I don't know about warranty or support and frankly don't care. I'm hoping for an android port and think one is likely; but here is the deal. I was thinking about getting a nook color or an amazon e-reader. This is color and much bigger screen for 150. It also plays MP3s and movies and I can surf the web. Killer deal even if WebOS is a dead end.
There is also some independent software activities going on too, called homebrew. There is a way to root it but it really isn't the same as an android root. The best thing is that they have found a way to turn off the data logging that was going on in the background slowing everything down. Then they overclocked it to 1.7ghz. With those the thing really flies; faster than an IPad2. Here is a link:
Overclocking the HP TouchPad cranks up the speed | ZDNet
There is one potential gotcha that I'm not exactly clear about. Supposidly if you plug in the usb cable and connect the tablet to a PC, the PC sees the tablets internal filesystem and you can copy files onto the tablet. Things like movies, mp3s, books, etc. Pretty cool. The not so cool part; you cannot connect usb flash, portable, or external drives to it. That is what I heard anyway. There is no micro-SD slot and you cannot add storage via USB. So the memory that is internal is all you will ever get. That's the reason I got the 32 GB version.
Again, this is just rumor I have't tried it. There was also some discussion that the homebrew crew could get this activated though through some sort of utility or software patch. The rationale given was that HP was trying to get into cloud services and had already linked this tablet to a cloud storage system; which of course once users started using, HP would charge for. Essentially, disabling the usb was a way for HP to make money. Well all know the games these companies do to make a buck so when I read the explanation it seemed reasonable to me.
Hooking a usb drive to the usb port is one of the first things I'm going to try when (if) I get mine. I signed up for fedex 2 day shipping so I'm hoping to get it before next weekend. I will give a follow up.