The TouchPad is dead, but Hewlett-Packard is giving it a hell of a wake. HP has slashed the price of its $399 tablet computer to $99 after killing the product on Thursday, sparking a buying frenzy.Finally, an Apple competitor has found a price low enough to start an online shopping stampede. And why not? Sure it’s bulkier than an iPad, the battery life is relatively poor, and it’s got just one camera — instead of two, but $99 bucks seems pretty good for anything with a 1.2 Ghz Snapdragon processor and an operating system with the ease of use and sophistication of WebOS.
Don’t do it. That’s because tablets are all about apps. There are just few hundred apps available for the TouchPad, compared to a several hundred thousand for the iPad and for rivals running Android. Worse yet, with HP killing its entire WebOS product line, so there’s no reason to believe more are coming.
That may not seem like a big deal. A few months from now, however, people will be talking about a new game or a new application. If you’ve got Apple’s iPad or an Android tablet such as Acer’s Iconia and Toshiba’s Thrive, it’s probably going to cost you just 99 cents to get it. If you’ve only got a TouchPad, you’re going to have to buy a whole new tablet.
And if you’ve already got an iPad, why bother?
P.S. — In a classy move, HP is offering refunds to anyone who bought the TouchPad for full price.
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