At 9:00 p.m. on August 22nd, when I entered the hunt for a HP Touch for $99, I’d already lost.
The HP TouchPad frenzy of the past week was sparked by Hewlett Packard’s announcement that they will no longer continue to produce the tablet. It was fanned when they slashed prices to $99 for 16gb and $149gb and set off a world-wide buying frenzy.
Even though I knew I was late, I couldn’t help but get swept up by the hunt. (I’m competitive and written here on how ‘extreme couponing’ seems to run in the family.)
Did I need a tablet? Not really, I have a Samsung Galaxy. Does someone in my family, not really. My husband does fine with the Kindle he inherited when I got my Galaxy. But that wasn’t the point.
I love gadgets and have had a variety over the years – some I’m still wondering how to get rid of properly. There’s an old Palm from early 2000 at my parents house, a 2004 computer in a kitchen drawer, a number of cell phones from Japan, the UK, the US, and Canada in a box somewhere, and then, there are the gadgets we use. (Not to count accessories and peripherals). I’d love to stack them all up and take a picture.
I’m guessing that the 5 million views and 28,000 replies to this one thread on SlickDeals represents some people like me.
We are folks who don’t really *need* the HP Touch; it is the hunt that is exciting. In all actuality, if you really wanted to purchase a HP TouchPad, Ebay has a slew of them for very decent prices. Now, the fun is to see how the hackers redeploy the hardware with some Android or Ubuntu built in.
Instead of judging any of the insanity, since I joined in it, I thought I’d just past a few of my favorite comments & a video:
Capitalism is buying a Furby at cost and then selling it on eBay for 3 times the cost.
Welcome! And while I am happy for you, your post is KILLING me! I’ve been trying for 5 days, placed 4 orders (including one with onSale before you) and have nothing. I think you are a very lucky person – you should buy a lotto ticket with your onSale order number.
This is like the 3rd or 4th thread for the Touchpad. By now the total view count should be somewhere around 10 Million. Reply: Probably more like 20 million, it’s been archived 3 or 4 times and one of the archives had over 8 million views.
Everybody guess what just happened! Reply:….Your mom told you I was the father?
Seller: You want confirmations? SlickDealer: I think I’m entitled to them. Seller: You want a status update? SlickDealer: I want the truth! Seller: You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has warehouses. And those warehouses have inventories that have to be tracked in real time. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Bargain Hunter? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for a Touchpad and you curse OnSale. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that your jumbled order, while tragic, probably saved you money. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves money…You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about on Slickdeals, you want me on this phone. You need me this phone. We use words like pending, processing, First-In-First-Out…we use these words as the backbone to a life – a life intent on selling something. You use ’em as the gospel. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain our order processing to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very click-and-buy convenience I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I’d rather you just said thank you and logged out. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a headset and hop in the call queue. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to! SlickDealer: Did you cancel my order? Seller: (quietly) I did the job our inventories made me do. SlickDealer: Did you cancel my order? Seller: You’re goddamn right I did!!
I can’t take it anymore! I’m burning down the internet!
Save yourself people. Walk away from this thread. Take your life back. Stop obsessing over saving $150. Go to work. Exercise. Enjoy life.
I threw in the towel after 12 hours. I’m good, but not that good. I have now witnessed a new bread of techie hunter.
(*All comments were taken from this thread off of SlickDeals.net. And there’s many more where they came from.)
