According to an article over at TechRadar consumers in the US will have another chance to get hold of a $99 HP TouchPad this weekend. This coming Sunday, December 11th, HP will be placing refurbished models of the tablet PC onto its eBay store.

The 16GB version of the tablet will cost you $99, while the 32GB model will be priced at $149. The company has said the devices will be placed into the laptops section of its eBay store, and that all sales are final.

HP will also be offering consumers an accessory bundle priced at $79, which will get you a wireless keyboard, charging dock, and the all important case. The sale will kick off at 7pm EST and will probably see a massive demand from consumers.

It is widely believed the company will be making a decision shortly on what it plans to do with the division. It could shut it down completely or sell it off to another company with around 600 jobs remaining at risk.

The device would have been successful even if the asking price was higher than the $99 that many lucky consumers picked one up for. Will you try and get one from the eBay shop this weekend?

The retailer has announced that it will be soon selling an upcoming HP TouchPad 32GB bundle that consumers can snap up for $149.99. According to PCMag to get one of these bundles customers will have to purchase a new PC. The deal will start on November 1st and is available online or in the retailer’s stores.

Customers who purchase a Compaq desktop, laptop, or all-in-one PC will also have the option to get their hands on the 32GB TouchPad. There is none of the 16GB version of the TouchPad left, and the offer excludes netbook and devices sold via BestBuy.com Marketplace.

Best Buy have said the deal will be available on a first come, first served basis, and around one hour before stores open employees will be handing out tickets for the device. After being open for an hour any TouchPad’s not claimed will be released to those waiting in line without a ticket.

Returns will be accepted for the TouchPad for up to 14 days after purchase, and if you return the PC and not the TouchPad the retailer will charge you $599.99 for the unit. The TouchPad will also not come under Best Buy’s Geek Squad Black Tie Protection, and HP have officially announced it has no more stock left of the tablet PC.

Will you try and get hold of the HP TouchPad?

Recently Pre-Central managed to get their hands on some TouchPad Go promotional material and a full spec sheet, to say the least this tablet had a lot of potential, however now we know that HP has no plans to release it, it’s a shame really – here’s why.

Let’s start with specs, this tablet was going to feature a 6.95 inch ISP display which outputs at 1024 x 768, a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcoom processor, 1GB of RAM and Qualcomm’s Adreno 220 graphics processor (GPU). There would have been 16GB and 32GB variants available and no-matter which model you chose there would be a 5 megapixel camera on the rear, a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera, stereo speakers, Bluetooth, WiFi and GPS. It looks like 3G and 4G versions of the Go were also planned.

According to sources this tablet would have been roughly 13mm thick and would have weighed no more than one pound – below you can two image which promote the tablet’s GPS and creative functionality, you can see full sized versions of these image via the Pre-Central link in the second paragraph of this article.

Ignoring the display size there is one other major difference in design between the original HP TouchPad and the TouchPad Go, the TouchPad Go has been designed for use in landscape, the tablet’s buttons and cameras give this away.

We can’t help but wonder if thing would have been different if the HP TouchPad Go was HP’s first-ever webOS tablet, we haven’t seen a lot of 7-inch tablets of late, therefore it may have found a niche in the market – we will never know.

Do you think the HP TouchPad Go would have sold well?

HP’s TouchPad was not a perfect device; in fact it was pretty low down in the tablet market. One thing can always help a device sell like hotcakes, and in this case it was a price of $99.

We heard about the price increase last week, which left some people drooling at the deal they missed. Today we hear that the UK will be getting 6,000 more HP TouchPad’s, but this time they will be only for the brands employees, although there are 16,500 UK workers. The models will be mostly 32GB, although there will be around 300 of the 16GB version, which was confirmed in this article.

While other partners of HP also want some of the devices, the company is looking after their employees first. Do you think this is the right decision? Some of the companies’ resellers can still get TouchPad’s but it will be via auction sites, and at a much higher price.

It seems crazy that a device that HP marketed was so unsuccessful, and didn’t have the right direction from HP is now doing so well in sales, and not only because of the cheap price last month, but also thanks to the hype surrounding the tablet. Maybe they need to take a leaf out of Apple’s book when it comes to building hype around a product. It will not be long to Black Friday, so those that missed out are sure to find an equally good deal this November.

According to ITProPortal if you go to PC Worlds online store and enter the voucher code TABLET5 you can get the 32GB version of the TouchPad for £236.55. For your money you get the wireless charging dock and TouchPad case. This is obviously a move to get rid of the probably big stock of accessories the store has, and you have to wonder if they held remaining TouchPad’s back for this reason.

The final production run of the tablet PC is not expected to be ready until the end of next month, and is unlikely to make it into retail stores. Consumers are unable to use the retailers online service to reserve for collection in store, and is available for delivery only but some stores may still have some stock left.

We have already brought you the news that consumers who purchased the TouchPad and the Pre3 before the fire sales will be offered the difference back by HP. This is only for customers who registered their product before August 23rd.

It is not known how much stock the retailer has left so if the price is still low enough for you get in quick. The TouchPad is still being advertised for £429.99 at Expansys.com but they are advising they have no shipping times for the unit. Wouldn’t have thought anyone would be interested at that price though.

Will you pay the price PC World is offering the HP TouchPad for?

TechRadar are reporting that HP has confirmed that it will be giving refunds to all the customers who purchased the products before the price cut. On the company’s official site that is covering the UK, Ireland, France and Germany HP have listed the refunds available for every model for its now discontinued devices.

It is promising to give consumers the difference between the sale prices and what was originally paid for each device. This means consumers in the UK can expect refunds of over £300 finding their way back to people who made the leap and purchased early.

Only customers who managed to activate their device before August 23rd are allegeable for the offer though, so if you had the device sitting in the box for a while after purchasing you are out of luck. The device is currently getting over the air updates from HP, and there is still the possibility of having Android on the device.

As soon as the TouchPad price was slashed consumers rushed out to snap up the device, which quickly led to stock running dry. Many units have found their way onto the likes of eBay selling for more than double of the sale price, but still way below what they were originally priced at.

With the next batch of units expected to be ready by the end of next month, if you haven’t already got an order placed for one you may be out of luck. Did you purchase the TouchPad or Pre 3 before the fire sale?

Electronista are reporting that HP have sent out emails to customers who have already placed orders, but have yet to receive their shipment from HP. In the email HP said they will start shipping the devices in six to eight weeks, and for the discounted price.

SMB customers were the ones to receive the email, and it doesn’t apply to the customers that may have orders from the regular home channel. This means the customers concerned should be getting their TouchPad’s by the end of next month, which coincides with the end of HP’s current financial year.

The company has not yet revealed how many uncompleted orders it has for its tablet PC, but it is thought the company and its suppliers have enough components left to build at least 100,000 units. HPs suppliers have called on the company to build up as many units it has parts for to clear the supply of components that are left.

There will undoubtedly not be enough TouchPad’s to satisfy the demand at the discounted price, and makes you wonder if HP couldn’t have released the TouchPad at a lower price than it originally launched at. Admittedly no manufacturer could release a device as cheap as what the TouchPad is selling at now, but it is surely better to make a reasonable sized profit on each device than no profit at all.

Are you still waiting for an order of the HP TouchPad?

This news was confirmed by the following quote which we found over at ComputerWorld:

“Despite announcing an end to manufacturing webOS hardware, we have decided to produce one last run of TouchPads to meet unfulfilled demand,” Mark Budgell, an HP spokesman, wrote in a blog post. The site appears to be overloaded and is currently unavailable, but the post has been reposted elsewhere online.

The newly manufactured tablets will go on sale in a few weeks. He said a “limited” number would be made but couldn’t say exactly how many. “We can’t promise we’ll have enough for everyone,”

Currently there are lots of HP TouchPad’s being sold on sites like eBay to make a quick profit, in fact people are easily doubling their money, therefore we are sure that the new stock will not last long – which begs the question “Why don’t HP just sell them at a more expensive price?” – We guess that there are legal issues which stop this from being a possibility.

Apparently this final batch of TouchPad’s will be manufactured during HP’s fourth fiscal quarter – this ends on October 31st, however we have no idea when stock will be shipped. This recent Register article suggests that the last batch of tablets will be exclusive to the United States, which will undoubtedly frustrated our readers from other parts of the world.

We find it strange that HP is producing more tablets which run a discontinued operating system, surely they should cut their losses and concentrate on other products? Perhaps they have parts to use up or are having regrets about their decision – what do you think? Also yesterday we revealed that HP will be rolling out an over-the-air update for the TouchPad, we wonder why they are so keen to support a discontinued product.

In just under two weeks later 9 To 5 Mac are reporting that HP’s PC boss Todd Bradley has told Reuters that the TouchPad could be making a comeback. The device was introduced but was only available for six weeks before being scrapped. Now Bradley has hinted that the company may bring back the device and said “Tablet computing is a segment of the market that’s relevant, absolutely”.

Now surely the killing off of the TouchPad was not some sort of marketing ploy as it would have cost the company millions. There have been rumors that Samsung may be looking to purchase webOS, and Bradley said the idea of HP selling its PC arm to the likes of Acer or Lenovo is “not a desirable alternative”.

Trouble is no company could currently produce a device such as the TouchPad and break even at $99. When the device was first released and priced at $499 hardly any units were shifted, but when the price was slashed to $99 stock quickly ran dry. With any product if it is priced at the right level demand will be there.

Consumers don’t mind paying the $499 price for the iPad, but unfortunately the TouchPad is not as good as the iPad. A recent survey has found that many potential customers would purchase the Amazon tablet PC if it was less than $250. This has led many to believe that Amazon will offer its tablet at a competitive price, and make its profits with applications among other things just like it does with the Kindle.

Would you be surprised if HP does bring back the TouchPad?

However, it is up for auction on eBay, but is does show you that it is possible. This is a good sign that Android support is now possible, but should you really take that chance to get yourself one of these Hewlett Packard tablets – if you still can that is? At this current stage it is hard to know, but then again if Android does make its way to the TouchPad fully then you would have missed out on a great opportunity.

Put it this way, $99 or £89 is not a lot to pay, so we believe it is worth the risk. Just think in a few days, weeks or months you could have yourself a tablet device that will be able to hold its own against the PlayBook, all for a fraction of the cost and with far more app support. We would not advise you to purchase the TouchPad that appears on eBay just yet, as the current bid is now up to $1,025.00 and still has less than two days to go.

Now we cannot understand why anyone would want to purchase the HP tablet for that price, maybe they want to see how it manages to run Android and then figure out how to make it available to the masses – what other rational explanation could there be?

As we mentioned above one of the main issues with the TouchPad is its apps – or lack of them to be precise. Well ZDNet is reporting that HP has made 6 apps free for a limited time only; these are as follows: Glimpse, Kung Fu Panda 2 Storybook, Big Boss, Sparkle HD, Camera for TouchPad and finally Audubon Birds.