What everyone wants to know right now is:  Will WebOS live?  If so, Who will own it?

Why does Brian want one?

From Brian himself:

“It’s simple they are cheap movie watching/web surfing devices if nothing else.  They support HTML 5 and at leat MPEG Video.  The really impressive thing is how fast both Ubuntu was made bootable and Android already has beta’s out.  So even if WebOS doesn’t survive we will likely be able to run at least honeycomb and ubuntu.  So the apps issue shouldn’t be a long term problem.  Oh and did I mention it was a $600 tablet just a few weeks ago?  I think the roughly $160 is pretty awesome.” 

Brian’s wife Christa used her amazing shopping powers to get Brian and several members of the extended families five HP Touchpads.  She ordered 8 in total but 3 of them got canceled.  Or at least they thought they did until they recieved this E-Mail from Office Max.( 2 of three of the canceled ones were from OfficeMax)

August 31, 2011
Re: Cancelation of HP TouchPad Order
Dear OfficeMax Customer:
Recently you have been contacted and informed your HP TouchPad order was canceled due to HP discontinuing the item and OfficeMax not being able to source the item.
It was brought to our attention that HP may be shipping additional inventory to its suppliers. Our Merchandising team has contacted HP and is pushing to acquire enough stock to cover the orders we had to cancel. HP has posted the following statement on their website – “Despite announcing an end to manufacturing webOS hardware, we have decided to produce one last run of TouchPads to meet unfulfilled demand. We don’t know exactly when these units will be available or how many we’ll get, and we can’t promise we’ll have enough for everyone.”

We have saved all canceled orders, and if we are successful in attaining additional HP TouchPads, we will contact you to fulfill your order.

As always, we value your business. Thank you for your patience and loyalty throughout this situation.

While we deeply regret any inconvenience this has caused, we ask that if you have questions, please call customer service at 1-877-OfficeMax. 

So we will keep you posted on what Brian does with his and if Joe manages to get his hands on one.  To everyone who did buy one enjoy it.  Go install some linux on it.