GB model, and $149 for t...
The question is, is this really a good deal? And if HP's liquidating its stock and dropping out of the tablet business, are other manufacturers going to follow?
Not worth it at any price?
As Marco Arment points out, the reviews of the HP TouchPad have been almost universally negative. It's a classy-looking device ... or at least, it's got classy advertising. But under the hood? Despite its dual-core processor, the HP TouchPad feels underpowered, for technical reasons (like the high-level Web technologies used for basically every app) that average users shouldn't have to worry about.
The end result? A tablet that's slow and unresponsive, crashes frequently and needs to be rebooted often. Oh, and it has worse battery life than the iPad, plus it can't run any iPad apps. It can only run WebOS apps, most of which are designed to be used on an HP/Palm phone and haven't been optimized for tablets yet.
The best is yet to come
HP's liquidating the TouchPad because it gave up on the tablet business altogether. And it's easy to see why; firsthand reports suggest that fewer than 10 percent of the TouchPad stock was sold, even after the first $100 price cut.
HP may be the first, but it arguably won't be the last. And even if other companies don't give up the fight against the iPad, their first wave of tablets hasn't been selling too well. There have already beenmassive price cuts, huge sales, and promotions, and more are surely yet to come ... especially once the Black Friday sales hit.
The Upshot
The $99 TouchPads are likely to be the ones that sell first. That means your option is to keep driving between or otherwise checking stores until they get the $149 tablets in, and then buy a device that's slow and frustrating to use, and won't have decent app support or any future OS updates.
Maybe HP will surprise us, by turning over control of WebOS to someone that does something with it. But in the meantime? It's not looking good for the TouchPad, and unless you're sure it'll actually last you awhile you ought to be careful before spending the money. Especially when it may well be joined soon by other tablets.
