The thing that's funny about Palm is their history runs in patterns and circles. They began as a startup. They had great ideas and needed revenue to fund their developments, they were bought by US Robotics. US Robotics was bought by 3Com, Palm wanted their independence, broke off and became PalmOne. Then they split the company into hardware and software, followed by the infamous falling out with the original founders who started Handspring which eventually joined back with Palm. <deeeeep breath>
The Handspring/Palm move was probably the best thing Palm could had done at that time as it made room for the Treo to rule the market for it's short period. Problem was as mentioned is the OS got stale. I remember years ago Palm kept pushing that they were looking to build a groundbreaking OS to "revolutionize" the market. Interestingly, WebOS capabilities were what they had dreamed up at that time, and instead of something new and exciting....they gave us Garnet which ultimately put them in the spot they sat in. They unfortunately waited too long, Android and iPhone had established themselves pretty well already and hardware was getting better and better.
WebOS is a great concept, the multitasking with the card system was such a great idea. You rarely see bad reviews about it. But the hardware to run it is awful. They should had licensed the OS out like Palm originally did, Sony used to put out some killer devices with that OS, I wonder what they could had done with WebOS, we'll never know.
HP could absolutely have a little goldmine on their hands if they treat it right. If they could develop devices that could run WebOS right like Incredible, EVO, and Droid X are handling Android they will be in the game. Give us devices like Droid Eris and the Pixi (what's WITH that name?) that have great form factors but cannot efficiently run the OS like it should and you might as well pack it in. So much potential......