With buyers clamoring to get their hands on a discounted HP TouchPad, some have questioned why people want to shell out anything, let alone $99, for a dead product and platform. One perk might be 50GB of free cloud storage from Box.net, for life
When the TouchPad launched, Box unveiled a webOS app that, when activated, provided the user with 50GB of free storage. In the wake of HP announcing plans to kill off the TouchPad, ZDNet wondered if the Box.net deal would remain in effect. In a Tuesday interview with PCMag. Box's CEO Aaron Levie insisted it would.
"We’re absolutely still offering 50GB of free cloud storage to all TouchPad owners, and not surprisingly, we’ve seen a significant spike in signups through the Box for TouchPad app in the past few days, bringing total app downloads to 30,000," he said.
To take advantage of the offer, install the Box app on your TouchPad and sign in with an existing Box account or create a new one.
Over the weekend, HP and retailers like Best Buy and Barnes & Noble started selling the TouchPad for $99 for the 16GB and $149 for the 32GB version, prompting a virtual stampede of tablet-hungry buyers.
Levie praised webOS and said it "aspired to be were philosophically interesting and aligned with Box and a lot of other companies in the space." He acknowledged, however, that "competing with Steve Jobs is a very trying exercise."
"I respect the attempt," he continued, "but we're obviously sad to see webOS go. We'll continue to support more things that HP does in the future, but this one is definitely unfortunate."
The TouchPad app was the largest tablet offering Box has done to date, though its iPad app is its most popular application, Levie said. The company released an Android app two weeks ago and it has one for RIM's PlayBook, but it is also focusing on an HTML5 Web app.
"It will work on all tablets and mobile browsers and that's really where we're going to be putting a lot of our investment going forward," he said. "Our focus is how do we make sure that Box is accessible in the best and most elegant way from the devices that our customers are working from? That's our tablet philosophy; we tend to not pick favorites."
For more, see PCMag's full review of the TouchPad, as well as The 20 Best Apps For The HP TouchPad and the slideshow below.
Also check out Don't Buy an HP TouchPad to Run Android and HP TouchPad Deal Shows Thirst For Good, Cheap Tablets.
Update 9/2/11: Several readers emailed to say that it appeared as though early TouchPad buyers had a Box upload limit of 1GB, but those who downloaded the app recently were limited to 100MB per file. Accounts, meanwhile, were listed as "Lite (5GB)," prompting some to question if they really had 50GB. We checked in with Box and a spokeswoman said the 5GB designation is a mistake that will be fixed. "You definitely have 50GB of storage," she said.
On the 1GB vs. 100MB upload discrepancy, Levie said in a statement that "From the beginning, the promotion we agreed on with HP was 50GB of free cloud storage, along with a 100MB file size limit for uploads. Due to a misconfiguration on our end, some lucky users received a 1GB limit, and we'll of course continue to honor that for those accounts. We're sorry about any confusion that discrepancy has caused."
As of Friday, meanwhile, Box said it was at 100,000 TouchPad app downloads.