After one door closes, another is supposed to open, or at least that's what people always say. Maybe it's true, because after Hewlett Packard closed the door on its TouchPad tablet, the OEM opened its door to the HP Slate 2 Tablet PC. The Slate 2 is an 8.9-inch slate HP says is ready for instant deployment for business and vertical markets such as education, healthcare, government, retail, and any other job that doesn't always keep workers tethered to a desk.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and so does competition in PC platforms, This helps explain why Acer chairman JT Wang is in full support of Hewlett Packard keeping its PC business rather than spinning it off or selling it to a third party. Wondering what that has to do with Acer? It's simple, really -- HP is the world's largest PC manufacturer, and both have a common enemy in Apple.

HP's newly appointed CEO Meg Whitman already has a long list of things to do and oversee, not the least of which is to figure out what to do with the company's PC business. And then there's the whole challenge of trying to restore confidence in a company that seems to be swirling with uncertainty, not to mention the challenge of turning around HP's fortunes. If all that weren't enough, Whitman now has to forge ahead without HP's chief strategy and technology officer.

Market research firms International Data Corp (IDC) and Gartner both report that HP still sits on top of the world as the largest PC maker, shipping more units than other computer maker in the third quarter. Given that HP is maintaining a sizable lead despite all the turmoil surrounding the company's past, present, and future, why on earth would HP go forward with plans to sever its PC business? That's a question HP itself is having trouble answering, and it now looks as though newly appointed CEO Meg Whitman wants to back off plans to spin off or sell HP's Personal Systems Group (PSG).