technobuffalo.com did an awesome job comparing two tablets, the iPad and the HP Touch Pad with webOS.  Wednesday, HP Announced the HP TouchPad, its first tablet computer with both HP and Palm branding. The Palm TouchPad weighs in at just 1.6 pounds, and is 13mm thick; making it exactly the same size-wise as the current iPad.

The detailed comparison article features all different areas of both tablets, including features, pricing, camera, and ease of use.  If you are wondering which's better? well read more by clicking on the link below.

So which is better?

I still give the advantage to the iPad. The TouchPad appears to be, for the most part, an HP-branded version of the iPad. The tablet has a unique interface ideal for multi-tasking, but is likely not to have the developer support to be able to offer a substantial library of applications to run on it. The few non-OS advantages the TouchPad currently holds such as a forward-facing camera, and the ability to connect with a phone by tapping, are also likely to be included in the iPad 2 later this year.

http://www.technobuffalo.com/blog/companies/apple/a-tale-of-two-tablets-hp-touchpad-vs-ipad/

GoRumors is reporting that Palm is known to be working on at least two new devices - called Palm Mansion and PalmPad - that are likely to be launched early 2011. Although not much information is available about these devices as yet, there was words last month that suggested that the Palm Mansion could be a fully touchscreen device with 800 x 480 WVGA display.

Now, we have heard from one of their close sources that Palm is also working on a smartphone that will have a display slightly bigger than 5″. While we have been unable to confirm if this is indeed the rumored Mansion, the chances for this are pretty bright taking the possible launch date into consideration. Our source has confirmed that the launch shall happen in three months time. That's towards the end of Q1 2011.

Like we said it's just rumors if its came from GoRumor's news site, we will bring you more details as soon as we get them. Sorry, no pictures yet.

souce: GoRumor

French provider SFR have posted an official picture of the Palm Pre 2, but French site MobiFrance has just come by way of with hands-on photos.

A Palm Pre with an improved ridge across the face of a now-flat front that ought to both cut back the amount of cracking we've seen and eliminated that fiddly charger door.

It is working webOS 2.0 and until we're mis-seeing issues, it seems as if the screen resolution is identical 320x480 we've on the Pre and Pre Plus.

We have confirmed that it is working at 1GHz with 512mb of RAM. - MobiFrance suggests early November. Hit the source links for many more shots.

via: engadget

Pretty good deal to say the least, as you may already know HP had just bought Palm couple of months ago, and today we see that HP is selling Palm Pre and Pixi on its website (Wireless Central).

Sprint hasn't been able to meet up ATT's pricing when comes to the Pre and Pixi, which they are selling sell the phone for $49 dollars with a 2 years contract.

Sprint charges significantly less each month for the bill, so most phones will cost more up front, simply because they can't afford to subsidize them as much.

but that being said, it may also have more to do with pushing to get the ATT/VZW stock dwindled down to Sprint levels before announcing the new hardware.

source: precentral

Looks like Palm pretty desperately want to get more Palm App developers that they are offering some pretty sweet deals to spice these developers to help them expand the App catalog.  Here's the message from Palm Developer Center:

• These are exciting times for Palm and our developer community. The Hot Apps promotion that we kicked off back in February is about to end with over 400 developers receiving a share of a million dollars. We recently launched the Summer Half Off promotion-a 50% discount for nearly every app in our U.S. catalog, funded by Palm. And we're just getting started.

• In July, we're launching the new PDK Hot Apps promotion-another million dollars to developers, this time focused on the C/C++ apps that were excluded from the original Hot Apps promotion.

• And we have one more program change that will benefit all developers. When we launched the developer program, we introduced a $50 per app fee to submit apps to our catalog. Effective immediately, we're waiving this fee and refunding to all developers any $50 fees collected in the past. If you're one such developer, you will see a credit in your PayPal account in the near future.

• Thank you for being part of the webOS community. We're excited to continue to evolve the Developer Program as together we build an incredible application catalog for customers.

Pretty sweet in my opinion, I sure hope they will be able both maintain and obtain more app developers.

source: Palm Developer Center

After all the speculation, HP has agreed to buy Palm for $1.2 billion, or roughly 5.70 dollars a share. (Here's the release.)

Palm, which was running short of cash and struggling to compete against the Apple's and Google's of the world, will now have HP's deep pockets and worldwide scope. While HP is no stranger to the mobile phone world-with its line of iPAQ phones-it has a lot of catching up to do and could benefit from branching out to phones and tablets from its a laptop and PC driven line-up.

Generally, Palm's technology is viewed as solid, it was just poor timing that hurt the smartphone-makers' chances. Of all the rumored potential acquirers from Dell to HTC and Huawei, HP was never considered a likely candidate. Palm's current chairman and CEO, Jon Rubinstein, who received a bit of flak for Palm's recent poor performance, is expected to remain at the company.

In a brief statement on Palm's web site, they point out that HP is one of the largest technology companies in the word, adding: "Can you say "webOS acceleration"? We're pretty excited, and pleased we surprised the world again."

source: finance.yahoo.com

China's Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. is the latest company to be linked to an acquisition of struggling smartphone manufacturer Palm Inc. , which has called in Goldman Sachs & Co. and San Francisco-based Qatalyst Partners to look for a buyer, according to reports.

And Huawei is far from the only Asian vendor believed to be involved in talks with Palm, which has been hard hit by growing competition from rivals such as Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) and Apple Inc. after its Pre and Pixi smartphones failed to sell as well as hoped. Taiwan's High Tech Computer Corp. (HTC) and China's Lenovo Group Ltd. are also rumoured to be interested.

But the list of potential suitors goes further, with even Apple and Intel Corp's names thrown into the rumor melting pot.

full story is at light reading

Both the Pre Plus and the Pixi Plus will be released in Germany on April 28 2010. We don't know how much it will cost.  But since Palm is selling itself to someone (Potential Buyer would be Lenovo and HP)  We will wait to see what fate it is for Palm.  

But we surely hope WebOS will stay alive, the market needs this competitor for sure.

Shares of Palm Inc. jumped 20 percent Wednesday on reports that Lenovo Group might be interested in buying the company.

Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu told Marketwatch that he wasn't sure Lenovo could pull off a ourchase of Palm, suggesting that other possible buyers include Hewlett-Packard Inc. (NYSE:HPQ), Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL) and Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO).

source:bizjournal

So it looks like Palm might dump the ad agency after all.   A lot of folks weren't too happy to see this creepy lady introducing the Palm Pre.  I personally didn't think it was that bad, but my opinion is reserved for myself.

Little wonder then that Palm is rumored to be cutting the agency loose, evidently having finally realized that launching a bet-the-company smartphone with an advertising campaign that says almost nothing about it was unwise, if not utterly foolish-almost as foolish as choosing as a lead for that ad a female character far better suited for a role in "The Exorcism of Emily Rose."

We are hoping to see some cool ads from Palm in the future.

Source: allthingsd.com