
$99 TouchPad a hit, as Ubuntu and Android ports emerge - darkduck
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Touchpad-discounted-gains-ports/?kc=rss
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wccrawford
I'm sure selling something for 1/3 the cost to make it is attractive to
buyers... But of course, HP can't afford such a thing indefinitely. It was
merely an attempt to get rid of this embarrassment as quickly as possible.

And it worked, too... I couldn't get my hands on one.

~~~
sili
And yet, now they have this sizable user base waiting to be monetized. It's
like selling razors for cheap and making real profit in selling the blades. If
only HP had "blades" to sell on top of the touch pad.

~~~
hellweaver666
They do... they have an official stand thingy that incorporates wireless
charging (I think it's called the touchstone). It's a nice accessory and one
that I wish was available for my iPad.

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j_col
webOS is based on Linux, only tailored beautifully for a finger/touch based
interface, so why bother replacing it with a variant of Linux that is not?

~~~
jonknee
I'd assume because webOS will not be receiving updates.

~~~
drgath
Yes, it is. Heck, a new version of webOS was pushed out yesterday.

~~~
mikeash
An update pushed out yesterday was prepared entirely before HP made their big
announcement, though. Will there be any WebOS updates for the TouchPad now
that HP has discontinued it and is exiting that space entirely? Seems highly
doubtful.

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darklajid
I was - sad. I'm a WebOS fanboy, watched live streams of the HP revelations in
the beginning of the year? What? 'Available in Summer?'

The price reduction was amazing, but the servers didn't hold out. And - and
this is where I'm really unhappy - lots of people I heard about used this as a
business chance. 'Hey, let's order six of these devices and sell them for
profit on eBay'..

Bah. I own a Palm Pre Plus, really looked forward to buy Pre 3 & Touchpad.
After waiting and waiting and waiting I gave in and upgraded my phone with an
Android device. The price reduction would've been a nice chance to grab at
least one current WebOS device (and look into tablet use cases), but
'entrepeneurs' like those above ruined it. Really, I spent all in all ~10~
hours of manual refreshing and checking if I can get one. Meh.

~~~
arghnoname
It has been disappointing. I spent more time than I probably should have
trying (and failing) to snag one. All of the scalpers will probably saturate
the market though and when people realize that it is now a dead ecosystem, the
aftermarket price might be acceptable to you.

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niels_olson
Looks like eBay and craigslist are stabilizing the 16 gb version around
250-300, but there will probably be a drift downward as time wears on and this
story falls off the news. What I'd hate is to be pricing Chromebooks at $429
right now.

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digamber_kamat
Several $99 tabs have emerged in India. I am yet to get my hands on them but I
suspect Indian companies have simply imported some cheap Chinese low quality
stuff and branded as their own.

~~~
joezydeco
All of the cheap tablets are using resistive touchscreens. After 5 minutes of
using one you'll want to throw it out the window. They're impossible to stay
calibrated, they can't do more than one-point touch, and if you're lucky
you'll remember where the stylus is for the first few days before it's gone
forever.

~~~
eftpotrm
Funny; I used a Palm III then a Psion 5 for several years in the past. Both
were resistive touch screens, both were accurate, I didn't lose either stylus.
In fact, I found the resistive screen _more_ accurate than my current
capacitative on my phone, because I quickly realised I could use the end of a
fingernail as a very precise makeshift stylus - which is obviously out with
capacitative.

Is there a specific reason these are _that_ much worse than 12-13 year old
devices?

~~~
joezydeco
My hypothesis is that the larger the screen, the harder it is to keep the
resistance within tolerance for the price.

Don't get me wrong, there _are_ large-format resistive screens that work well.
You can see them on a lot of commercial and industrial products (ask any
waiter or waitress working with a Micros system).

But I think what is being put on the $99 tablets are very cheap films with
loose tolerances and cheap knockoff controller chips. You can literally feel
the film floating off the cover lens on some of these tablets. I tried one
chinese Android tablet, SuperPad III, and you could feel the film _moving_.

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jddeveloper
Insight still had tablets available this morning for $99 (16gig) and $149
(32gig). The site seems to be down now, but the links were

[https://www.insight.com/search/ppp.web?materialId=FB356UT%23...](https://www.insight.com/search/ppp.web?materialId=FB356UT%23ABA)
[https://www.insight.com/search/ppp.web?materialId=FB454UT%23...](https://www.insight.com/search/ppp.web?materialId=FB454UT%23ABA)

~~~
jevinskie
I just called and they're out of stock now.

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topbanana
Would have been interesting if they'd discounted it to this level _before_
canning the ecosystem. Might have given it the shot in the arm it needed?

~~~
martythemaniak
Come on, the BOM alone on these things is more than $200 and there is no
console-like way to make your money after.

~~~
ig1
You mean like the billions of dollars Apple makes from their App Store ?

~~~
Sayter
Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer stated that "We run the App Store just a little
over breakeven" during a shareholder meeting earlier this year. An analyst
from Citibank estimated that the App Store would account for $2B in yearly
revenue for 2011. Compare that to the $24.67B revenue that Apple had in Q2 of
2011 alone, and that puts the App Store at approximately 2% of Apple's yearly
gross revenue. Also, a Trefis analysis of $AAPL puts iTunes and iOS Apps at a
combined 4.3% share of the stock's perceived value. While the App Store does
provide the ecosystem that allows the iPhone and iPad to thrive, it does not
act as a significant revenue source for Apple.

~~~
ig1
I don't see how that invalidates my point in anyway, yes Apple doesn't make a
significant proportion of their revenues from their app store, but that
doesn't mean that $2 billion dollars of revenue is insignificant in absolute
terms.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
It is when you are trying to recoup losses form selling hardware below cost. I
think App Store revenue last quarter was 1.4 billion. Take out content
providers share and you are left with 420 million. This is for the entire
store mind you.

HP's fire sale will cost them something like 100 million and it is not as
popular as the iPad. Not even Apple could pull something like this off.

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sliverstorm
Whether or not this helps HP, this is probably going to turn out to be huge
for the future of tablets. Millions of people who would not have bought one
for years will very soon take tablets for granted.

~~~
Tutorialzine
And buy an iPad.

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lpgauth
Can you still find them for 99$ somewhere?

~~~
Splines
Check <http://slickdeals.net>. Occasionally someone will find a store with
more stock. It's rumored that HP will have more in about a month, and/or we'll
see these again around Black Friday (post-Thanksgiving sales in the U.S.).

~~~
mitjak
Is HP ceasing production of these yet?

~~~
hackernews
Yep.

@BrynaAtHP: "K getting of Twitter for a bit for dins dins. For the record: New
inventory coming is from a warehouse, not being manufactured. #justsayin"

<https://twitter.com/#!/BrynaAtHP/status/105823537037717504>

~~~
mitjak
Man, I wish she stopped talking in that tone. "#staycoolmybabies" _shudder_

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iambot
at my work the devs have ordered like 2-3 each and 6 for other employees, so
£90 for an android tablet is brilliant, the ubuntu port is news to me though,
but all the better

~~~
hahaiamatwork
I've been trying all day to get my hands on one, and yeah £90 is fantastic.

Tell your devs that I hate them, everywhere in the UK is now out of stock and
we have only rumours to go on.

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VladRussian
reminds about the IBM's "strategic mistake" of allowing BIOS clones that
triggered the PC revolution.

~~~
joezydeco
Huh? IBM couldn't stop BIOS clones after they lost the Compaq lawsuit.

~~~
VladRussian
Their publication of BIOS source allowed for successful "clean room"
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Technologies#History>

Interesting history to compare with discussed in another thread Google's Java
API "infringement".

~~~
joezydeco
The publication of the _API_ allowed for clean room engineering of BIOS
clones, but the publication of the IBM BIOS source was a defensive move to
taint the pool of engineers that would be trying to write clones.

~~~
beagle3
The publication of the source code was not a defensive move. It predated the
clones - it was a time in which it was customary to include schematics with
manuals (I still have an "XT Technical Reference" at home which includes full
schematics and commented bios source code.

~~~
joezydeco
Sure. Apple did it too. I still have the original ][+ Monitor ROM listing
somewhere. Apple listed theirs to aid hobbyists. Did IBM do the same? I would
think to IBM it had more to do with copyright than aiding hackers.

~~~
beagle3
They didn't do it to aid hobbyists or hackers per se. It was just standard
practice at the time. Televisions, radio receivers, amplifiers, washing
machines -- almost everything came with schematics.

Also, at the time, IBM did not consider the PC a "serious" business - they
just did the minimum possible to not lose out on a possible new market. The
original PC (PC-g) and even the PC-XT were basically not much more than
Intel's reference 8086 / 8088 design with not a lot of modifications -- I
don't think anyone at the time (1982) thought there was much IP there anyway.

