The anticipated HP/Palm Tablet was revealed today. The TouchPad is the first tablet that looks to me to be the best iPad competitor out there, when it is released.

First Impressions

• The webOS software looks great (really great)
• The hardware is nice but it has a plastic back
• Full gesture interface with no interface buttons. Nice, maybe Apple will follow
• The integration with the Pre 3 is really great
• Notifications done right

My Big questions

A few questions that stood out to me

Where is the price?

Apple aggressively priced the iPad and are almost certainly about to improve on that when the iPad 2 is released. The TouchPad has lots of things that I am sure will keep the price on the high end, but how high I wonder that they didn’t even give a possible price range?

What will battery life be like?

Currently the iPad is rated at about 10 hours with a 6600 mAH battery but the TouchPad has a slightly smaller 6300 mAH battery. With webOS multi-tasking, a more powerful processor, beats audio and Flash, I would love to see what the TouchPad will be rated at.

Availability in Summer is very vague

Will it arrive in time to compete with the iPad 2

Weight

Wi-Fi only when released but weighs more than the current iPad Wi-Fi + 3G model (740g vs 730g). Not great considering people want the iPad to be even lighter than it is now.

So

Hopefully these get answered soon, unless they are waiting to see what Apple does with the iPad 2 before they make decisions on price and how aggressive they will be with battery life. I mean the guys at Cupertino are the ones to beat and Palm doesn’t want to set low expectations.

Based on what I have seen though, it is the first device that has made me consider a switch but the big questions remain to see if it is a real competitor.