I tried to sign up for the $150 TouchPad developer deal a few days before they stopped accepting submissions, but they never even responded.

Same here, it was through some channel called ViennaChannels.com [Sales-Focused Demo Programs for Mobile Device Manufacturers & Carriers]

I signed up, and was later told that they were out of devices, but later I got one (last one according to them).

I see that the ebay.com's site the $149 one is still for sale (the one I got).

I was able to cross-compile and run luajit on it, and creatonix (Tim Caswell) got even more stuff (but haven't tried it yet).

It looks like there is a whole "homebrew" society distributing lots of open source packages. It's called Preware.

And that sums up HP and this whole fiasco, exactly.

A nice trick was that you could get one from ebay.ca or ebay.co.uk, since most people were hammering .com's servers.

I attempted to get one but had no luck. I didn't even think of using ebay.ca like the commenter veeti mentioned.

It truly boggles the mind that this tablet saw little interest at $500, $400, or even $300 (I finally got it when it was on sale for $300 at Staples), but bring it down to $100 and it sells out at iPhone/iPad speed.

Having an open-source webOS is great and all, but this shows just how mistaken Leo Apothecker was when he unceremoniously dropped webOS.

give it 3-6 months and the current crop of android tablets will be outdated, and available for peanuts.

got one, 16gb.