5 replies to this topic

[broadz]

(borrowed from The Age, last Monday)

HARVEY NORMAN will sell Hewlett-Packard's discontinued TouchPad tablet computer for just $98 from 2pm AEST in a dramatic fire sale designed to get rid of its remaining 4800 units.

The Australian fire sale is being held following a meeting with Harvey Norman this morning where HP agreed to fund the liquidation sale.

Harvey Norman's Ben McIntosh said all TouchPad accessories will be sold at half price.

Harvey Norman, the sole distributor of the TouchPad in Australia, removed it from shelves on Friday following HP's global announcement to discontinue it.

Mr McIntosh, the general manager of Harvey Norman's computers and communications division, said the units would be available in all Harvey Norman stores until sold out.

The decision to slash the TouchPad's local price follows similar heavy discounting in the US on the weekend.

Mr McIntosh said he was "very happy" that HP Australia had recognised the need to strike an arrangement following its decision last week in the US to axe the tablet.

He said Australian buyers who purchased the TouchPad were getting a better deal than US ones as all purchases would still be subject to the protection of Australian consumer law


Who here was lucky enough to buy one and what do you intend using it for?
I bought one of the 32gb versions specifically for the car for MP3 and Video media both of which my HXD2 fails to support. Only problem I can see is the need to use the 3.5mm audio jack whereas an ipad can output sound through it's media port at the bottom.

Edited by broadz, 29 August 2011 - 11:22 AM.

[ubernoob]

At the end of the day it's still a HP and it will no doubt break in three weeks time, it was a pretty crazy discount though.

[Selfdestruktor]

Really?
We have a lot of HP systems at work, workstations, servers and laptops, and they're all rock solid.
Probably my favourite brand from that point of view.

Anyway, here's a bit more about the HP tablet and more broader information about the industry: http://www.economist...bl/realitydawns

This technology is creating a huge buzz in the education system (I manage IT in a college) so i've had it rammed down my throat for months.
At the end of the day, though, i'm standing my ground in saying that they're too expensive and you can't do any real school work on them.
Yeah, it would be cool to have as a complimentary device, but I'm part of a team making a decision on which type of device we are going to buy at the end of the year to give to students (~500 devices, replacing half our student fleet).
Whatever we get, it is supposed to allow a student to do the majority of their work on.
I'm certainly going to be arguing for 12" laptops.
Lenovo x220i's with 4gb of ram and the Sandybridge i3 to be exact.
Yeah, they're more expensive, but you get a helluva lot more out of them.

[Luke352]

Selfdestruktor, on 04 September 2011 - 01:27 PM, said:

Really?
We have a lot of HP systems at work, workstations, servers and laptops, and they're all rock solid.
Probably my favourite brand from that point of view.

Anyway, here's a bit more about the HP tablet and more broader information about the industry: http://www.economist...bl/realitydawns

This technology is creating a huge buzz in the education system (I manage IT in a college) so i've had it rammed down my throat for months.
At the end of the day, though, i'm standing my ground in saying that they're too expensive and you can't do any real school work on them.
Yeah, it would be cool to have as a complimentary device, but I'm part of a team making a decision on which type of device we are going to buy at the end of the year to give to students (~500 devices, replacing half our student fleet).
Whatever we get, it is supposed to allow a student to do the majority of their work on.
I'm certainly going to be arguing for 12" laptops.
Lenovo x220i's with 4gb of ram and the Sandybridge i3 to be exact.
Yeah, they're more expensive, but you get a helluva lot more out of them.

One of the Private schools in my area cancel'd it's yearly snow/ski trip to get the students Ipads, I couldn't believe that. We have an Acer A501 tablet at home but it is not a device you can use to do any large amount of productive work, you can answer urgent emails along with pull things up to show clients but that's about as productive as one will be without a proper keyboard and better speeds for handling inputs.

[Selfdestruktor]

I'm not a big sports fan, and I think it's pushed too hard in some schools when basic maths and english skills are plummeting, but I would have been super pissed if that had happened to me or one of my kids.
Throwing a piece of tech at a kid does not guarantee better learning outcomes.

It's interesting that you mentioned the Iconia.
I mentioned in another thread that we were interested in looking at Android systems because it sounded like the Honeycomb release was going to be ready enough for us to use in a corporate wifi environment.
I went ahead and bought one to trial, but was pretty disappointed.
The proxy server support is still very poor, the flash support was poor and the plugging in and access of USB storage devices was also poor.

If the proxy server support had've been the same as on iOS and either (one would be enough) real flash support or decent USB storage support, we might've looked at them instead of the iPad's (which we've got 6 of and will probably get another 6 or so) but they are just so far behind it's not funny.

[Chris.]

There a consumption device, not a creation device.

Hand in hand with a PC is a great combo.