Hasta La Gadget!

We’d heard HP’s Todd Bradley had confidentially told employees that a webOS tablet would arrive in Q1 2011, but now the man’s gone on the record in the company’s Q3 2010 earnings call. “You’ll see us with a Microsoft product out in the near future and a webOS-based product in early 2011,” he told investors and analysts in response to a direct question about tablets this afternoon, adding that potential slates were part of the reason HP bought Palm in the first place. Now, we’re not financial experts, but we’ve heard it’s typically a good idea not to promise things to your shareholders if you don’t intend to deliver. In other words, there’s a good bet the PalmPad is actually not an imaginary friend our subconscious created after Mark Hurd’s hateful words in June.

[Thanks, Robert]

HP confirms webOS tablet for ‘early 2011’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wild news out of HP just now — CEO Mark Hurd has just resigned over a sexual harassment investigation. Hurd and HP’s board of directors decided that he should resign following a sexual harassment claim against Hurd and HP by a former marketing contractor — HP claims that although there was no violation of its sexual harassment policy, Hurd violated the company’s standards of business conduct by submitting inaccurate expense reports that covered his relationship with the contractor. CFO Cathie Lesjak is taking over on an interim basis, and she’s actually upping the company’s forecasts for next quarter, saying Mark’s resignation has nothing to do with HP’s performance and everything to do with his behavior. A committee led by former Netscape CEO Marc Andreessen has been formed to find a new CEO; Lesjak has asked to be excluded, and HP declined to answer if Jon Rubinstein was being considered when we asked.

Update: We liveblogged the media call — check it after the break!

Update 2: A quick note from the investor call, which mostly repeated the same info — interim CEO Cathie Lesjak said that although Mark Hurd was a “strong leader, at the end of the day, he didn’t drive our initiatives — it was the organization that supported Mark in driving those initiatives.” Ouch — given Mark’s recent history of saying things like “we didn’t buy Palm to get into the smartphone business,” it certainly seems like he might have been a little distracted.

Update 3: We’ve just received the full text of the letter interim HP CFO Cathie Lesjak sent to all employees — check it after the break.

Continue reading HP CEO Mark Hurd resigns over sexual harassment investigation (updated with liveblog!)

HP CEO Mark Hurd resigns over sexual harassment investigation (updated with liveblog!) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Aug 2010 17:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP’s Pavilion dm1 has done an awfully great job of living in the shadows, but it’s just about time this 11.6-inch ultranote finally peek its head out to do battle with Gateway’s LT32 and the host of others slotted between netbook and ultraportable. At long last, the style-centered dm1z is up for sale, touting space for 5GB of DDR3 RAM, a 250GB hard drive (or a 128GB SSD), a 92 percent full-size keyboard, optional external DVD burner, a 6-cell battery good for up to 5.25 hours of usage, VGA webcam, three USB sockets, a 5-in-1 card reader and a 64-bit copy of Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional. On the CPU front, it’s AMD’s Athlon II Neo running the show, with a variety of choices ranging from 1.3GHz (K325) to 1.7GHz (K125); there’s also an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4225 GPU, 1,366 x 768 resolution panel, 802.11n WiFi, optional WWAN and a total weight of just 3.24 pounds. The whole shebang gets going at just $449.99, but don’t be shocked at how easy it is to push this cutie beyond six or seven Benjamins.

HP’s 11.6-inch Pavilion dm1 goes on sale originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jul 2010 12:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Interesting post by our friend Harry McCracken at Technologizer today, pointing out that HP’s gone dead silent about the Slate ever since it announced plans to acquire Palm. Harry was at The Big Money’s Untethered conference today, and HP CTO Phil McKinney was on stage, where he “talked about the downsides of using existing operating systems for new types of devices” and “extolled the virtues of webOS.” Interesting topic, since the Slate very prominently ran Windows 7. When pressed, Phil said he couldn’t talk about unreleased products, which is a big change: it’s been six months since Steve Ballmer first showed the Slate at CES, and since then HP’s produced several rah-rah videos, one of them featuring none other than Phil McKinney himself.

Harry takes this new silence to mean that the HP Slate is dead, and we’re beginning to think he’s right: although we haven’t heard anything concrete, we definitely noticed HP’s absence at tablet-heavy Computex, and at this rate, the Slate’s rumored 1.6GHz Atom Z530 will be hopelessly out of date by the time it launches — Intel’s now showing off Moorestown Atom Z600 tablets and it’s got the Windows-tablet focused Oak Trail Atom planned for early next year. The window’s closing a little more with every passing day — at this point, HP needs to come clean just so we can all move on to waiting for the Hurricane.

What’s going on with the HP Slate? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP CEO Mark Hurd certainly caused a few sad faces yesterday when he told investors and analysts that HP “didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business,” and now the company is trying to walk that back a little — rest easy, folks, because there are definitely more webOS smartphones on the way. Apparently what Hurd was really trying to say was that HP is excited about using webOS as the foundation for all types of smaller web-connected devices, and smartphones are just a part of that universe — a part HP intends to pursue. Phew. Now, can we see these new webOS devices, please? Here’s the full statement from HP:

When we look at the market, we see an array of interconnected devices, including tablets, printers, and of course, smartphones. We believe webOS can become the backbone for many of HP’s small form factor devices, and we expect to expand webOS’s footprint beyond just the smartphone market, all while leveraging our financial strength, scale, and global reach to grow in smartphones.

HP says it’s in the smartphone market, after all originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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