Wayne Schulz

If you’re one of the 612 who purchased the HP TouchPad on August 5 from Woot! for $379 thinking that you got a bargain – only to see HP discontinue the product and firesale remaining inventory at $99 – hang on. According to a message on Woot!’s discussion area from user DennisWKam who is identified as “staff” – Woot! is working with HP for a solution which may include a partial refund.

Several buyers have reportedly sent Woot! emails requesting an update on whether refunds will be offered. As of this morning nobody seems to have received any email reply which seems to indicate Woot! is likely still discussing the issue with HP.

Woot! is a deep discounter of one-deal per day merchandise. They were purchased in June 2010 by online retailer Amazon for a reported $110 million.

Woot!

Did you just pick up a heavily discounted HP TouchPad? Need a quick link to the user guide in PDF format? Here it is – HP TouchPad User Guide (PDF). This 213 page guide covers: Basics, Setup, Working with Applications, Copying files and syncing your data, Email, Text, Multi-Media and Instant Messaging.

Have tablet fever but hate paying full retail? The BlackBerry Playbook will set you back about $450 via Amazon. If you hurry you can score a brand new one for only $ 299. This 7″ tablet has been widely panned for lacking essentially BlackBerry applications such as email and contacts. However if your primary interest is in browsing the web it might not be a bad deal.

Shipping via economy is free. Head on over to the link below to check out the deal.

UPDATE: Deal Expired

eBay Deal via BlackBerry  Forums

Wondering how to make that HP TouchPad faster? James Kendrick over at ZDNET has been using one for quite some time. According to a post there one of the secrets is to set the logging of errors to minimal. Apparently by default HP set their TouchPad to log every event which makes it easier for support to debug but causes the TouchPad to run much slower.

James also some instructions on further speeding up the device by loading a few custom fixes that further reduce the amount of logging that occurs in the background.

Head on over to James’s post for the full details here.

Sprint now has the new BlackBerry Bold 9930 listed online for $199. This pricing includes a web discount of $50 meaning that if you head to a Sprint store you’re going to pay $249.
This new BlackBerry sports the latest OS 7 which is only an incremental upgrade for most BlackBerry users. The main attraction for the BlackBerry faithful is the faster QC 8655 1.2GHz processor, VGA 640 x 480 high resolution touch screen and slightly larger keypad.

Sadly Sprint imposes an extra $10 fee for “premium data” despite the BlackBerry 9930 not being capable of 4G speeds and requiring less data than comparable smarthones due to the BlackBerry infrastructure.

Here’s  quick peek at the current Sprint BlackBerry 9930 plans:

Don’t forget that new subscribers can claim a $125 credit if they port in a phone number. The service credit will be applied to the first or second invoice following the 61st day after the eligible port-in activation as long as you registered for your service credit within 72 hours of the port-in activation date.

Sprint BlackBerry 9930