As HP’s June launched TouchPad did not earn much positive reviews from the masses, the leading computer makers decided to slash down the price of their tablet. The tablet’s prices were cut thrice in merely a week, beginning from a fifty dollar cut and ending with a $350 price tag. But the surprises do not end right here for eBay decided to offer the HP killed tablet to its customers for just $99. This was surely a treat for everybody, despite the fact that the WebOS based TouchPad has a number of technical issues, nobody cared and the demand outnumbered its supply. This price was for the 16 gigabytes model, another fifty dollars would get you the 32 gigabytes flavour.
In times when the consumer spending has dropped in the sheerest manner, this sale proved to be a fire cracker for masses with stores being flocked with buyers. The operating system used by TouchPad was way slower than other tablets with its overall browsing speed, page load times and even the start-up time being pretty long. HP did make changes to provide users with a quicker service and was able to cut the time lag by .4 seconds as quoted by SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark test results but it was still far behind Apple’s iPad and Motorola’s Xoom. The best in speed aspect is Acer’s Iconia Tab A500, which complete the same test in 1.9 seconds making it phenomenally fast. But with an eighty percent price cut, who on earth would care about such flaws.
Most of the purchases were done with the intention of reselling, now the ninety nine dollar gadget can easily fetch $200 to $250 price. The discounts offered by HP itself in July’s first week did not earn much turnover but eBay’s cuts took the market like a whirlpool. Even when the stocks have ended, people are trying every possible way to get their hands on TouchPad. The very blatant result of this sale for HP is to start developing a new, revitalized operating system for its future tablet otherwise only eBay sales would attract users to HP’s tablets.
