One last production run for TouchPad
Fondleslab’s final fling
Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery
HP swears this is it: the end, the final, never-to-be-repeated, absolutely the last time: but there will be just one more production run of TouchPads for punters that missed out on cheap-as-chips deals when it killed off the unloved fondleslab.
When retailers cut the price to shift the just-launched end-of-life stock, TouchPads suddenly acquired the sort of shopper response that vendors dream about, with queues out the door. A product that couldn’t buy friends at a $399 price tag suddenly found itself on everybody’s want-list at $99.
The company blogged that the response was “stunning”, and while it doesn’t know how long its final run will take to hit the shelves, there will be one last chance to queue for an abandoned product running an orphan operating system, with a limit of one per person.
Response to even that mild announcement seems to have caught HP by surprise. Elsewhere on the blog, it complains that heavy traffic has whacked its sign-on page out of service.
Play this right, people, and you could farewell the TouchPad for years … ®
COMMENTS
heavy traffic has whacked its sign-on page out of service.
Really?
And these people are giving up hardware sales to make money telling people about software?
@Erik Borgo
Unfortunately, "PC's becoming a sunset industry" only exists in the minds of the more loony industry analysts and the dreams of the tablet pushers.
Hint: Your job may be possible to do using only one 10" screen and a "point and peck" onscreen touch keyboard taking up a third of it, but mine definately isn't.
As I said elsewhere, last time round it was thin clients that were supposed to do for the PC. At least that one made some sort of sense, even if it didn't happen. Anyone betting the farm on tablets displacing PCs should be top of any 419ers list of gullible targets.
Dent the sales of low-end laptops? Yes. Increase the number of suited idiots going; "Looky. I haz iPad!!11!!" in meetings? Yes. Displace laptops entirely in the consumer space? Possibly. Change the world? No.
$250?
But everybody knows they've been selling now for $100--$200, so reaching shops at $250 in a few weeks/months time is not going to help.
And argued e.g. on TheRegister, most of the shopping frenzy was a the idea it was a unique opportunity; people felt they got a fantastic deal vs. the $400 asking price (the day before) --- many people wouldn't have bought the $200 device if sold previously at that price.
So a $250 asking price means they will want to get it for $75--$150 max! Paying $250 means having missed the boat on paying $100, and gives people (irrationally) a feeling of having lost out (rather than paying a fair price for a quite good machine).
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Top 10 SIEM implementer’s checklist
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
