I dearly hope the offer a decent tablet that is inexpensive and <i>not</i> tied to a mobile carrier. I think one of the things that killed Palm/Pre was that they tried to play the 'mobile phone' game, when they could have gone 'retro' with the "pda without a mobile phone" and done much better.<p>Lots of geeks and non geeks would be willing to give a device a spot in their lives that doesn't displace their current mobile phone. Given the current state in the US, we're overwhelmingly tied to 'contracts' and steep monthly fees. The threshold any device needs to meet to displace our current devices at any given time is huge.<p>However... many people are willing to plunk down $150+ for an iPod Touch - which is for most purposes an iPhone with no phone, which also means no contracts, carriers, monthly fees, etc. If you like it, great! If not, it'll make a nice gift for some family member or friend. The barrier to trying one out is much lower.<p>Regardless of the initial price ("free phone!") most of us now understand that any "mobile phone device" we get is going to cost us $500-$1000/year for multiple years. Playing that game is way too costly - the stakes are too high - the carriers have no real incentive to push you 3 months from now when the next model of something else is 'new'. iPhones have been the exception to all this, and betting your company on being the next disruptive exception was/is foolhardy (Palm pre-HP).<p>Apple already <i>proved</i> there's a large market for wifi-only devices - let's hope HPalm's new webOS devices offer sanely priced wifi-only options.