Just days after HP said it was mulling over plans to spin off its Personal Systems Group and discontinue webOS-based smartphones and tablets, several things happened: the tablets were essentially liquidated at fire sale prices (with another wave to come, strangely enough), the company vowed to support the devices with OS updates despite putting the software on hold, the Pre3 was canceled here in the States but sold at “fire sale” prices overseas with promises of OS updates, and the HP Compaq 8200 Elite AIO PC was launched.

Did you catch that last part? HP launched a new PC although it has no idea what it wants to do with its PC business. Todd Bradley, executive vice president of HP’s Personal Systems Group, told CNBC on Monday that the company has not made a decision on what it plans to do with its PC business, and may not make a formal decision for another 12 weeks. In the meantime, HP plans to focus on the enterprise sector – including cloud computing – and will resume manufacturing tablets without the webOS software.

That’s right: HP is still in the tablet business.

“What we said was we would stop manufacturing webOS devices,” he said. “We did not say we would get out of the tablet business, but we would stop that piece of webOS go-to-market activity. WebOS is still a strategically important asset for us. We’ve seen interest from a number of large parties that are interested in working with us to potentially license webOS. We’ve always said that we bought Palm for that webOS operating system, and this is part of the strategy playing out.”

According to Bradley, HP is looking at a variety of strategic alternatives to ownership of the Personal Systems Group, from spin-off to absolutely nothing. After studying their options for eight to twelve weeks, company officials will sit down with the board, take them through the results and will “make the best decision for shareholders.”

HP’s recent announcement about spinning off its PC business and canceling webOS-based smartphones and tablets seemed to come out of nowhere. Very little information was released at the time HP made the announcement, and from a distance, it seemed that HP really didn’t have a solid plan to follow in regards to releasing information in the coming days. Because of that, various rumors surfaced that included his departure – ridiculous and unfounded as Bradley calls them – which could have been avoided had HP fully disclosed its overall plans from the start.

“My intent is to work through this process with HP,” he said. “At the time whatever action is determined, my intent is to lead that. If it stays with HP, I will continue to run it.”

To see Bradley’s whole ten-minute interview with CNBC, check out the video here.

It’s been a long time since Intel tried to tempt the world with a new Itanium chip. The VLIW 64-bit processor last received a serious update in 2008, with the 2-billion transistors Tukwila. Now Chipzilla is upping the ante — moving to 32nm process, adding up to four more cores, and tacking on more than one billion additional transistors. Poulson also adds a new feature called Intel Instruction Replay Technology, which adds a buffer for more quickly recovering from errors, allowing the chip to pick up from the last known good instruction instead of having to completely flush the pipeline. Those looking to upgrade will also be happy to hear that the upcoming IA-64 CPU is pin compatible with Tukwila, so customers can simply drop the new processor in to existing systems.

SOURCE via Anandtech

Hoping for some new development from camp Intel about their much-improved Atom processor? Well, hold your breath longer. DigiTimes is reporting that the next-gen Atom chip has been pushed back from its anticipated September launch to November. Apparently Chipzilla is having issues with the graphics drivers and has been unable to pass Windows 7 certification. The new low-power CPUs should still be ready in time for the holiday season though, and will likely find their way into plenty of netbooks that almost nobody will buy.

SOURCE via Anandtech

WebOS developers may not have had much good news in the past few days (apart from a slew of new TouchPad owners looking for apps), but they are at least getting some attention. That includes a message from Microsoft’s Senior Director of Windows Phone 7 Development, Brandon Watson, who offered free phones to published webOS developers on Friday, plus all the necessary tools and training to get them started with Windows Phone. Judging from his tweets since, the response has been fairly overwhelming — Watson says he’s received close to 600 emails from webOS devs as of Sunday evening.

SOURCE via @BrandonWatson(Twitter)

Amazon is sending book-loving gadget fans into frenzy with another round of domain name buys. It registered KindleScribe and KindleScribes.com to go along with the KindleAir and KindleSocialNetwork addresses it picked up earlier this month. All that’s left to do is speculate wildly on what they could represent (Thin and light e-reader? Tablet-style touchscreen (what the f*** am I even babbling)? Kindle that comes pre-loaded with the Social Network?).

SOURCE via Fusible

Following the devastation wrought by the recent Japanese earthquake, Apple has hooked the country’s early warning system into iOS 5. The tectonically-volatile nation has the most sophisticated alarm in the world, delivering life-saving warnings seconds or minutes before disaster strikes. iOS users already had access to this functionality via apps like Yurekuru, but iOS 5 will bring it directly into the operating system. The service can be activated in the Notification Center settings pane, accompanied by a warning that the constant connection will deplete your battery faster — a fair exchange if it saves your life.

SOURCE via 9to5mac

Well, it’s official, the TouchPad is currently the hottest piece of consumer electronics around, and all it took was HP’s complete abandonment of its current line of webOS devices. The once maligned slate is currently atop Amazon’s electronics sales list. The 16GB and 32GB models have snagged the top two spots, beating out the Kindle, the iPod touch, and everyone else. And there may be some good news for UK customers who have been watching the excitement from afar — reports are rolling in that the tablet will available for £89 ($146) and £115 ($189) for the 16GB and 32GB versions. UK retailer Dixons is the first to confirm the price drop in UK. Well, better grab one while you can, and hope that the port to Android Gingerbread works!

SOURCE via Amazon