Ten Things I Think I Think (HP Touchpad Edition – and Personal Finance Links)

With all the news about the HP Touchpad over the last three days, regular readers could have guessed this was coming. Read through for what ZDNet says “may be the deal of the year” (though you probably know about it unless you’ve been living under rock).

1. I think I’ve put my next out there with a couple of articles on the HP TouchPad: HP Touchpad: A Practical, Smart Buy? and Samsung Chromebook: webOS Clone in a Netbook?
2. I think that, like everyone, I shocked when HP announced to the world that it was ending not only sales of smartphones and tablets, but also PCs. However, as shocking as the news was to me, I feel for the employees who learned the news from two sentences in a press release.
3. I think this is the best commentary about how and why Palm and HP failed webOS from the former editor of PreCentral, the leading website about all things webOS. Many people perceive webOS as a failed platform that consumers do not want. They couldn’t be more wrong. Those people should read the preceding article. Palm that didn’t have the money or business partners to compete with Apple (partner: AT&T) and Google (partner: Verizon). HP had the money, but miscalculated how difficult it would be to compete and decided that it wasn’t worth the risk. For months HP claimed that they were in mobile business for the long haul often saying that it isn’t a sprint, but a marathon. HP announced their first tablet, the Touchpad four and half months before it launched. They annonced they’d exit the tablet market 49 days later. That’s some marathon.
4. I think this article gives the best insight as to the strong emotional response HP actions (or lack thereof) have caused from Derek Kessler, the current editor of PreCentral. The article goes through just some of the things that HP failed on with regard to webOS. Specifically I like the last paragraph.
   

   “I’ve never, I repeat, never, been so disappointed, frustrated, and angered by a single company. HP, you botched almost everything you could possibly botch with webOS, and now when things didn’t go as well as you would have liked – almost entirely because of your missteps – you give up. That’s the mark of a really classy company right there.”

5. I think I would have liked to been in the room with Derek the next day when a new 64GB white Touchpad showed up on HPs website as being for sale. This was the day after HP announced they would not be making any more webOS hardware. On second thought, perhaps I should be thankful I wasn’t in the room.
6. I think that the news of $99 HP Touchpads (down from $499) is the deal of the year, not just “may be the deal of the year” as this ZDNet said. This SlickDeals thread has 2.7 million views and as of this writing over 1300 pages of comments (15 comments per page). It got to be so much that they’ve had to archive the old comments… twice. Before the end of the day they’ll likely do another archiving of comments.
7. I think that if you haven’t been able to get a $99 Touchpad, you should sign up at HP to be notified when new stock arrives. You might also try Best Buy if you live in the middle of nowhere – chances are that every place has sold out of them (Best Buy coupons here). Lastly, if you can find one at full price somewhere, like RadioShack, buy it and leave it unopened for a few days. They’ll like reduce the price and you can return it for a price adjustment then.
8. I think that because of these deals, the $500 in cash back that I’m getting from my Chase Sapphire Preferred Card is no longer going to go to a TouchPad. I bought two of them from HP (one for me and one for my wife) on Friday night for around $200. This leaves me $300 for an HDHomeRun Prime, which would eliminate my cable box fees.
9. I think that it took around 24 hours for my “lifetime” boycott on HP products to end. I decided that as long as HP is going to lose around $225 on each sale, I’ll capitalize on it. That said, I enjoyed the title of this Forbes article HP: Down 20%; Now Officially Hated By Almost Everyone. Of course that was before $99 TouchPads came about. Still, I think that many people will continue to boycott HP for quite some time.
10. I think that I have mixed options the future of webOS. HP announced that they weren’t going to make any more webOS devices. However, they did say that they were still going to work on webOS software until they decided what they were going to do with it (license it, sell it, or open source it). The wild card is that with all the people having webOS in their hands for the first time, the platform ironically has more of the market and mind-share than it ever has. Depending on how many Touchpads were made, there might be more of them in consumer hands than Honeycomb tablets by the end of next week (if not already).

Now for the personal finance links

Money Writers:

• Digerati Life asks how much do you pay for electricity? Ways to minimize your electric bill.
• Learn how to manage financial stress at Frugal Dad.
• Million Dollar Journey presents top 5 pension myths.
• Money Smart Life offers 10 ways to get out of debt.
• My Dollar Plan with surprises on your Social Security statement.

Top PF Posts:

• Free Money Finance says slow down to save on gas mileage and car insurance.
• My Journey to Millions goes over what to do if your flight is cancelled.
• Scott on MONEY wonders are you financially ready for retirement?
• Endless Gibberish presents how to manage accounts at different banks.
• Financial Freedumb and Brownie shares how I would change our US government right now.
• Mighty Bargain Hunter talks about what to do with an old cashier’s check.
• Finance For Youth on having “the talk”.
• The Soapboxers asks how many people don’t pay taxes?
• One Million and Beyond is ready for renting.
• PT Money on how to overcome frugal fatigue.