HP to WebOS: go forth and multiply

So HP buys Palm.

Then HP announces, finally, new phones and a tablet with WebOS.

Then they say they're going to put WebOS onto all their computers.

Now, people are saying they are being copy cats and this is a dumb move. Now I don't know about anyone else but I have no idea what they really have planned. Its way to soon to say if this is a bad idea or anything.

I've seen this idea compared to Apple with their bootcamp for running Windows on their machines. On a technical level they will probably achieve this in much the same way. But they'd be doing it for totally different reasons. Its not a copy cat idea at all. They're not doing it to sell more computers because they have a niche product and their trying to get it into markets it wouldn't sell to. HP sells plenty of pc's with the most popular OS already.

There's two ways I see them implementing this. One, is dual booting. And this would be done so that you would have the option of a fast, lean, simple system you could boot into for getting on the net or media applications or whatever. It would be interesting to see this as embedded into flash ram, allowing you to start up your machine in a low power mode needing no hardrive etc. Every laptop they sell could also be like a TouchPad.

The other is as an application running under windows, which could allow again simple media display and sync options to your phone, Touchpad etc.

Yes, this has all been tried or announced before by other companies but nobody's really pulled it off well. But HP has the ability to do it, mostly because they sell an assload of PC's already, and printers, and cameras, etc. If they put WebOS onto all these devices and integrate a seamless experience.. wow! That could make Apple look pretty stupid.

And they've already pretty much said they want to copy Apple's success, and why not? But thats not the same as being a copy-cat. Thats just good business sense.