14 DAY TRIAL // Product promotions are a common tactic in any market and it looks like HP is having one for its very own media tablet, the TouchPad that will start shipping next month (July, 2011).
Seeing the success of media tablets, HP, naturally, decided it wasn't going to stay out of the game and even came up with a more or less unique way of going about things.
After buying Palm, the company went ahead and put together a 9.7-inch tablet which, instead of running the Android OS like most others, features the webOS operating system.
In fact, the product has already showed up in some stores, albeit in a demo version, since real availability is still only scheduled for July.
Meanwhile, pre-orders can be set through some online retailers, for the prices of $499 or $599, depending on whether one wants 16 GB of storage or 32 GB.
The $500 mark isn't much different from the price of the Apple iPad, the main foil of all media slates nowadays.
Still, a lower price is always something that prospective buyers would welcome with open arms.
Turns out that HP really does have a way of selling the TouchPad for a lower amount of money, $50 lower to be exact.
More specifically, until July 31 comes around, owners of the Pam Pre, Pixi or Pixi Plus will get a $50 rebate on the tablet.
For those that want a reminder as to what the product can or cannot do, it is a 9.7-inch model powered by a 1.2 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU.
It can do anything slates are supposed to (multimedia playback, web browsing etc.), but it does lack one specific capability, namely document editing,
Fortunately, document viewing is already fully integrated into webOS and the editing capabilities will be finished and provided by the end of summer.