科技英语新闻:HP TouchPad sold out in fire sale

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Hewlett-Packard's tablet TouchPad has become the hottest consumer electronics device on Monday after HP launched a fire sale for the discontinued product line over the weekend.

"It was like a stampede and they went quick," a Best Buy employee in San Diego told technology news website Betanews, describing the line waiting to buy TouchPad. He said the discontinued tablet was sold out five minutes after the store opened.

The device is also getting snatched up at a lighting speed online and increasingly difficult to find.

The TouchPad is no longer listed on Bestbuy.com in the United States, which last week was reportedly sitting on 270,000 unsold TouchPads and was hoping HP would buy them back.

On Amazon, TouchPad tops the world's largest online retailer's electronics sales list, beating out the electronic reader Kindle and iPod touch.

Last Thursday, HP announced that it will completely shut down its webOS operations, specifically the TouchPad tablet and webOS phones.

The 16 GB TouchPad currently is only 99.99 U.S. dollars, compared to the original price of 399 dollars. The 32 GB model, which used to be 485.99 dollars, is now priced at 149.99 dollars.