I think I’ll start calling the TouchPad “Rasputin” for its eerie refusal to die. Best Buy is now offering the 32GB Rasputin for $149 when you also purchase a new HP or Compaq PC. You can also buy the tablet on its own for $600. It makes for an interesting comparison to the leading tablet, says PC Magazine:
Best Buy’s top HP PC bargain is a Compaq desktop computer for $300 with 2GB RAM, 500GB HDD, 1.65 GHz AMD E processor, six USB 2.0 ports, and Windows Home 7 Premium (64-bit). Add to that the $150 price tag for the TouchPad and you end up with a boring tower PC and a webOS-based tablet with almost no future for about $450. That’s $50 less than the $500 16GB iPad 2, a tablet that most certainly has a future and a massive catalog of third-party apps.
Supplies are limited, of course, because officially HP has stopped making new TouchPads. But the tablet has taken on a bit of an interesting life after its death. Sort of the tablet equivalent of all those college kids hanging James Dean posters on their dorm room walls. HP has yet to officially kill the webOS platform, upon which the device is built. Could Rasputin be brought back? Or is the scarcity and the bargain clearance price part of the appeal?
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