The Palm Pre, Palm’s  last ditch effort to overthrow the iPhone as king of mobile and bounce back to profitability is getting an upgrade. The Palm Pre 2 is the first real announcement from Palm since they were bought out by HP, so it’ll be interesting to see what if any influence HP has over the new hardware. Details are currently light. All we know at this point is that the device will run the next version of Palm’s WebOS software, WebOS 2.0, and contain a 1ghz CPU and 512mb of RAM, kind of a no-brainer if you’ve been following mobile tech for the past couple of months. The Pre was a great potential competitor…

The ink on the Palm purchase paperwork is barely dry, and there’s been nothing but problems over at HP. First, CEO Mark Hurd announces that HP didn’t buy Palm to get into the smartphone business. Then, CEO Mark Hurd announces that actually, they might have bought Palm to remain in the smartphone market. Kind of. As if all that wasn’t bad enough, then CEO Mark Hurd gets ousted from HP for questionable expense practices and liaisons with a soft core porn actress. If this all sounds a little bit “Days Uf Our Lives”, the latest news is a little more down to earth. Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO and general silicon…

Value-conscious geeks are snapping up the last available units of Palm’s Pre and Pixi smartphones at huge discounts as the company moves across to new owner, HP. And at these prices Palm’s smartphones really do look smart. Take the flagship device, the Palm Pre Plus. Verizon Wireless is offering the 16GB, 3G-savvy touchscreen handset for just $29 with a two-year contract. Or, for the same price, you can get the Palm Pixi Plus, with Verizon offering a “buy one, get one free” deal for both models of phone. Verizon no longer charges for its Palm Mobile Hotspot service on either phone, so you can tether…