HP and the TouchPad - Book of Revelations and The Spy Who Shagged Me

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood leads on to good fortune

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, IV, 8

Just when I thought all hope was lost for Hewlett-Packard and WebOS, after they had snapped up Palm as stated in the article “HP buying Palm for US$1.2 billion”, published April 28, 2010 1:14 PM PDT by Erica Ogg, CNET News - Circuit Breaker () and supported by the article  “HP to Buy Palm for US$12 billion”, published Wednesday, April 28, 2010 01:43 PM PDT by Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service, PC World, the come out of their corner swinging.

A rather boring little company, HP’s fans (is there such a thing?) saw the purchase of Palm and their Deck-of-cards WebOS as a strategic reboot and a play to get back at being trounced by the Apple iPad in the Tablet market as CNET Editor Erica Ogg slyly suggests in the article “With Palm, HP reboots mobile strategy”, published April 28, 2010 5:46 PM PDT by Erica Ogg, CNET News - Circuit Breaker.

The Christmas of 2010 had not been to bad for them, having hit accident gold with the Indianapolis 500-inspired HP Slate 500 as stated in the article “Hewlett-Packard runs out of Slates”, published November 15, 2010 10:09 AM PST by Lance Whitney, CNET News. For the record, the HP Slate 500 was never any challenge in my book as I had pointed out in my blog article entitled “Apple iPad vs HP Slate 500 - The Force Unleashed in the Tablet Wars”.

The Windows 7 Professional  8.9" Tablet device was packing a Intel Atom Z540 Processor 1.88Ghz 512Kb L2 cache with a 2GB DDR2 667MHz on board memory and 64 GB SSD Hard Drive with VGA front facing web cam, 3MB outward facing camera packs Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n), Bluetooth, USB and a docking cradle with HDMI (High Definition Media Input).

Nice specs, but it was windows, so don’t get you hopes up as Microsoft COO (Chief Operating Officer) Steve Ballmer own nervousness gave away their lack of confidence in the product as stated in the article “HP preps its would -be iPad killer, the Slate”, published Tuesday April 6, 2010 11:13 am ET by Ben Patterson, Yahoo! News!

Thus the gasps of “ooh!” and “ahh!” ! When HP revealed specs of a coming Tablet (s) named Opal and Topaz as stated in the article “HP Opal and Topaz revealed as first WebOS Tablets”, published 19 January 2011, 12:06pm by Rich Trenholm, CNET UK - Crave.

9” Opal and 7” Topaz Tablets detailed specs as per the article “Topaz Specs! Exclusive details on Touchstone v2 and Much More!”, published Monday 24 January 2011 12:13 by Dieter Bohn, pre|Central.net.

Quickly laying the cards straight, the September 2011AD of the Topaz and Opal Tablets, also rumoured to be sporting a 1,024 x 768 resolution 9-inch screen 512MB of RAM, three (3) storage options that being 16GB, 32GB, and64GB, a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera and powered by a Qualcomm MSM8660 1.2GHz processor are enough to drool over in this nascent interface.

September 2011 is enough time to test the batteries without giving too much away before London Olympics 2012.

So one can imagine my surprise when these gems in HP’s crown were revealed at the San Francisco event (which I did not attend!) as reported quite faithfully in the article “HP gets official with 9.7-inch TouchPad WebOS 3.0 Tablet”, published February 9, 2011, 11:16am PST By Rachel King, ZDNet.

First then, the corrections to the above! It is actually one Tablet. No, it is not called Topaz and Opal, albeit these would have more exciting names than the rather bland TouchPad. The specs are pretty close: 9.7-inch capacitive touch screen (1,024 x 768 resolutions), which is equal to the Apple iPad but below par when compared to the Motorola Xoom. Qualcomm Snapdragon 1.2GHz dual-core processor (naturally) with 16GB and 32GB storage options included!

The usual suspects with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1+ EDR, Virtual keyboard, Light sensor, Gyroscope, Accelerometer, Compass. Curious docking charger thing named Touchstone (the only non-boringly named part of this product!).

Weighing in at 1.6 pounds, 13.7mm thick, it surprising lack of a rear facing camera and packing only a Video-Calling capable front-facing 1.3 megapixel webcam may be HP being practical, as it is a Tablet, not a camera. Criticism for those tired of hearing of Tablets naturally follows in the article “HP TouchPad first take: some kudos, some cynicism”, published February 9, 2011 5:37 PM PST CNET News – Crave.

So HP’s boringly named Tablet, curiously enough, is now in a week that is permeated with Tablet and rumors of Tablets in diverse places, The Book of Revelations Style, with the latest being that the Apple iPad S is now in production as stated in the article “WSJ: Next-gen iPad now in production; Tablet Wars heating up”, published February 8, 2011, 4:43pm PST by Sam Diaz, ZDNet.

Truly, HP is Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me (1999) Style: totally unexpected and yet I still love the fact that Developers will be getting a crack at making some more moolah [American colloquial: money] just before the start of all that streaming during the London Olympics 2012!

Hint: the front-facing camera thing……..The Apple iPad may also be going that route, as multiple cameras and Qualcomm dual-dual core with so many doubles is a drain on battery life as predicted in my blog article entitled “Apple iPad S vs Motorola Xoom - Qualcomm Doubles the Fun”.