Cringley's article is an excellent overview of how HP lost their way.

http://www.cringely.com/2011/08/losing-the-hp-way/

My own thoughts:

It seems like many once-great tech companies reach a certain size, get a second-generation CEO, and lose their ability to make wise strategic decisions.

DEC
Motorola
Sun
HP
Dell (before the second coming)
Apple (before the second coming)
EDS
Cisco
Yahoo
eBay

Microsoft seems something of an exception - they continue to pile up the cash through not-really-amazing software despite their many missteps into hardware of all kinds.

Google - will they suffer a similar fate?

HP has dropped the price on their site without needing a coupon now. Both are currently out of stock, but if it's true that stores are sending them back by the pallet full, more will probably become available.

The 32 GB one for $149
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/sh...Pad&aoid=35252

The 16 GB one for $99
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/sh...GB_HP_TouchPad

I will say, that thread on slick deals was amazing to watch last night. If you clicked on last page, by the time you finished reading the dozen or so posts on that page of the thread, there were two more pages. For a while, you could not read fast enough to keep up with the new posts, with multiple pages of posts all having the same time stamp.

As of right now, the rate is still about 60 posts/minute. I believe they hit one million page views in under five hours.

Yes. I worked with DEC equipment for years so it was sad to see them get consumed by Compaq, then eventually HP.

Its rather hilarious to watch MS screw up almost everything they do. Zune, Kin, WP7....

Hard to call with Google. They have diversified into so many areas so fast.

If you are patient, you can get an order through HP's SMB website. I accidentally ordered five 32gb (only needed two), but didn't want to spend another hour refreshing to correct the quantity.

It looks like I been trying to order one for a few hours, I hope HP has a few hundred thousand in stock :)

Yesterday morning, bestBUY refused to reduce their prices to the level mandated by HP. Around 6pm CST, they had changed their minds and were offering them at the correct price to customers and employees. Debating whether to camp-out at the nearest store now to beg for their crumbs, wait for HP to make them available again online/direct, or bag the whole issue.

Breaking News: Scored 1 online @ BB (99 plus tax). Will pickup @ store tomorrow. Hope it's not DOA.

HP SMB has 32gb models available now.

http://shopping1.hp.com/is-bin/INTER...nkCrossSelling

Link to Best Buy...

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olstempl...c=abcat0500000

Picked up a $99 HP for my 3 year old. Now I can trade her iPad and give it to my Mom, since it is nothing more than a fashion accessory.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

Why dont you sell the iPad and buy Touch pads for the whole family?

Nope, prefer my Asus Transformer to the iPad. Don't like supporting the ultimate closed source company, Apple, and the ultimate a-hole, Steve Jobs. Personal preference, that's all. The HP will work for movies/Angry Birds/reading, which up to this point is exactly the same I've seen people using the iPad for! ;)

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

That's why I said sell the ipad.

Anyone grab a TouchPad(s)? I bought a 16gb and 32gb from different vendors. Will be giving away one of them as a present and not sure about the other. I have an iPad 1 already.

I haven't played with webOS since it debuted on the first Palm phones. Supposedly it is a sensible OS, but hoping that Android gets ported over so I have options.

that's ultimately what I use the iPad for. Well except for angry birds don't enjoy any of the games on the iPad. A few of the apps I enjoy have moved to the web (namely the FT) because of Apple's stupid policies so no big loss if I can actually get a touchpad...

I was hoping to grab one. I'm currently in the UK and will be in the US in a couple of weeks. I had hoped to buy one for delivery to my LA hotel, something I've done many times before with other products.

I managed to get one in my hp.com basket and tried to check out. Unfortunately, I hit the 'US only' rule. For billing, only addresses with US states and 9-digit ZIP codes would be accepted. Other websites had no availability.

I guess I'll have to check when I arrive and hit the stores then.

BTW, the Staples $49 price has reverted to $99.