Now comes HP with its new Folio 13, a svelte, flyweight Windows laptop with a 13-inch display, a potpourri of ports, and best of all, a battery that’ll last nine hours on a single charge—supposedly, at least.

Slated to go on sale December 7 starting at $899, the Folio belongs to a relatively new class of so-called “Ultrabook” laptops that use low-power, ultra-efficient, yet relatively peppy processors from Intel.

The current crop of Ultrabooks includes notebooks from the likes of Apple, Acer, Asus, and Toshiba, all of which weigh somewhere between two and three pounds and range in battery life anywhere from five to eight hours.

With the new, 18 millimeter-thick Folio 13 and its nine hours of battery life—according to the marketing sheet, anyway—HP is hoping to claim the battery-life crown for Ultrabooks.

Of course, that claim has yet to stand up to real-world scrutiny; expect that nine-hour figure to fall once reviewers start putting the Folio 13’s battery to the test.

Take the 13-inch MacBook Air, for example, which Apple says is capable of running for up to seven hours on a charge, but managed closer to 5 hours once gadgets reviewers were done with it.

It’s also worth mentioning that the 3.3-pound Folio 13 is about a third of a pound heavier than the 13-inch MacBook Air.

Then again, the base Folio 13 laptop—which comes armed with 128 GB of flash storage (meaning no moving parts), a backlit keyboard, an HD webcam, and Dolby sound—costs just $899, a $400 savings compared to the cheapest 13-inch Air.

So, how much would you be willing to spend for a three-pound laptop with a battery that would last all day?

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Yep, things have sure changed in the past few decades, but one classic tech gadget has stayed impressively the same: Hewlett-Packard’s best-selling 12c financial calculator, which first went on sale 30 years ago and has remained in stores ever since.

That’s a pretty remarkable statement—especially considering that HP is the very company that just killed off its new TouchPad tablet barely a month after it landed in stores.

Armed with a one-line, 10-character screen and a bunch of keys that … well, do things I know nothing about (hey, I was an English major), the 12c “revolutionized financial calculations” thanks to its “breakthrough landscape layout,” according to HP. (I’ll take their word for it.)

If you want to own a piece of history, you can get a 30th anniversary “limited edition” of the iconic calculator for $80.

That’s $70 off the original, 1981 asking price of $150, which (adjusted for inflation) comes out to $373 in today’s dollars.

LINK: HP Celebrates Enduring Icon with Limited-edition 12c 30th Anniversary Calculator

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Also this week: AT&T ditches is bargain messaging plans; Netflix streaming gets kid-friendly; I go eyes-on with a new glasses-free 3D phone; free Hulu videos on your PlayStation 3 with a magic (well, sort of) Blu-ray disc; and how to decline calls on your iPhone without making enemies.

HP kills off HP TouchPad tablet, leaves mobile WebOS platform in the lurch
Once upon a time, there was a once-great smartphone company called Palm (remember the Treo?) that had fallen behind the times in the wake of the game-changing iPhone. Palm aimed for the fences with WebOS, a gorgeous touchscreen phone interface that rivaled Apple’s, but the resulting phones didn’t hit a home run with consumers.

Then HP came along and bought the struggling Palm, pledging to take the promising WebOS platform and make it its own, starting with a series of new handsets and the enticing TouchPad tablet.

Sounds like a heartwarming story—especially for those consumers who’d taken a bet on WebOS phones like the Pre, the Veer, and the new Pre3. Except this story doesn’t have a happy ending, as a stunned tech industry learned Thursday. Read more…

Google to buy Motorola: What it means to you
Once upon a time (yes, there’s a theme here), Motorola was the mightiest cell phone maker in the world (you remember the glorious RAZR, right?), while Google was just another frog in a big pond of search engines. But then something funny happened.

Google got really good at search and advertising, and it got bigger and bigger. It also invented Android, a software platform for smartphones that gave even the mighty iPhone a run for its money.

Motorola, meanwhile, managed to kill the RAZR that had laid so many golden eggs, and it started to flounder. But then it paddled over to Android and stayed afloat, making some pretty good Android phones in the process.

Now Google says it wants to buy Motorola, and Moto couldn’t be happier. But the other companies making Android phones are feeling spurned (and what about your non-Motorola Android phone, by the way?), while others think Google had an ulterior motive for sweeping Motorola off its feet. Read more…

Whatever happened to cheap messaging plans for cell phones?
The days of getting monthly “buckets” of, say, 200 or 500 messages for your cell phone seem to be numbered, with AT&T announcing Thursday that new customers who want to text will either a) have to sign up for a pricey unlimited plan, or b) pay through the nose for each individual text or picture message. Unfortunately, there might be a trend here. Read more…

Skype offers by-the-minute Wi-Fi for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Ready for some good news? If you’ve got an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, you can now buy Wi-Fi time at more than a million global hotspots by the minute, rather than by the hour or day—all thanks to a new Skype app. Read more…

LG Thrill review: Fuzzy outlook for a glasses-free 3D smartphone
3D without glasses? Great, right? Not so much. Read more…

Orb Blu-ray disc lets you watch Hulu videos on your PlayStation 3, no subscription required
A new Blu-ray disc for the PlayStation 3 lets you skirt around Hulu’s $8-a-month subscription fee for watching TV shows on your big-screen HDTV. But it’s not magic, and it’s not the easiest thing in the world to use. Read more…

iPhone tip: A sneakier way to send incoming calls to voice mail
There are, in fact, two ways of sending an incoming call to voice mail on the iPhone—one a bit sneakier than the other. Read more…

Netflix’s “Just for Kids”: Yes to iCarly and Big Bird, no to Rambo and Jason
Nope, Freddie Krueger and Tony Soprano aren’t invited to Netflix’s “Just for Kids” party. Read more…

Google brings (more) catalog shopping to the iPad
The new—and free—Google Catalogs app takes all the paper catalogs piled on your coffee table and puts them on the iPad, perfect for searching, tapping, and swiping. Read more…

Don’t want to download “Lion”? Try Apple’s $69 USB installation drive
Now there’s an alternative for Mac users who’d rather install Mac OS X “Lion” using good, old-fashioned packaged media: a (pricey) USB thumb drive. Read more…

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Barely a month and a half after launching the TouchPad tablet, HP shocked the tech world Thursday by abruptly announcing (as reported by All Things Digital) that it will discontinue its iPad competitor—and not only that, it will also stop making any and all devices running on the once-promising WebOS mobile platform.

This is jaw-dropping news for those of us who’ve been covering the saga of WebOS, the impressive touchscreen operating system that powered devices ranging from the Palm Pre to the TouchPad.

The much-hyped TouchPad tablet only landed in stores (with a thud, according to some reports) a little more than a month ago.

The once-$499, then $399 TouchPad was greeted with mixed reviews, with the tablet winning praise for its “attractive and different interface” while also getting slammed for its “rather hefty” shell, “lack of polish,” and poor battery life.

So, what was the big deal about WebOS? Here’s how I described it back in June:

First introduced back in 2009 on the Palm Pre smartphone, WebOS is a truly beautiful, intuitive, and rather powerful touchscreen platform that boasts features like email and text alerts that bubble up unobtrusively from the bottom of the screen, the ability to seamlessly pull contact information for your social-networking friends into your Address Book, and application windows organized like a deck of cards that you can swipe back and forth, or flick up when you’re ready to quit.

Sounds nifty, right? But the Palm Pre never took off with consumers, and the financially-crippled Palm (which, let’s not forget, was behind the legendary Treo smartphone from the late 2000s) was finally snapped up by HP last year.

Die-hard WebOS fans hoped that the innovative platform could get a second lease on life with the resources of HP behind it. But with today’s news, it’s clear that HP has decided to cut its losses and move on.

The move would appear to strand just about anyone who did buy the TouchPad, not to mention newer WebOS handsets like the Pre3 and the Veer. Hopefully, we’ll get more news on how HP plans to handle customer service for its remaining WebOS customers.

For its part, HP says it will “continue to explore options to optimize the value of WebOS software going forward.” Personally, though, I wouldn’t take any comfort in that pronouncement.

So, anyone out there with a HP TouchPad they’d like to trade in?

Note: I haven’t even mentioned the other mind-bending announcement from HP today—that it’s looking to unload its PC business. Yes, that’s HP … no longer selling PCs. Mind blown.

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Meanwhile, it’s still not even clear whether the number of tablet apps in the Android Market has hit four figures yet (Fortune has the number pegged at about 1,300, while GigaOm says it’s a mere 170), while the HP TouchPad (which runs on another mobile software platform, dubbed WebOS) will have only 300 or so tablet-optimized apps available for its Friday launch.

here’s the thing: 100,000 apps versus a few hundred—the numbers pretty much speak for themselves.

Source: MacStories

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On the one hand, reviewers seem enamored of the TouchPad’s WebOS software, which “works beautifully” when it comes to switching between apps, notifying you of incoming emails and impending events, and pulling contact info from your various social networks into the tablet’s addess book.

Then, there’s the bad news: the TouchPad’s “thick,” “rather hefty” shell, the bugs and overall “lack of polish,” the single, front-facing camera that’s only for video chat (no stills), and HP’s woefully sparce app store (just 300 tablet apps, versus about 90,000 for the iPad).

The HP TouchPad isn’t without its fans—Ed Baig of USA Today, for one, says it has a “world of potential”—but so far, I’m not seeing anyone who’s recommending the TouchPad over Apple’s towering iPad 2.

A few opinions…

Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal:

…despite its attractive and different user interface, this first version is simply no match for the iPad. It suffers from poor battery life, a paucity of apps and other deficits.

Tim Stevens, Engadget:

We all wanted the TouchPad to really compete, to give us a compelling third party to join the iOS and Android boxes on the ballot. But, alas, this isn’t quite it.

David Pogue, The New York Times:

In this 1.0 incarnation, the TouchPad doesn’t come close to being as complete or mature as the iPad or the best Android tablets; you’d be shortchanging yourself by buying one right now, unless you’re some kind of rabid A.B.A. nut (Anything but Apple) … but there are signs of greatness here. H.P. is coming to this battle very late, but it says it intends to stay the course. True, it’s tilting at windmills — but at least it’s riding an impressive steed.

Joshua Topolsky, This is My Next:

Still, the bottom line here is that the stability and smoothness of the user experience is not up to par with the iPad or something like the Galaxy Tab 10.1, even if many of the underlying ideas are actually a lot better and more intuitive than what the competition offers. That, coupled with the minuscule number of quality apps available at launch make this a bit of a hard sell right now.

Ed Baig, USA Today:

Even as a fan of the iPad it’s good to see robust competition among tablets. And there’s an awful lot to like about the first webOS tablet. But before HP can even hope to challenge Apple, it will need to need to supply more apps and exterminate a few bugs.

here’s the thing: Based on the early TouchPad reviews, it looks like the iPad 2 still rules the roost as far as tablets are concerned.

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Well, Palm is no more—it got gobbled up by Hewlett-Packard last April—but its sleek, easy-to-use WebOS mobile platform lives on in the 9.7-inch TouchPad tablet, which (we just learned) will arrive in stores July 1.

The TouchPad tablet itself (which I’ve yet to see in person, by the way) boasts most of the features you’ll find on the latest cutting-edge tablets, including a state-of-the-art, dual-core processor (“dual-core” basically means two processor on a single chip, resulting in speedier, more efficient performance), a camera lens in front for video chat, and a 9.7-inch, 1024-by-768-pixel touchscreen—the same size and resolution as the iPad 2.

The new HP tablet ($599 for the 32GB version, or $499 for the 16GB model—again, equivalent to the iPad’s pricing) will also come with a microUSB port (meaning you’ll be able to plug in a USB-enabled memory card or device), and a nifty wireless docking station, dubbled “Touchstone.”

Most importantly, though, the TouchPad will run on Palm’s—or now, HP’s—WebOS software.

What’s so special about WebOS? First introduced back in 2009 on the Palm Pre smartphone, WebOS is a truly beautiful, intuitive, and rather powerful touchscreen platform that boasts features like email and text alerts that bubble up unobtrusively from the bottom of the screen, the ability to seamlessly pull contact information for your social-networking friends into your Address Book, and application windows organized like a deck of cards that you can swipe back and forth, or flick up when you’re ready to quit.

Of course, the iPhone and Android smartphones support “multitasking” applications, too, but Palm’s WebOS platform was the first to do it in an elegant, visually pleasing way.

And indeed, WebOS’s subtle notification system is still superior to the iPhone’s jarring pop-up windows—or at least, they will be until this fall, when Apple rolls out its new and improved notifications in the iOS 5 software update. (It’s probably no coincidence that Apple poached from Palm the man responsible for WebOS’s splendid notifications about a year ago.)

Nice, but there’s just one problem: Palm’s WebOS smartphones never sold all that well, and consequently, the number of apps in the WebOS app store is puny—about 6,000 or so, compared to more than 250,000 for Google’s Android Market and a whopping 500,000 in the Apple App Store. The good news is that many of the most popular iPhone and Android apps are present and accounted for the in the WebOS app catalog, including Facebook, Evernote (an handy app that syncs notes with your desktop PC), the New York Times reader, Yelp, and yes…even Angry Birds.

In any case, those with a soft spot for Palm or the old Treo should certainly give the new TouchPad a look—and even if you’ve don’t know a Treo from a Droid, the TouchPad might make for a friendly, easy-to-use alternative to the iPad or the latest Android tablets.

Got any questions about the TouchPad—or WebOS, or Palm, for that matter? Let me know.

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