Check out the various threads on slickdeals.net. There are literally over a thousand pages (split among multiple threads) of people scrambling to buy these at the discounted prices. Very few of the people there are geeks, mostly just normal folks trying to jump in on what is seen as a huge value (~75% price drop over a single day).
Seeing those forums will also show you why you will never be able to buy one of these online at the new price unless you are extremely lucky. The item is selling out in seconds every time the price drop is noticed at a new retailer, and these people are tracking all of them.
I tried to jump in on this last night and put an order in for the 16gb at Microcenter's online site less than a minute after the new pricing went live there. The order made it through their website and I even got a confirmation email and a precharge ding on my credit card, went to bed thinking I'd be playing with WebOS on a tablet sometime next week but woke up to an email saying my order was cancelled due to insufficent stock.
I purchased one at 12:40 PM PST today from Amazon, at full retail price. Four hours later, they promised me to issue a refund so the price was the $99 HP price.
It wasn't incredibly difficult to get one, if you really wanted to.
Seeing those forums will also show you why you will never be able to buy one of these online at the new price unless you are extremely lucky. The item is selling out in seconds every time the price drop is noticed at a new retailer, and these people are tracking all of them.
I tried to jump in on this last night and put an order in for the 16gb at Microcenter's online site less than a minute after the new pricing went live there. The order made it through their website and I even got a confirmation email and a precharge ding on my credit card, went to bed thinking I'd be playing with WebOS on a tablet sometime next week but woke up to an email saying my order was cancelled due to insufficent stock.