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Besides performance and reliability enhancements, this new version also brings new features to core webOS apps such as Email, Calendar and Photos.

Among the highlights are improved image rendering and faster scrolling in Email, the ability to set your wallpaper from photos in the Photos app, new layout of the Calendar, reduced audio skipping in Music when using other apps, and improved speed and accuracy of autocorrections when typing.

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Karl Kamb Jr., previously HP's vice president of business development and strategy, was named as a defendant in a federal lawsuit filed by HP in 2005. It alleges that onetime HP employees illegally started a rival flat-screen TV company while still working at HP and it is claiming up to $100 million in damages. Kamb, who has denied any wrongdoing, filed a countersuit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on Friday, according to legal documents. Among Kamb's allegations: That in 2002, HP hired Katsumi Iizuka, a president of Dell Japan until 1995, to supply information on Dell's plans to enter the printer business. That "senior HP management" signed off on the payments to Iizuka.

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The complaint alleges that Dunn and Hunsaker knew that HP's outside investigators were obtaining personal phone records through false pretenses - usually by lying to phone company employees - and that both "facilitated" the use of the ruse, which Lockyer says is illegal. The defendants, if convicted, face a maximum of 12 years in prison and a $30,000 fine.

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The book makes no mention of questionable investigative methods like pretexting, which involves pretending to be someone else to obtain information from telephone company employees. Nor does the book say whether Fiorina directed Sonsini to spy on any individual reporter or director. She writes that Sonsini personally interviewed every board member. He reported back to Fiorina that Thomas Perkins, the prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist who had previously served on the HP board and would soon rejoin it, had been a source for the article.

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"She has admirably supported our business needs across the globe and will be missed," CEO Mark Hurd said in a press release regarding Baskins. "Stepping down was a very hard decision for her, but by doing so, she has put the interests of HP above her own, and that is to be commended." HP has acknowledged that it accessed phone records of board members and journalists, including CNET News.com reporters, as part of its leak probe. The company has also followed reporters and tried to trace e-mails in an effort to track down the source of leaks from the board of directors.

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Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for Lockyer, confirmed the attorney general is looking into whether pretexting was used. It's unclear exactly how the private investigators used pretexting. Pretexters could call a phone company and falsely represent themselves as a legitimate customer to obtain logs of numbers called and received at home and on cell phones. Although pretexting "was not generally unlawful" at the time of Hewlett-Packard's investigation, the company's outside legal counsel couldn't confirm the tactics used by investigators "complied in all respects with applicable law," the filing said.

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To protect this franchise, increasingly under attack from rivals, H-P could sue any ink makers it suspects are infringing on its patents. This month, it sued China's G&G Ninestar Image Co., a cartridge manufacturer, alleging G&G had violated seven H-P patents in cartridge design. The complaint also targets four online retailers. H-P also asked the International Trade Commission to open an investigation against Ninestar. A Ninestar spokeswoman said the company had no comment. This latest suit follows other actions over the past year. In June, H-P said retailers Walgreen Co. and OfficeMax Inc. had infringed on H-P ink patents with ink used at in-store ink-cartridge-refilling stations; Walgreen and OfficeMax both deny the claims. Last year, H-P similarly warned the U.S. arm of Cartridge World Inc., a domestic retail ink-cartridge refiller; Cartridge World says it is working to resolve the issue.

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HP also has more negotiating heft than it did before the merger. Back in 2001, HP and the former Compaq were at the mercy of their major suppliers, Microsoft and Intel, said Jonathan Eunice, an analyst with Illuminata. Microsoft and Intel knew they could play the two companies off of one another when it came to introducing new technology or hammering out contracts, he said. The combined organization now has the size to negotiate agreements with alternative suppliers, like Advanced Micro Devices, without seriously affecting HP's relationships with its primary suppliers, Eunice said. It was hard to get to that point, but "sometimes you need to do ugly things," he said. "They're using their economic power to good effect."

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Information transfer requires actual physical connection to the Memory Spot and Taub says they designed it that way. "We don't want to increase the range of contact," he said. "We think it's just right." Memory Spot technology works independently of Internet connection. It is meant for physical data transmission, much like RFID, although another fundamental difference is that the data on Memory Spot is rewriteable whereas the majority of RFID chips are read-only.