HP Tablet: A Bestseller, Now That HP Is Killing It

HP TouchPad (Courtesy of HP)

Six weeks ago, when the HP TouchPad tablet was introduced, the company could barely give it away. Now that Hewlett-Packard has killed it off, it's a winner.

It's been for sale online and at stores such as Best Buy at prices as low as $99 for the Wi-Fi only 16 GB version, and $149 fully loaded with 32 GB. It's still not an iPad, but at these prices it's a steal.

Where to find one? It's a race to the checkout line. Today the TouchPad was the top seller in electronics on Amazon.com, though for far more than the fire-sale prices that began to appear over the weekend.

HP's own website offered the TouchPad "starting at $99.99." It was forced to insert a blue box: "Notify me when product available again."

Courtesy of HP

HP TouchPad View Full Size

Courtesy of HP

HP TouchPad

TechBytes (08.15.11) Watch Video

TechBytes (08.10.11) Watch Video

Hurricane Apps Watch Video

On Twitter, the hashtag "#HPTouchpad" appeared, for people anxious to buy one at a bargain. And sites such as SlickDeals have been trying to keep up with the rapidly-changing prices.

Best Buy lowered its price ... then said it was no longer selling TouchPads ... then said it was selling them again, but limiting them to one to a customer (Best Buy's FAQs are here).

By the way, if you were foolish enough to buy a TouchPad at full price when it first appeared, major retailers said they would take it back or reduce the price to the bargain-basement levels that have been offered now.

As reported Thursday, Hewlett Packard decided there was no point in trying to compete anymore in the high-stakes, low-margin business of making hardware, even if it was the biggest-selling brand in the U.S. Apple has a lock on high-end computers and handhelds, and companies like Dell and China's Lenovo have made life tough for HP. So HP announced on Thursday it would reinvent itself as a software services company, much as IBM did a decade before.

The transition has not gone well so far. On Friday, Wall Street pushed HP stock down 20 percent.