I agree on the marketing, but disagree strongly with your statement that they mishandled the hardware. I've got nearly a half-dozen WebOS devices kicking around (Pre 1-3, Pixi, Veer) that I would prefer to use over my Galaxy Nexus if they had Android on it. I would say that the hardware was actually the _best_ part of the WebOS ecosystem.
I will clarify that I liked the Pre but the hardware always came out 6 months too late.
The Touchpad was decent hardware but it was up against the iPad 2. The 16gig version was $499 yet the camera function didn't even work correctly when it was released! It should have been released at $399 at the most. Who at HP made this decision? Did they really think they could justify $499 for hardware that had fewer apps and 1 camera instead of 2 and was thicker than the iPad2?!
For what it's worth, there is an active community developing Android for HP Touchpad. The Touchpad had decent hardware to begin with and can be overclocked and more. I have a 32gb Touchpad running Jelly Bean and it's as smooth as butter, and the latest netflix app plays great, skype, etc all work fine in Android.
Like many HPers I got a Touchpad in the fire sale and haven't converted it to Android yet because I heard the camera wasn't working. Apparently that's fixed now and Netflix works too? Might be time for me to convert.
Camera works in CM9 and CM10. I still use 9 because I'm not desperate for Android 4.1 (already have 4.2 on my Gnexus and Nexus 7).
The other place to look for Android on the Touchpad is rootzwiki (http://rootzwiki.com/forum/217-hp-touchpad/). Either forum will get you what you need most likely though, but I'm an admin on rootzwiki for what it's worth.
I grabbed a Touchpad in the sales. I only played around with it for a month or so but that was enough for the bezel to crack in places (a common occurrence I think). Certainly nowhere close to iPad-quality.
As for the internals... well, after that month I left mine gathering dust for a year whilst waiting for Android support to mature. I turned it back on to discover the touchscreen no longer worked. Someday I'll try and fix it, as it seems like it'd be a competent secondary Android tablet to leave around the house.
Yeah, I can't disagree with any of what you've said here. The TouchPad was one device in the Palm family I never picked up, since the writing was on the wall for WebOS then.
Me and four friends all got Pre 1s or Pixi Pluses, and every one of our phones broke the same way, the non-speakerphone microphone stopped working, so I had to make all my calls on speaker.
Before that the rubberized back came off all three of my colored back pieces for the Pixi.
