14 DAY TRIAL // Even though it will still take a while for shipments to actually start, HP's TouchPad tablet has fallen under the gaze of a certain online store known as Amazon, where the product seems to have already been listed.
Among the many tablets released over the past couple of months, one might say HP's TouchPad stands out more than most because of not just its choice of hardware, but due to its operating system as well.
As end-users may know, a big chunk of all tablets unleashed at MWC (Mobile World Congress) and CeBIT 2011 were Tegra 2 slates running Android 3.0 (Honeycomb).
HP, on the other hand, means to make use of a certain IP portfolio that it acquired upon buying Palm.
Basically, the world's top supplier of PCs now owns the webOS mobile operating system and has been adapting it, making it available in forms suited for printers (of all things) and, now, slates.
Back when just the Apple iPad existed, skeptics did not believe in the future of the slate market.
Now that tablets are already affecting the market share of netbooks and notebooks as a whole, however, HP found it could not ignore the call.
Not only that, but Apple even launched the iPad 2 not long ago, forcing practically every other slate-owning company out there to step up their efforts, as the iPad 2 came out sooner than most expected it would.
We were able to get a look at the HP TouchPad back at MWC 2011 and the device has since been rumored to be coming out in April, sooner than initially expected.
Whether that be true or not, the fact is that Amazon has actually listed it, although it gave no indication as to the price of the 9.7-inch product. Regardless, those interested can drop by this page and get up to date on the main hardware components.