HP Tablets with Palm Operating System Due ‘Early 2011’

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On a company earnings call yesterday, Hewlett Packard’s Todd Bradley made it official that we can expect both Microsoft tablets and webOS (Palm’s mobile operating system) tablets to hit the market.

“You’ll see us with a Microsoft product out in the near future, and a webOS-based product in early 2011,” remarked Bradley when asked about his company’s tablet plans.

The Microsoft product is very likely the HP Slate that was rumored to be available in June, and then rumored to be killed off altogether. Hopefully HP has spent a little time ensuring the device will be able to run Windows 7 smoothly, as sluggish performance is one of the main arguments against full Windows tablets—short battery life being a close second.

I still contend that HP should build a hybrid Windows 7/webOS tablet that can be dual-booted into either operating system depending on what type of work you’re looking to get done. You could use webOS for apps, light web surfing, and multimedia, or Windows 7 for running big boy programs—it’d be the best of both worlds and wouldn’t be too much extra work for HP to implement. Perhaps something like that will come after both the Windows 7 and webOS tablets get established.

No real news on the internals or any of the specs for this “webOS-based product,” but we’ll undoubtedly hear more between now and next year.

[via Computerworld]

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They Should Make It: HP Slate Dual Booting Win7 and WebOS

HP Confirms webOS Tablet and Printer

HP To Acquire Palm For $1.2 Billion