In an effort to make sure it isn’t left behind as manufacturers race to get their tablet devices to market,Digitimes is reportingthat HP is to launch its WebOS 3.0-powered HP TouchPad tablet in April, possibly fulfilling orders by the end of March. HP’s TouchPad, announced at thebeginning of February, will form part of a push from HP that will see between 45-48 million notebooks and tablet PC’s shipped in 2011. An internal estimation puts shipments of HP’s TouchPad series at 5 million units....

HP has announced that the WiFi version of its HP Touchpad tablet device will go on sale in the US on July 1, with customers in the US, Canada and Europe able to preorder the device from June 19. The electronics giant will make the device available in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France and Germany a a few days after its US launch, with Canadian consumers getting the opportunity to buy the device in mid-July....

Today at HP andPalm‘s ‘Think Beyond’webOSevent, the lack of Palm logos was a tell-tale sign that HP would steal the show. “We have a history of firsts. We have a tradition of creating firsts,” said Todd Bradley, the Executive VP of the Personal System Group atHewlett-Packard, a company known for its sturdy computers, printers and laptops. With a focus on bringing scale to the mass markets, HP has acquired Palm and added hundreds of engineers to its force....

According to theWall Street Journal, and aregulatory filing, HP will pay ousted CEO Leo Apotheker a severance payment of $7.2 million over 18 months, an annual bonus of $2.4 million, in addition to stock. Apotheker was CEO of HP for 11 months. In addition to the severance, bonus, and stock, Apotheker will receive: In short, it can obviously be expensive to hire and then remove a CEO from a publicly traded tech company....

There’s a lot of talk lately about how the tablet form factor is killing the netbook market. While the sales numbers do certainly tend to reinforce this talk, there are still those of us who love to have a netbook for many different reasons. Generally speaking, netbooks suck. Flimsy construction, mushy keyboards and generally crappy specifications put them right there into the category of “if I have to”. HP’snewly-revamped 210is a lovely exception to an ugly rule....