HP preview new HP TouchPad at Gadget Show

HP will release the HP TouchPad, a tablet running on the webOS mobile operating system, in the UK, within the next few months. It was on display at this week’s Gadget Show Live at the Birmingham NEC, and promises to be a very user-friendly tablet with great multitasking abilities.

The HP TouchPad is a 9.7 inch tablet that aims to integrate the most-used features into an interface that is both comprehensive and intuitive. For example, it combines appointments and events from a range of calendars – Google, Facebook, Linkedin – into one straightforward calendar.

Multitasking is the main strength of the HP TouchPad, as became evident at the HP stall’s demonstration. It lets users run multiple applications simultaneously, and organises them in a scrollable panel in the middle of the display, allowing the users to halt and go back to applications very easily. It also compiles different sub-panels of related applications. If, for example, you’re browsing through a number of documents, they will be stacked into one panel.

The 1024 x 768 display looked very impressive, especially when used for looking at online magazines. Users will also have access to more than 800,000 titles from Amazon’s Kindle Store.

There are the usual storage options of either 16 or 32 Gb, and a 1.3 megapixel webcam for video calling.

An exact UK release date for the HP TouchPad was not given, but we were told to expect it in the first half of 2011, at around £300.