With HP’s ‘Something big, something small, something beyond’ event coming up on February 9th, rumours have been rife as to what we will be seeing coming out of the computer giant. What we expected was something using Palm’s WebOS – probably a tablet. Turns out we could well be seeing not one, but two!

Engadget’s Nilay Patel wrote recently that the gadget blog has received a tip, along with internal renders of a device. The anonymous (aren’t they always?) secret-wielder claims that we will see two tablets, one a 7inch model named Opal, and the other a 9inch version called Topaz. Whether these are internal names or if this is what the final shipping products will be called is unclear.

So what about specs? Looking at the renders and reading Patel’s blog post it looks fairly clear that the device will resemble a large Palm Pre in that we’ll see a slab of black plastic with minimal buttons. In fact, we see no buttons at all on the leaked render. Will the whole device be gesture-driven? Perhaps.

On top of that we have what appears to be a front-facing camera and a micro USB port for charing and syncing. Patel also suggests a 3 speaker system will be in place. The idea behind 3 speakers is that a device can offer stereo sound in both landscape and portrait orientations. It’s an interesting idea that Vizio will also be using in its tablets.

The CPU behind the glass is expected to be a 1.2GHz chip, which should ensure WebOS blazes along nicely, with plenty of multitasking goodness to boot.

Engadget also speculates that, based on internal marketing info the site has received that three models of the Opal tablet will be available: a WiFi only model and one each for AT&T and Verizon with a release date of September 2011.

Information beyond that is hart to come by – HP’s event is just weeks away and I’m sure they’ll have something suitably exciting to show us.

If info does keep leaking out though, will we already know everything before then? Keep an eye on Touch Reviews for more info when we have it.

In the last few weeks, after HP snapped up Palm, we’ve seen some worrying signs from the company.

Last month Matias Duarte left Palm. Apparently to go and work for Google. Who are not just a rival handset maker. Apart from Apple, Google with its Android smartphone ecosystem is the other major smartphone player in the world. Period. Not only that, but he went to work as a lead in their Android User Experience Department. Not an insignificant role!

HP’s reaction? They didn’t even issue a statement about the reasons behind the main architect of Palm’s webOS operating system apparently fleeing the company.

One can only read into that turn of events that HP didn’t see it coming, or that even if they did they perhaps either didn’t care or couldn’t spin it in any positive way. So said nothing.

In the first couple of days of this month, HP’s CEO issued the rather worrying and myopic statement that his company “didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business”. He went on to try and qualify this sound-byte. But his explanation didn’t make things much better either.

A few scant hours later a rather rushed PR statement from HP tried to further clarify the CEO’s original statement, and to smooth ruffled features of HP’s shareholders.

Today we are hearing news that Rich Dellinger, another key webOS engineer, and a former Apple employee has also left Palm to return to Apple.

HP will obviously have the technology of webOS, as it stands, frozen in time to use as they see fit moving forward. And they’ll also reap the benefit of Palm’s patent portfolio.

But other than that it seems that Palm is still slowly disintegrating. Even after being bought out in what seemed at first like a rescue bid. It really would have been much better for Palm if they had been snapped up by Lenovo or HTC, other rumored suitors.

It seems that we are witnessing a rather sad end to a once truly innovative company.

Do you think its all over for Palm? Will we ever see any fruit from HP’s acquisition? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.