Woody Allen said that 90 percent of life is "just showing up." That's something that Hewlett-Packard has yet to do in its attempt to take on Apple's iPad and iPhone and its competitors' Google Android devices—show up. And no matter how shiny and wonderful the latest crop of gadgets derived from the remains of Palm are, there's still the small matter of showing up to be dealt with.
On February 9th, Hewlett-Packard finally got around to unveiling what had been rumored to be coming for months: a new tablet computer based on Palm's WebOS. HP also showed off two new phones from Palm, which the company acquired last year. All three devices are aimed squarely at doing battle with the iPad and iPhone, as well as Google's Android platform. But will consumers actually want them?
That's a big question, especially since no one can buy HP's Touchpad, Veer smartphone and Pre3 smartphone yet. But HP is doing some things with WebOS that will help people bridge the world between work and personal life a bit better than Apple's products do out of the box. With features like encrypted network connections to a user's work network, video calling, support for Flash and better navigation of multitasking apps, the Touchpad looks like what many wished the first iPad looked like. But it likely won't show up until a few months after the next iPad has already hit the market.
The Veer, a "slider" style smartphone with a keyboard that has a profile as small as a credit card, will be available this spring. Only 3 and a half inches tall, the phone puts smartphone features into a package that more comfortably slides into a pocket.
Like previous Palm phones, it has many of the functionality of other smart phones—a library of socialapps, integration with Microsoft Exchange email as well as with web mail services and any other mail account, and a built-in Wi-Fi hotspot. And it has 8 gigabytes of storage to fill with apps and music—which you can buy from Amazon right on the phone, or load from your computer. But while HP announced that it would be available "in the spring", there's no word on what the Veer will cost.
Nor did HP announce any pricing details for the bigger, more capable Pre3 (which will have video calling and a 5 megapixel camera, among other things) or Touchpad, which won't be available until the summer. And there's the small detail that HP's devices all apparently are based on 3G cellular networking, just as others are preparing to jump to 4G. So even when HP does show up, it will be late to the party.