HP employees to get first access to last batch of TouchPads

Rich Fiscus
19 Sep 2011 10:52

If you were hoping to get one of the last TouchPads at the fire sale price of $99.99 or $199.99, your chances just got a little smaller unless you are an HP employee.
After a HP announcement last month that they will discontinue the TouchPad, the initial production run sold out quickly at the highly discounted prices. Soon after, they announced plans to produce just 200,000 more in order to fulfill contracts with suppliers.
In an email recently leaked to TechCrunch, HP employees were told they will get exclusive access to the additional stock:

After a thorough review of options, I'm pleased to share that starting at 9:00am (Pacific Time) on Wednesday, September 28^th, HP employees in the United States will have one last chance to buy an HP TouchPad through the Employee Purchase Program on a first come first serve basis. Pricing will remain the same as it has been during the wind down process -- $99.99 for the 16GB TouchPad, $149.99 for the 32GB TouchPad...while limited supplies last.

Even for people who might not be interested in owning the tablet, those prices leave plenty of room for profit reselling them. The 16GB model, in particular, is selling for twice or more its original $99.99 price on eBay.
Although WebOS, the native operating system for the TouchPad, appears to be on life support, discount TouchPads have resulted in extensive interest in running Android on it. In particular, the developers of CyanogenMod appear close to a fully functional release for the TouchPad.