The processor was not below par. It's perfectly fine. The perceived slowness came from insufficient GPU acceleration as well as a buggy initial release.
However, you are right in that HP was not commited to webOS. Then again, look at HP's stock price since Leo's announcement.
The market is not pleased and I doubt it will be with all this waffling.
Its processor is somewhat underpowered when compared to iPad 2's (ARM7 vs. ARM9 cores). The perceived slowness, short battery life and various other problems were could also be blamed on it being released before it was ready. The hardware side being ready (sort of - the machines should be faster) before the software shows poor management.
Where are you getting your information from that they are "ARM7" cores? I think you are getting confused so please do not go off spouting about (ARM7 vs. ARM9 cores).
ARMv7 is Cortex of which there have been Cortex A8 (single core) and A9 (dual core). There's also A15 coming down the pike.
The processor in the TouchPad is a Qualcomm dual core APQ8060 clocked at either 1.2 or 1.5GHz. It is very much the current state of the art for tablets. And given that they have been overclocked to as high as 1.9GHz certainly means that the processor itself is no slouch.
Now, once again, what runs on top is a whole different story.
Again, re your statement about short battery life, I would love to see a proper reference. Stock, out the box: "The battery life is estimated at nine hours by HP; in a review by Engadget, the battery lasted for about eight and a half hours". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_TouchPad
Modified with appropriate patches, it should and will last longer than said 8 1/2 hours. I find it tough to believe anyone that would quantify a device capable of lasting over 8hrs (of use) as having a "short" battery life.
Now the product being released before it was ready, that's a problem. However, there have been rumors that the release date was forced upon the Palm GBU without regard for product readiness. The 3.0.2 release brought much improved stability so that really should have been the proper baseline release.
That said, this is all kind of moot since HP and Leo seem keen on stumbling around like a drunk bull in a china shop. The sequence of events since the announcement certainly give off the impression that HP is not on the ball here and the stock price certainly reflects that. In 10 days, it would be a month since HP made the announcement and the stock has been flat after the massive drop the day after giving credence to fact that the market has no faith in where HP is headed.
I guess you are correct. I am not sure where I got the CPU information (I was at the office and I can't get my browsing history from here) but your reference seems sound. I also remember reports of WebOS running much faster on Apple's iPad 2 (under mobile Safari) that may hint at some other hardware performance bottleneck.
As for battery life, it was mentioned in BYTE's podcast. IIRC, the reviewers were quite unhappy with both the software stability (frequent reboots) and with the short (according to them) battery life.
I am equally sorry about HP's current directions. It's clear that given a little more time, their tablet would become a solid offering and a very attractive third option. But not at iPad prices.
In the tablet market Android is still pretty invisible. Saying that it won is just wrong, at least for the tablet market. It might win in the future but it certainly hasn’t yet.
The real problem was HP (the new HP) just wasn't commited to WebOS.