Hewlett-Packard is offering a fire-sale on it’s TouchPad tablets, that it just released months ago. HP has confirmed plans to stop making PCs, tablets and phones, in order to refocus on software. Hewlett-Packard, the world’s top personal computer maker, announced Thursday it is exploring a spinoff of its PC unit in a historic shift away from the consumer market.

“HP is recognising what the world has recognised, which is hardware in terms of consumers is not a huge growth business anymore,” said Michael Yoshikami, chief executive of YCMNET Advisors.

“It’s not where the money is. It’s in keeping with the new CEO’s perspective that they want to be more in services and more business-oriented.”

On the sale of its PC business, HP said it “will consider a broad range of options that may include, among others, a full or partial separation… from HP through a spin-off or other transaction”.

Now this may be a hard deal for many to pass up, even though HP is discontinuing webOS and its hardware products. But HP will begin selling the 16GB TouchPad for $99 starting tomorrow. Likewise, the 32GB model will sell for just $50 more.

The Touchpad uses a proprietary operating system called webOS, and is based on the Linux kernel.

Got my 32 GB model w/ Wireless Keyboard, Case, and TouchPad Charger Stand for $260 (normal price $700, so 63% off), including tax, direct from HP.

I figure I’ll use webOS until it EOLs then pop the Ice Cream Sandwich source on it (which should be out by then).

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 20th, 2011 at 20:37 by dsmith and is filed under $200 computer, Hewlett Packard, HP, Tablet, WebOS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.