At a very significant launch event held by Hewlett-Packard (HP) on Wednesday, February 9, the company took the wraps off its new webOS-driven products – two smartphones, Veer and Pre3; and a tablet dubbed TouchPad.

A first glimpse at the three new HP products – which are the first fruits of HP’s $1.2-billion acquisition of Palm last year - gives the feel of winners in the making; especially the 9.7-inch TouchPad which will take on the popular Apple iPad and a horde of other tablets, when it hits the stores this summer.

The key features of the 9.7-inch, webOS-based HP TouchPad include a videocam; a complete suite of office productivity software; and notably enhanced multitasking capability vis-à-vis any present rival tablet. 

In addition, the touchpad also sports superlative capabilities for e-mail, photo/video and music (Beats Audio); and is not relegated to one browser. The tablet, which also supports Flash, features easy sync-up functionality, with the users merely having to bring the TouchPad in contact with any other device to facilitate the syncing of the two devices.

However, even though the HP TouchPad appears to be a promising product, the summer availability of the device might just make it a bit too late in arriving at the market – more so as Apple will already have released its iPad 2 by that time; and a slew of new Android tablets would have also hit the market by then!