instant obsolescence

[LCHIEN]

The new HP Touchpad went from new product to clearance item in a mere 2 months. Sold out in US and Canada in four hours.

about 2 months ago it was introduced at $599 for the 16 GB version. It got points for some features but it was widely panned. They dropped the price to $399 just days ago amid reports it was not moving from stores.

Friday HP announced it was leaving the PC business completely (no more computers) and overnight dropped the 16GB touchpad to $99 and the 32 GB version to $149. By noon today (Saturday) there is not one to be found for sale anywhere. Best Buy claims they returned all stock to HP Friday night and Walmart, Target, Office Max, Office depot, Staples and everyone else is completely sold out on-line and in B&M stores, both... maybe a phenomenon aided by twitter.

Most Interesting. I would have bought one at $99. but alas I could not find one. Gotta be some kind of record.

[leehljp]

I thought the same thing this morning. $99 even for nothing more than to browse the internet and do email - would have been worth it. It would NOT have been a substitute for a small computer for me, although an iPad would in some cases.

The downside to the TouchPad must have been their processor as much as anything else. Their WebOS was twice as fast running on the iPad as it was when running on their own TouchPad. That must have been embarrassing to explain to the head honchos.

Plus there must have been considerable dissension among the department as the WebOS team wanted one thing while the hardware folks wanted something else.

I read an article the day before HP made their huge announcement that said that Best Buy had informed HP that they were shipping the TouchPads back. It seemed like BB had some inside information.

[cwsmith]

I heard HP's announcement on NPR (I think it was yesterday morning). I'm wondering what they are thinking. HP is a "hardware" company, especially known for the thier printers and computer systems and I don't know of any "software" that they make.

Maybe I heard it wrong, that they are getting out of the hardware business and are going to concentrate on their software? What software?

Sounds to me like a real quick way to committ corporate suicide. Who would buy an HP product that has the potential for no support, parts, etc.?

I remember back in the 90's when IBM bought the number ONE spreadsheet program company: Lotus. Overnight, the product was dead and never to be heard from again (or hardly remembered). It was like IBM's systems folks earned a bonus from Microsoft. Likewise when IBM announced it was splitting off it's PC division.

Sales very quckly came to a halt.

CWS

[LCHIEN]

here's one nail in the coffin:
http://www.businessinsider.com/chart...AI_COTD_081911

Here's their product and services mix:
http://www.businessinsider.com/chart...AI_COTD_081911

they're dropping the "personal systems" they will still sell printing and imaging products, services, software and enterprise servers and software.
I assume personal systems are PCs, laptops, notebooks, and touch pads.

[TB Roye]

just check HP web site, out of stock on both, check back later. Just bought a HP laptop the first of the year, geat computer, hope it lasts awhile. Time to sell the 2HP mini we have, or give them to the Grandkids. Wait there will be a bunch of them on Ebay when HP cleans out the returned stock.

Tom

[jackellis]

Here's why others will have trouble catching Apple: http://www.pcworld.com/article/23799...ml#tk.rss_news

[buckeye95]

I work in the industry and was as shocked as anyone. A few years ago Palm seemed to be king of the PDA, then went downhill as their smartphone line (Treo, Pre, etc.) were respected in reviews but never gained traction in the marketplace. I always wondered what HP could do to turn around the WebOS bus from a marketing / product perspective, and I guess the answer now is "not enough".

With RIM on the ropes now, can anything stop the Android / Apple dominance?

[LCHIEN]

for the latest in this insanity...
when I went to Best Buy at noon, they said they had pulled all stock for return to HP Friday night.

Apparently at 4PM today Best buy and HP decided to release these for sale at the sale price. E-mail from the head office to start selling them got to my local store at 6PM the sales associate told me. When I checked at 9:25 PM, they told me thay had sold out at 7PM, an hour after they received word to go ahead and sell them.

Earlier reports said that Best Buy had 270,000 touch pads from HP... gone within an hour.

man, the power of twitter...

[Kristofor]

Here's why others will have trouble catching Apple: http://www.pcworld.com/article/23799...ml#tk.rss_news

Yeah, except it's wrong on almost every point... There have been tons of previous lightweight PC laptops that were much slimmer and lighter than the average PC or Mac laptop of the time, had long run times etc.

In fact I and/or my team has had to support ones from Toshiba, IBM/Lenovo, and Sony in years past for executives who just "had to have one" in spite of the clearly rational reasons why they weren't the best choice back then. Low-powered Intel, Transmeta, and other come-and-gone low voltage processors were just that, low-powered both on the consumption side, and also on the performance side. It wasn't until the last three or four years that some these folks would actually end up keeping the device in question after they had used it for a few months and saw how much slower it was than a more traditional machine.

While the current generation MacBook Air's and similar models from PC manufacturers are now able to meet the performance requirements for many non-power-users due to improvements in hardware speed, size, and power consumption that have outpaced the performance requirements for most application, the value triangle for performance, cost, and size still only makes those devices the best choice if size is assigned a pretty hefty weighting.

[LinuxRandal]

Long rant, tablets missed the mark to me.

It all comes down to cost verses return. I can use an Iphone or an Android phone, with a data plan, to do my work on my pc (personal computer, not the Windows they are trying to make that synonymous with) remotely, via VNC.
I can do the same thing with a tablet, and have a larger screen as long as I have a wireless connection (or a cellular enabled version). I can do the same thing with my netbook, and have the benefit of if out in the boondocks with no connection, still be able to work, and not just use a pad as an entertainment device.
I looked at a HP Mini with Linux already on it, and it was close to $800. Watched the tablet my brother bought, go for under $300, where you have to root it to upgrade it (hardware wise it is the same as the 3.1 versions out there). Saw the Ipad my b-i-l uses as well as both relatives Android phones, and none of them provided any real incentive to go to a monthly subscription fee, or start hanging around places that use "free" wifi as an incentive to get you to come in and spend your money. In a lot of ways, tablets are the return to the old client server model, just with a new billing methodology. (It may be Your data, but you have to pay to access it)
One report I read on this, said it was not a good deal, even at $99 (if they leave the market, who and why would it be developed further? Closed OS, who will take it up?)
Another said they expect the OS will continue, into other items that HP will bring out, and eventually move to the subscription based model. (pads as part of a business cloud based setup, think hospitals and such, but not consumer devices, security through obscurity)
The Ipad toppler, may very well be, on the edge of coming out in another year. India is looking to make a $30 10" tablet, for students, with Libreoffice and Android.
Microsoft started pushing the tablet concept years back, it didn't happen. Apple has what percent of the market? Seems to me that percentage is the same that are interested in tablets, generally. I think we are a bit away from tablets being real useful devices, then toys, as the market long ago, went to smart phones.

[leehljp]

Yeah, except it's wrong on almost every point...
In fact I and/or my team has had to support ones from Toshiba, IBM/Lenovo, and Sony in years past for executives who just "had to have one" in spite of the clearly rational reasons why they weren't the best choice back then. Low-powered Intel, Transmeta, and other come-and-gone low voltage processors were just that, low-powered both on the consumption side, and also on the performance side.

While the current generation MacBook Air's and similar models from PC manufacturers are now able to meet the performance requirements for many non-power-users due to improvements in hardware speed, size, and power consumption that have outpaced the performance requirements for most application, the value triangle for performance, cost, and size still only makes those devices the best choice if size is assigned a pretty hefty weighting.

I may have read it wrong but it seemed like the article mentioned these very things - design, weight, battery life, performance, durability. These other companies made these products and when they didn't sell in numbers, concluded that the end user didn't want them. Where-as Apple attacked the individual problems of Why they didn't want them - battery life (use SSD), weight, (use caseless SSD, reduce motherboard and other size through design), performance (Apple consults regularly with Intel about what it wants in a chip - this not mentioned specifically in the article but they attack the problem rather than assuming people don't want it), durability (all aluminum unibody for rigidity, while saving weight).

The article deals with how others came to one conclusion (people didn't want it) while Apple looked at WHY people didn't want it, and attacked each problem. It seemed very logical to me.

[leehljp]

Microsoft started pushing the tablet concept years back, it didn't happen. Apple has what percent of the market? Seems to me that percentage is the same that are interested in tablets, generally. I think we are a bit away from tablets being real useful devices, then toys, as the market long ago, went to smart phones.

This is where tech minded people are missing the point - We are tech minded and see the world through our own eyes. We are kinda like race car mechanics wondering why in the world anyone would want an automatic transmission or a bunch of amenities. The race car mentality sees the world at the leading edge of engines, timing, fuel, etc and judge the world of racing (naturally) through those eyes. But the rest of the world sees the automobile through THEIR eyes of less technical mumbo jumbo, ease of personal use without needing that technical knowledge.

And so it is the market that Apple is targeting. For this very reason, tech minded people attack Apple products from most every angle while non-tech minded people go to the products in droves.

AS to the tablet and Apple's success, the all in one closed ecosystem is what MOST people want and the very thing that technical minded people don't understand. Could it be that tech-minded people are not seeing what the "world" sees or wants? This process is also undermining the IT world because the world around us don't like being dependent upon others for what they don't understand. Apple is one company that listened to what and why something was not liked, and changed it when it could.

The iPad was under development for about 5 years before release and its development was kept secret - as opposed to most companies announcing something as being developed while it was in reality still just a concept. This move is called freezing the market (hopefully), but it also reveals that the company's purpose is market and product minded, not development of a core quality product. Freezing the Market with "future product" announcements and even "getting into the market place" is far more important to most companies than figuring out how to make a foundational product from which to build a clientele base. The case of HP's touchpad hardware running twice as fast on iOS than on WebOS alludes to this very point.

The result is that Apple found as HUGE base of people who don't want products that need a considerable amount of IT support or even moderate technical knowledge to operate. And then we technical minded people lambast the products because it isn't an open platform. It is the "mechanics" that are losing out on understanding of the rest of the world that operates outside of the race track venue.

[LinuxRandal]

This is where tech minded people are missing the point - We are tech minded and see the world through our own eyes. We are kinda like race car mechanics wondering why in the world anyone would want an automatic transmission or a bunch of amenities. The race car mentality sees the world at the leading edge of engines, timing, fuel, etc and judge the world of racing (naturally) through those eyes. But the rest of the world sees the automobile through THEIR eyes of less technical mumbo jumbo, ease of personal use without needing that technical knowledge.

And so it is the market that Apple is targeting. For this very reason, tech minded people attack Apple products from most every angle while non-tech minded people go to the products in droves.

I understand your point, but I do find it humorous, since most of the Linux users I know, are not tech people. They tend to be people up and running on donated hardware (older hardware) that Linux works well on, or people using the built in os (Android) which includes most of the phone only people.

Linux isn't just the race car, it is also the put about car your grandmother drove. I guess that makes people like me, a mechanic in your scenario.

[jackellis]

I bought my iPad for a specific purpose, which was to get rid of the cost and inconvenience of lots of paper in my tiny airplane cockpit. It serves that purpose exceptionally well. I can also use it on long flights to read a book, watch a podcast, or catch up on other reading that comes in pdf format.

The device is easier for short e-mails than my Blackberry, which also doubles as a cell phone when I'm in Europe.

We're leaving on a three week trip to the UK in two weeks. I'll have an old laptop with me in case I need to do some work along the way.

IMHO iPad's are not terribly useful as content creation devices, but for what they do, they run circles around the alternatives. I suspect that to a greater or lesser degree, other tablets are similarly useful.

It's not unlike tools in the shop. I can use a router, bandsaw, circular saw, jigsaw and table saw to do many of the same operations, but some are better for certain operations than others.

[leehljp]

I understand your point, but I do find it humorous, since most of the Linux users I know, are not tech people. They tend to be people up and running on donated hardware (older hardware) that Linux works well on, or people using the built in os (Android) which includes most of the phone only people.

Linux isn't just the race car, it is also the put about car your grandmother drove. I guess that makes people like me, a mechanic in your scenario.

I do quite often lower the standard when using "tech minded". Anyone above the level of LOML is tech minded! When the web browser is not instant as in turning a TV on and off or instantly changing channels, she bangs her keyboard and complains that I am hogging the WIFI channel! I keep telling her that the computer is not a TV! She thinks that a computer should be MORE than a TV and faster too, "After all, it IS a computer and a TV isn't!"

But that is her logic!

OT: LR - I thought of you today when I was thinking of one chain of events that led to MS changing their EULA on Windows some years ago. MS of course had the PC hardware makers locked into a contract that said that they would and could only sell Windows on their machines. No one could buy a PC WITHOUT buying a Windows OS, according the the MS contract with the PC vendors. But MS made one mistake - in the initial boot up of a new computer, you could accept the terms of the EULA or refuse it. I believe it was a Linux user in Australia that refused and wanted his money back for the Windows OS that he could not use since he would not accept the EULA. This came about close to the same time that MS was being taken to court for a monopoly abuse. But that Linux user won his case and soon after, MS changed their EULA, in addition to changing monopoly contract with vendors.