Just when we thought the $99 Hewlett-Packard TouchPad was gone forever, the tablet that refuses to die is coming back for one last sale, according to online reports. A limited quantity of refurbished TouchPads will reportedly go on sale at HP's eBay Store starting at 6 p.m. US Central Time (7 p.m. Eastern) on Sunday, December 11.

The future of webOS has been hazy since HP announced in August that it will discontinue its webOS line of devices. The HP Veer 4G faded into oblivion, but the HP TouchPad has enjoyed numerous fire sales since the announcement. Today, HP announced that webOS will live on as an open source platform.

HP announced today that it will "contribute" its webOS operating system to the open source community.

A little birdie (The Verge) revealed earlier today that HP's new CEO Meg Whitman had scheduled an all-hands meeting for the WebOS crew. The news sparked speculation that HP had perhaps found a suitor for the mobile platform, but those predictions turned up false.

Hewlett Packard's webOS-based TouchPad tablet is back from the dead and hitting Best Buy store shelves this week. Starting Tuesday on BestBuy.com you can pick up the 32GB version of the TouchPad for $US150 with the purchase of a new HP or Compaq PC. Alternatively, you can pick up the webOS tablet alone for $US600. The tablet will be available at Best Buy retail locations starting on Friday. You can find complete details on Best Buy's TouchPad deal page.

The tablet wars will heat up when Microsoft Windows 8 ships next year. The developer preview of Windows 8 - unveiled at the BUILD Windows conference in Anaheim - underscores how Microsoft's new OS is nothing like what we're used to seeing and is destined to shake things up.

Everyone who’s been grabbing the $99 and $149 HP TouchPads in the recent fire sale might not be stuck with HP's webOS.

Perhaps you've heard that the HP TouchPad tablet has suffered an untimely demise? There are a lot of lessons that rival tablet vendors can learn from the death of the TouchPad (and the feeding frenzy it created in its wake). More importantly, though, the loss of the TouchPad creates a prime opportunity for a tablet like the BlackBerry PlayBook.

The leaked details on HP and Palm's WebOS tablet keep on coming, though HP has said we haven't seen everything yet.

Hewlett-Packard just raised the ante in the smartphone wars by purchasing Palm, bringing to the table its standing as the world's largest PC maker and potentially bringing on a new era of WebOS devices. The future is still cloudy for the union of the ailing Palm and the mighty HP, but here are five ways HP can make the best of its $1.2 billion buy:

The fall of Palm from groundbreaking innovator of handheld PDA's, to ailing developer of capable-but-waning smartphones is complete with the announcement that HP will acquire Palm to the tune of US$1.2 billion. The primary asset of Palm is the WebOS mobile platform--an asset that puts HP in a strong position to create a tablet device to compete with Apple's iPad.

Yesterday's statement from Palm's CEO, lamenting how Motorola's Droid beat the Palm Pre into Verizon stores, I was reminded of a famous Marlon Brando line from "On the Waterfront." Many people know the words, even of they don't know they come from a 1954 motion picture.

Palm has stayed very quiet since its releases of the Palm Pre and Pixi devices this summer, which debuted the WebOS that was at one point seen as a key rival to Apple's iPhone.

If I had a dollar for every instance of misguided Wall Street speculation, I might be richer than a trader, but let's just imagine that Nokia will acquire Palm, as reported on Friday.

Motorola's Droid has a tough game of catch-up to play, but not as tough as what faces Palm's Pre as both challenge Apple's iPhone. Longer term, this may be a two horse race, with Android winning in the end and BlackBerry still chugging along.

Does the world need another smartphone operating system? Apple's iPhone OS is still booming; Google's Android is increasingly promising; and three longtime contenders--Microsoft's Windows Mobile, RIM's BlackBerry OS, and Symbian's S60--are undergoing serious renovation to keep up with the times.