UPDATED 12:22 EDT / OCTOBER 31 2011

The Walking Dead Tablet: HP TouchPad

Last week we mentioned that Hewlett-Packard will be re-awakening their dead TouchPad tablet.  Back in August Leo Apotheker, then CEO of HP, announced the death of the tablet.  Things got confusing when they then sold their tablet for $99 (a hit with buyers) but then revived the tablet sale only for HP employees.  And now, they’re reviving it for one last time (for real?).

HP will offer Best Buy customers a tablet-PC bundle.  According to Best Buy’s website announcement, the HP TouchPad will be available for $149 if they purchase the tablet together with HP or Compaq laptop, desktop or all-in-one computer.  The TouchPad will still come with the webOS and a 32GB storage space.  But if customers just want to buy the tablet, they would have to pay $599.99.

The HP TouchPad is currently unavailable on HP’s site, but would be available in the coming weeks or months in limited stock.  HP advices interested customers to monitor the tablets availability on THENEXTBENCH, but the site tells another story.

According to THENEXTBENCH, “At HP, we try very hard to provide a positive experience to every customer who purchases an HP product. In some cases, like the HP TouchPad where supply has been extremely limited from the start, we simply cannot meet demand. We are now announcing that while some retailers will have limited stock available, HP’s online inventory is depleted.”

“Thank you for your interest in this product and the feedback you provided. Your input plays a critical role in defining our product roadmap and will help us continue to bring innovative products to market.”

Though the company announced that they won’t be killing their PC business, it looks like their webOS division would be facing the guillotine.  One webOS employee stated, “There’s a 95 percent chance we all get laid off between now and November, and I for one am thinking it’s for the best.”

“The accolades for WebOS are broadly known,” Todd Bradley, the EVP of HP’s personal systems group told Bloomberg. “[But] there are business model issues that we are working through…Our focus with WebOS is how we utilize that phenomenal software and talent in our business.”

webOS has been under a lot of pressure and scrutiny as uncertainty at HP looms.  There’s no telling what HP will ultimately do with webOS, a platform it’s invested in significantly, and could prove useful at some point down the line.  Ryan Paul over at Ars Technica thinks HP should open up webOS instead of killing it off, one of the many plans HP has touted for webOS in recent months.


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