If you asked me three weeks ago about a TouchPad, I would have said you should absolutely not get one. For the same money you could get an iPad 2 which is a vastly superior tablet.

One of the problems that HP and other tablet rivals have is that they think its enough to beat the iPad on paper with hardware specs, then match Apple's pricing, but the reality is that the iPad 2 is a much better experience so that strategy doesn't cut it.

HP learned that lesson the hard way, and quickly pulled the plug on its tablet--and its for that matter. Truth be told, for HP to go so quickly from grandiose claims of to shutting down the whole operation really just illustrates that HP never had a solid tablet or mobile strategy and that it was really just .

Even when HP started slashing prices and the TouchPad was supposedly selling for $300 at Staples a couple weeks ago, it was still questionable. Now that HP pulled the plug entirely on WebOS and the TouchPad, you'd have to be crazy to get one, right?

Well, no. Not really. It is actually a . It's just not an iPad 2. Starting this weekend, HP is supposed to fire sale the remaining inventory at $99. For $500 it was a joke. For $300 it was still a shady deal. For $99 it's a steal.