$99 HP TouchPad Sale: Windows 8 Being Tested on HP TouchPads
The HP TouchPad, which went on a fire sale this past summer and was scheduled to be discontinued, may not disappear just yet.
Sources within HP told Fox News that under the new CEO of the company, Meg Whitman, it is currently testing the Windows 8 Developer Release on the units that are still being sold for discount prices, and that it may either create completely new tablets designed for Windows 8 or revive the older models.
According to MSNBC, HP is not the only company attempting to run Windows 8 on its tablets, as Lenovo and Dell have also joined the ranks because the release of the Kindle Fire has made it increasingly difficult for their tablets to compete.
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The Kindle Fire has hardware that is either at the same level or even better than that of other companies, yet the price is at a fraction of what most tablets today are selling for. Over a five-day span on Amazon.com, pre-orders have been estimated at 250,000, and before the prices had gone down on the HP TouchPad, it reached number one and two on Amazon's top electronics list at $399 and $499.
Dell Founder and CEO Michael Dell told audiences at Dell World 2011 that the Android tablet segment had not as well as the industry had hoped and that the company was looking toward Windows as the solution.
"We are very aligned with Microsoft around Windows 8," Dell said in a statement. "You'll hear more about Windows 8 from us and see a wide range of products released. Android is certainly another opportunity as well, but that market has not developed to the expectations they would have had."
The HP TouchPad created a consumer frenzy when the company decided to discontinue the device in August and slashed prices from its starting value of $499 to $99, an 80 percent drop. Since then, the sale has had customers scrambling to snatch up the rest of the units after the company agreed to release and extra 200,000 TouchPads at the end of October to meet consumer demand.
