The HP TouchPad is dead right? Well, apparently there’s still some stock floating around, and Woot seems to have snatched it up. Today, they’ve got it on sale for you. It isn’t quite the firesale price of many months ago, but still a good deal if you like the HP TouchPad.

While I haven’t had the chance to give them a try myself, pretty much everyone I’ve heard from has really enjoyed WebOS products, including the TouchPad. It’s of course a shame that HP decided to halt the production of the HP TouchPad, along with the Veer and Pre 3 smartphone. As of now, HP says that the WebOS software is going to go open-source, which means the TouchPad might have some longevity after all — if you’re the kind that is able to take advantage of sometimes harder to use open-source content.

Anyway, this is a WiFi-only refurbished model (of course) with 32GB of storage, a 9.7″ 1024×768 screen, a dual core 1.2GHz CPU, and 1GB of RAM. Woot is selling it for $219. If you want a full list of specifications, see the HP TouchPad tracking page in our device database. In the box from Woot, you’ll find the following:

• HP TouchPad
• HP TouchPad AC Charger
• microUSB Sync Cable
• Getting Started Guide
• Navigation Guide

Early last week, I received my notification that my HP TouchPad order was going to be one of the final production run we have all heard about, and that it was expected to ship in 6 to 8 weeks. This stuck in my craw for a few reasons. I had seen the charge from HP flutter back and forth between pending and then disappear for several days. I thought HP was actually trying to fulfill my order out of current stock. While the TouchPad is a case outside of the norm, my usual schtick is not to let people hold onto funding for an order for product that I am not going to receive for several weeks. When I put my order into the HP Small & Medium Business site during the TouchPad firesale, I originally received a notice of intended shipment two days later, so I thought I was ordering from stock. None of this is to say that I cancelled my TouchPad order because I felt HP had dropped the ball. I cancelled my order because I had lost interest in the TouchPad in the face of not getting it immediately, and I had other issues to deal with as well.

While I was ecstatic at getting HoneyStreak to run on my Dell Streak 7, the experience was not without its issues. HoneyStreak is a custom ROM that implements Android 3.2 Honeycomb on the Dell Streak 7. The major thing that was corrected was my Streak’s constantly dropping Wi-Fi connection, but I also received a boost in battery life. However, I lost a few things like the external SD card reader. Keeping the Streak 7 as part of my kit became called into greater question as the number of apps that I wanted to run as part of my routine were found to be broken or partially functional under the Honeycomb ROM. I experienced problems with Gallery, IMDb, and then Google Books. At the end of the day, the partial functionality of my collection of apps on the Streak 7 went beyond what I was willing to bear. My plan had been to run HoneyStreak on the device until my TouchPad showed up, then replace the Streak 7 with the TouchPad. When the HP date moved 6 to 8 weeks to the right and my problems with the Streak 7 increased, I decided it was time to make a different call.

Before I go any further, let me say that the issues with HoneyStreak were likely not insurmountable. I did not hit the XDA forums to see what issues others were having or what work-arounds had been figured out. For all I know, there was an updated version of HoneyStreak available. DJ_Steve, the code’s primary author, has been curating the build since he got his hands on 3.x earlier this year. However, the demands of school have been increasing, and, for the devices that I am going to employ, there is just not as much time to tinker. Loading the custom ROM was a cool thing to do during one soft-spot in my summer semester schedule, but I could not afford continuing maintenance and tinkering. I needed something stock, which is really where I live anyway. So my conundrum was: a Dell Streak 7 which was borderline unusable with its stock install, a custom ROM load that was not sufficiently functional when interacting with some of my more important (or at least frequent) apps, and the planned replacement suffering a 6 to 8 week delay in delivery.

The decision I made was to first cancel my HP TouchPad order. I decided I would be better off taking that $150 and  putting it towards a device I could get my hands on now. I then ordered an Acer Iconia Tab A100. I was very satisfied with my Acer Iconia Tab A500 so far, so the concept of the same device in a 7-inch form factor was appealing. While I awaited the arrival of the A100 from TigerDirect, I flashed the Streak 7 back to its stock install. Well…almost. I actually replaced some of the image files with some from the Wi-Fi stock install. I am not sure exactly how much difference there is, or if that difference even matters, but I will say that for the short time I had with the Streak 7 after the roll-back, I was no longer seeing the Wi-Fi disconnects that I had been before. I also saw a trend indicating even better battery life than I had seen when the device was running Honeycomb. I can only say that I saw these improvements as trends that hopefully prove to be truly improved functionality on the Streak 7. After the rollback to the stock OS image, I only had about 12 to 14 hours with the device before I handed it off to a potential buyer to demo over the weekend.

You can see and hear some of my early impressions of the Acer Iconia Tab A100 after the first 24 hours of use in the embedded videos below. I do some comparisons between my other two Android tablets, the Motorola Xoom 3G and the Acer Iconia Tab A500. My apologies for the low resolution  and framing. The only thing I had available to shoot video with this weekend was my Sony point-and-shoot camera. I have also dropped some pictures in for viewing. So far, I like what the A100 is bringing to the table in its 7-inch form factor. It is a huge improvement over the Streak 7, and a good compliment to my current set of mobile gear options. I will be posting later short-term and long-term reports as the device gets put to more use.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5qA3KBJ3w0

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r_v3DGsS4o

Last Thursday afternoon, the mobile and PC world was (moderately) shocked by Hewlett-Packard’s announcement that they were considering “all strategic options” for contending with the negative impact the HP Personal Systems Group (PSG) was having on the corporation’s total valuation. Key in this consideration will be the eventual fate of WebOS, the mobile OS that was brought in-house with the purchase of Palm in 2010.

We can understand a certain amount of confusion with the tech-following public as to what HP is really doing and what they committed to on the earnings call. The amount of speculation that I saw running rampant around the web on Thursday was pretty daunting for anyone trying to get the picture on what was really going on. I sat in on the earnings call and wanted to post a few notes on my own take-aways. I should mention that my comments focus on the impact to mobile. HP talked about a lot of other things on the call, including enterprise, and their move towards a software and service-centric focus, but that is not the center of this commentarty.

Leo Apotheker, who has been at the helm of HP for the past nine months, talked about 4 factors driving the strategic direction of HP for the foreseeable future. Of those, the most important to Carrypad’s readers will be the way forward with PSG, within which exists both the hardware design teams and the software development teams for WebOS and its devices to-date. Apotheker indicated that he felt that PSG can compete and win in the PC and mobile marketplace. However, and this was iterated many times throughout the call, the HP TouchPad had failed to meet the sales projections of the executive staff. Financial metrics were set before the launch of the woeful device; yardsticks by which HP determined the success of the OS and the device, and then used to determine certain strategic decisions within the corporation.

With the under-performance of the TouchPad’s launch, HP now intends to turn its emphasis towards cloud solutions for enterprise, encompassing software solutions and services. The company named a new VP for the Enterprise Services, which is the group that has evolved from the EDS purchase back in 2008. There is no question that HP is looking very intently at making themselves an enterprise-only solution provider. When you look at the financials, the reasons behind this may not immediately jump out at you. The chart below from the Quarterly Earnings Statement shows that the PSG accounted for nearly one-thrid of the company’s revenue.

And while HP still holds the lead stake in market share percentage in the personal computer market sector, financials at the next level of detail reveal what has created a concern for Apotheker and his staff. The PSG was 3% off its mark from a year ago in revenue and showed no growth in total units year-over year. Additionally the division took in 4% less revenue in notebook sales, desktop revenue is down 4%, and consumer client revenue is down 17%. Now, some of these numbers may not seem like they should cause that much concern. However, and this is only my speculation, if HP believes that tablets and smartphones will be a growth product sector, and that notebook and desktop PC sales will continue to decline, and HP is looking at its most recent product launches in the mobile category… you might start to see reasons to be concerned.

You could even interpret some of Apotheker’s statements as equating to just that. He and HP’s CFO, Catherine Lesjak, spoke several times about concern over the “velocity of change in the personal computing marketplace”. Apotheker stated that the company had assessed that the impact of the Tablet on personal computer sales was a very real threat. When considered in conjunction with the poor initial sales of the TouchPad, the various factors combined to lead them to consider restructuring into a new HP that may or may not include the PSG, and therefore WebOS.

I have seen all sorts of hyperbolic headlines around the web saying that HP is selling off its personal computing business and that, at least as of today, is simply not true. The executive staff of HP have a 12 to 18 month outlook as to what may become of the PSG. Another important tidbit, which Apotheker said himself during the Q&A following the formal presentation, is that a possible outcome of the PSG assessment is that the division may remain a part of HP proper with no change in the corporate structure. I believe that other things would still change, like strategic focus, design approaches, and so forth.

At the end of June, we covered a rumor of a 7-inch TouchPad and now we’ve got information to corroborate that rumor, thanks to the FCC.

CENS.com had released a press release which included this statement:

As the world`s largest PC brand, HP is now in the tablet PC arena after introducing the 9.7-inch Touch Pad, has ordered from a supplier for 400,000 to 450,000 Touch Pad tablet PCs per month, and will sometime in August launch seven-inch tablet PCs. Inventec will supply HP these two tablet PC models.

The key here is the fact that Inventec is pointed to as the supplier of the device. Thanks to the FCC, we can see that the label location diagram bears the Inventec name. This gives more credibility to the statement above, and it is safe to say that the proposed August launch is likely to be accurate.

The 7-inch device that was once codenamed ‘Opal’ has been officially dubbed the TouchPad Go, and will come in 16GB/32GB variants, as well as 3G and 4G.

The label diagram indicates that 4G is HSPA+ which rules out Verizon, but there’s also a label that simply specifies ‘3G’ and doesn’t detail whether it’s HSPA or EV-DO, so Verizon and other CDMA carriers may or may not end up with the TouchPad Go. It’s safe to assume that the HSPA+ variant will find its way to AT&T, given that the 4G version of the 10” TouchPad already calls AT&T, home.

There’s a high probability that the TouchPad Go 4G will be using the dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8060, just as the TouchPad 4G is, but it isn’t clear whether or not there will be a CPU speed divide like we currently see between the TouchPad and the TouchPad 4G.

The TouchPad (WiFi-only) hit the market with the APQ8060 (a WiFi-only version of the MSM8060). HP clocked the APQ8060 to 1.2GHz for the WiFi-only TouchPad. The TouchPad 4G, which was announced shortly thereafter, uses the MSM8060, but HP decided to clock it to its full 1.5GHz.

I don’t exactly understand HP’s reason for having these two slightly different speeds, but if they feel there’s a need for it, we might see the same pattern come to the TouchPad Go, which would mean a 1.2GHz WiFi-only version while the 4G version would be clocked to 1.5GHz. That, or perhaps HP will just decide to release a software update to clock the WiFi-only TouchPad up to 1.5GHz to match the rest of the devices.

The labels found in the FCC documents list ‘1.5G’ across all variants; it’s likely (but not certain) that this means 1.5Ghz as opposed to ‘generation 1.5’.

Source: Electronista, FCC

I was literally in bed when I caught wind of this, and now I’m sparing myself a few additional minutes of rest to bring you this news right away (no, I didn’t have time to get dressed yes, this is that urgent). Our favorite deal-a-day site, Woot.com, has the HP TouchPad for just $379.

Why is it important that you be the first to know? Because Woot offers a deal on one single item every day, and that means that come tomorrow, this deal will be history. Furthermore, they’ve only got a limited (and unannounced) stock, so it could sell out before tomorrow even rolls around.

This is a brand new unit packing a dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8060 CPU. It’s the WiFi only version of the device and it comes with 16GB of memory built-in. Here’s what comes in the box:

• HP TouchPad (16GB, WiFi-only)
• Cleaning Cloth
• HP TouchPad AC Charger
• MicroUSB Sync Cable
• Getting Started Guide
• Navigation Guide

You can check out all of the HP TouchPad specs in our device database before considering the purchase.

The $379 price tag only beats what you’ll find on Amazon or direct from HP by $20 right now, but, that’s because HP is currently offering $100 off of the TouchPad from August 5th-7th. Once this period is over, HP and Amazon will go back to charging $499 for the 16GB WiFi-only TouchPad, which makes Woot’s deal that much better.

Though the TouchPad initially launched to some rough reviews, a recent update has brought it up to a more respectable level of performance.

Not long after the launch of the WiFi-only unit, HP announced a ‘4G’ version of the device for use on AT&T’s network. This version includes a higher clock on the CPU, which brings it up to 1.5GHz. HP has been unclear whether or not they would bump the speed on the WiFi-only units through a software update or a hardware change at some point down the road.

Today HP announced the first cellular version of their recently launched HP TouchPad. The device appears to be launching first with AT&T and will be braded as the TouchPad 4G (which I hate because AT&T’s ‘4G’ network is slow as hell compared to Verizon’s LTE). The real news here is that the TouchPad 4G comes with its CPU clocked to 1.5GHz, bumped up slightly from the 1.2GHz clock speed that we saw in the WiFi-only model that launched not even two weeks ago.

I don’t mean to gloat, but it does feel good when a prediction comes true. In addition to two other predictions I made about the TouchPad, I somehow managed to foresee a number of HP’s early moves regarding the TouchPad ecosystem. Here’s what I wrote back in June:

Clocking to 1.2GHz means that they’ve got some room to play with the speed down the road, and we may see a bump in clock speed at a later date, to keep the performance competitive

I will admit that I didn’t see it coming this early.

We knew early on that the Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8060 found in the touchpad supports a maximum clock speed of 1.5GHz, but HP decided to take it down to 1.2GHz, likely for performance and battery life considerations. Qualcomm states that the APQ8060 offers a 60% increase in performance over ARM A9 dual-core CPUs that have been seen in a number of recent Android tablets, though I figured this stat is only valid when the APQ8060 is running at its full 1.5GHz speed.

Now that the TouchPad 4G will be running the MSM8060 (the variant of the APQ8060 that supports 3G/4G modems) at its full capacity, perhaps we’ll see that claim reflecting reality a bit more than early reviews have indicated.

According to This is My Next, HP won’t be bringing the just-shipped WiFi-only version of the TouchPad up to 1.5GHz through a software update or a subsequent hardware refresh. This seems a bit silly, and I think they may indeed decide to push the update through to WiFi only devices at a later date.

I also still stick to my prediction that we’ll see an HP TouchPad ‘1.5’ within 6-months of launch which has updated hardware (rather than a mere overclocking), though that may come in the form of a third-party WebOS device:

In my mind, I see HP releasing a TouchPad 1.5 sometime around 6 months after the TouchPad is released that adds some important ports and to bump the performance to compete with Kal-El devices and the iPad 3.

The HP TouchPad has hit the streets and the reviews are in… and they’re mixed.

After reading through a number of reviews, here are a few of the things I’m seeing repeated:

• Sub-par performance the TouchPad’s 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8060 should have the oomph to compete with contemporary tablets, but it sounds like applications are running sluggishly, which is likely a combination of developers getting used to the platform and the software lacking a few years of optimization that has been seen on Android and iOS. Auto-rotation responsiveness is a common review-complaint.
• Heavy! The TouchPad is one of the heaviest 10 inch tablets currently on the market. I didn’t even realize that it was heavier than the Xoom, which is constructed mostly of metal and glass, while the TouchPad’s body is plastic. A number of reviewers also said that the build quality of the device was not as nice as some other tablets on the market, also noting that the back of the tablet is very prone to fingerprint pickup. Here are the weights of some of the top tablets:

• Best-in-class multitasking It seems WebOS’s card-style multitasking concept has scaled very well from it’s initial introduction on Palm’s ‘Pre’ smartphone. Tim Stevens of Engadget says in his review that multitasking on the TouchPad is “…genuinely fun; there’s something very satisfying about literally throwing away a window that you no longer want cluttering up your screen or your RAM. inch It sounds to me like multitasking is intuitive and functional; the former part of which we don’t quite find on any current iteration of iOS or Android.
• Impressive speakers (for a tablet) The HP TouchPad has ‘Beats’ audio, the goal of which (according to HP), is to reproduce audio the way that it sounds in the studio. Reviews say that the speaker quality on the TouchPad is definitely better than the competition, but it likely won’t be replacing your home-audio setup any time soon. I’ve also read some unofficial reports that the TouchPad has extra insulation around its headphone jack to reduce static from electrical components. Unless you’re an audiophile the difference between, say, the Xoom’s headphone output, and the TouchPad’s is unlikely to matter. However, if HP can convince consumers that it has superior audio (even if it’s the same), that’s one more feature they can claim to have over competing devices. I haven’t yet read any audiophile-grade reports about the Beats audio in the TouchPad, so I won’t know if it’s truly better than other devices until I try it for myself. If I had to put my money down, I’d say that it won’t be any better than the iPhone or iPad’s audio output.
• No Tabbed Browsing You’re likely familiar with tabbed browsing on desktop, tablet, and even smartphone browsers. On the TouchPad, however, each new page in the browser opens as a new browser instance, and as a new card in the multitasking menu which leads to slow browsing.

Comparisons to the current king of the tablet world, the iPad 2, are inevitable. The prices match, but the value that each represents are significantly different, with the TouchPad being on the lesser end of the value-spectrum due to lack of software optimization and lack of apps. Of course, both of these things can be be fixed over time, but at the moment it would seem that HP has some work ahead of them, and they know that.

HP is reportedly working on an update to address some early performance concerns like auto-rotation sluggishness. Hopefully they keep the updates coming so that they can optimize the performance before the TouchPad falls to next-gen Kal-El tablets.

(update coming, timing not yet official)

no tabbed browsing, websites open as new instances of browser

Recently we spent some time looking at the pros and cons of the HP TouchPad in an article published the other week (lots of great discussion happening in the comments!). The TouchPad is launching tomorrow in the US and will shortly be available in the UK, Ireland, France, and Germany (and in a number of other places in the next few months).

In the aforementioned article, I made a few predictions about the device and its software, and we’re now starting to see evidence to support them.

Third-party WebOS Devices

Honestly I think there’s a good chance that we’ll eventually see third-party WebOS devices if HP is unable to tempt people away from one closed-ecosystem (iOS) to another.

You’ll have to read the brand section of the article to fully understand how I came to this conclusion, but the gist of it is that Apple represents the ultimate in a closed-ecosystem, while Android is the ultimate in open-source (in terms of licensing Android to third-party hardware manufacturers). Trying to best Apple at the closed game would be an uphill fight for HP. Introducing third-party devices running WebOS would help HP gain traction by offering more hardware choice, something that is vital considering how lacking the TouchPad is on ports; licensing WebOS to another hardware manufacturer could possibly get a WebOS tablet, with more ports, to market more quickly than if HP tried to develop a new one itself.

Bloomberg reported yesterday that HP in in talks with partners to license WebOS for use on third-party hardware. According to the article, Samsung is among those that HP is talking with which is particularly exciting for anyone interested in WebOS (including myself!).

Rumors of a 7 inch TouchPad

In my mind, I see HP releasing a TouchPad 1.5 sometime around 6 months after the TouchPad is released that adds some important ports and to bump the performance to compete with Kal-El devices and the iPad 3 this ‘1.5’ device could come along with a 7 inch version of the tablet.

The ‘TouchPad 1.5’ may instead be fulfilled by WebOS licensing, but its clear, if you’ve ever talked to anyone who has used the Samsung Galaxy Tab, that the 7-inch tablet form-factor is much desired.

According to a press release on CENS.com (via BGR), HP is set to launch a 7-inch version of the TouchPad in August:

As the world`s largest PC brand, HP is now in the tablet PC arena after introducing the 9.7-inch Touch Pad, has ordered from a supplier for 400,000 to 450,000 Touch Pad tablet PCs per month, and will sometime in August launch seven-inch tablet PCs. Inventec will supply HP these two tablet PC models.

This obviously isn’t official yet so there could have been some miscommunication within the press release, but we’ll only have to wait until August to see find out for sure.

Both of these items are exciting for WebOS and we’ll be able to watch the platform develop over the next few months. Expect TouchPad reviews to begging cropping up as early as today (I’m not so secretly hoping that we hear good things from WebOS for tablets!).