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Comment by slowpoison | Hacker News Reader

If HP really wants developers behind it, they should consider giving away these devices to the developers. Even a $500 phone is a cheap investment with high returns, when made on a developer who's going to invest time (and money), is going to learn mostly by herself, and release an app in the market, even if in the hopes of making money for herself.

With Android already doing well, I don't see a developer risking her time as well as money on Palm, when it's uncertain how much success she'll achieve.

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They were giving away Pre 2's. They probably still are giving them away if they still have them in stock.

According to the HP webOS Developer Forums' Hardware Section, the offer's done. In fact, a lot of developers who took part are still waiting for theirs from back in February/March. The Pre 2 giveaway to developers really could have been executed better, IMO. Some folks who were approved back then don't even know if they'll still get one, which is disconcerting. Google can drop 5,000 special-edition Samsung tablets in a day, and HP's had almost three months to fulfill.

I respect that they could have just not given any away in the first place, but HP's in a critical spot right now trying to keep webOS relevant with developers--especially given that many in the first wave of webOS developers from '09-'10 have already long left the platform. Better communication on the status of the program and fulfillment would have gone a long way. I'm really hoping they can work the kinks out of the system when it comes to things like this with the resources HP has on-hand.

This is just anecdotal, but I signed up and received my developer Pre2 in about 2 weeks. I assume I must have gotten in before the rush because I signed on as soon as I heard about it.

On the other hand, I've been waiting 4 and 6 months to get a Cr48 laptop from Google and not a peep. So its not like only HP is the only one bad at communicating.

Did Google promise to send you one? Or did you fill out a questionnaire in the hopes of them sending you one?

Same here, from the time I first sent a request in to the Pre 2 arriving, it was only about 2 weeks. I also signed up as soon as I heard about it, so it probably was because I got in before the rush.

If anything, that's the single biggest problem with HP / Palm.

Execution is extremely shoddy. That and what seems like low attention span sometimes.

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