More TouchPad News: QuickOffice HD and Forthcoming System Updates

If you're enjoying your $99 TouchPad, there continue to be new updates on the software side that keep the now-dead platform in the news. When the TouchPad launched it had the ability to open Word and Excel files via QuickOffice. Document creation and editing both weren't supported at the time. The QuickOffice developers indicated that a future version of the software would enable creation/editing support, but that was prior to HP's announcement to discontinue webOS hardware. Yesterday, via the HP App Catalog, QuickOffice saw an update that brought forward new features and performance improvements, including the ability to create and edit Word/Excel documents on the TouchPad. To get the new version simply update your existing copy of QuickOffice on the TouchPad.

That's not the only good news. Today HP told Brooke Crothers at cnet that TouchPad users should expect another OTA update that will "enhance the platform and add functionality". Although the 3.0.2 update fixed some of the issues we saw in our review, the TouchPad is far from bug-free and still needs some serious work on the performance side. In my eyes the 3.0.2 update was fairly minor. Both the scope of this update and the timing of release are unknown.

Now the reality check. Both the QuickOffice and TouchPad OS updates were likely mostly complete when HP made the announcement to kill off the webOS hardware devision. While it's great to see updates to this platform, I'm not sure how long we'll continue to see this sort of support. The webOS software division is still active, but I'm guessing HP isn't going to be pouring tons of resources into it. Our best hope continues to be an outright acquisition of webOS by an eager partner or the continued development efforts of the webOS community.