Harvey Norman has $98 fire sale for HP TouchPads

By Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson A TABLET dumped just four days after going on sale will now be cleared at cut-price.

HP TouchPad

THE tablet that lasted just four days on sale in Australia will today be sold for less than $100.

HP's TouchPad launched last Monday in Harvey Norman stores exclusively only to be discontinued on Friday.

Today the national retailer will sell off its remaining 4800 tablets for $98 (16GB) and $148 (32GB) respectively starting at 2pm AEST.

Update! 3pm — the word on Twitter is many Harvey Norman stores have already sold out of stock. That was quick.

Harvey Norman computer and communications general manager Ben McIntosh said the fire sale would only take place in bricks and mortar stores as the tablet computer had been removed from the retailer's website.

"What's happened now, we've negotiated with HP this morning and they've been very positive," he said.

"HP Australia were really in the dark last week -- it was something the CEO came out with.

"We've negotiated with HP that from this afternoon we will be having an HP TouchPad stock liquidation with the tablets going out very cheap."

In addition to the $98 tablets, Harvey Norman will sell HP TouchPad accessories at a 50 per cent discount. Those accessories include a charging dock and cases for the abandoned tablet.

Mr McIntosh said customers who originally purchased the HP TouchPad at a price of $498 and $598 last week could choose to be refunded the difference between the old and new prices or get a full refund.

The TouchPad was discontinued last week in an international statement from HP that stated it would abandon the WebOS software on which the tablet was based.

At $98, the TouchPad is just a fraction of the price of competing tablets including the Apple iPad 2 (from $579), BlackBerry PlayBook (from $579) and Lenovo IdeaPad K1 ($569).

Mr McIntosh said Harvey Norman would not advertise the TouchPad sell-off using traditional means but expected the tablets to sell out by the end of the week.

"I'm very disappointed this had to happen," he said.

"But while I'm disappointed by its short lifespan, some customers will get a bargain."

There were this afternoon several reports on Twitter about queues at Harvey Norman stores for the TouchPad, including this one:

@ozdj#OH at Harvey Norman Martin Place: "Is this the queue for the TouchPad launch?" ROTFLMAO!