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HP TouchPad best seller at Best Buy, Amazon

Hewlett-Packard's discontinued tablet has surged to the top of best-seller lists at online retailers. It's all about price. And HP is shipping out more in response.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor

Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.

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Brooke Crothers

Aug. 22, 2011 2:55 p.m. PT

2 min read

HP is releasing more TouchPads from warehouses due to demand. Amazon

Hewlett-Packard's TouchPad tablet has become an instant hit at Best Buy and Amazon despite being discontinued in the wake of HP's shuttering of its WebOS device business. And HP is responding by shipping more from its warehouses.

It's all about price. On Friday, the company slashed the price to $100 from $399 for the 16GB model and to $150 from $499 for the 32GB version. This ignited a buying frenzy and the tablet subsequently flew off the shelves and out of the warehouses, selling out at many locations over the weekend.

Select Best Buy stores added fuel to the fire by deciding at the last minute Saturday night to unload their inventory at the discounted prices on Sunday, instead of sending unsold stock back to HP.

All of this has driven the TouchPad to the top of best-seller lists at Best Buy and Amazon.

And HP is responding by releasing more TouchPads, according to a tweet from HP's Bryna Corcoran. "Regarding 'next batch' coming in...it's called a warehouse. No more being made, but have inventory coming from ones already manufactured."

It is still available at some online resellers at prices that are closer to the pre-fire-sale pricing. This list of resellers on Amazon's site claim to have stock, with prices ranging from $300 to over $500.

Calls to two Best Buy stores in California and one in Pennsylvania revealed that two of the stores had lines outside before the stores opened on Sunday. One, in suburban Los Angeles, had a line long enough to snake around the corner of the store. Because stock of the TouchPad was low--typically tens of units--the stores sold out quickly.