That synergy, then, can take several forms. As HP showed Wednesday, it has made it easy for TouchPad users (and probably webOS smartphone users as well) to print directly to an HP Web-connected printer, from inside a photo or e-mail application, for example. HP says this will work with most of its printers released in the past few years.

WebOS also has a novel "touch to share" capability, which lets a user physically tap a smartphone against a TouchPad to share URLs between the devices. In the example shown on Wednesday, if a person looks up information about a restaurant at home, then wants to take that information out of the house, they can tap their phone on their TouchPad, and in a few seconds the same URL opens up on the smartphone automatically.

Voicemail and text messages received on a smartphone can also be made to pop up on the TouchPad, to avoid missing messages, HP says. And with a feature called Synergy, users can sign into their Facebook, Google, Microsoft Exchange, LinkedIn and Yahoo accounts from a webOS device, and any contacts, calendar entries and e-mails from those accounts will be downloaded to the webOS device.

HP claims there are other features that will set webOS apart, including the way several applications can be active on the screen at one time. They appear as what HP calls "cards" -- basically windows -- that can be flicked off the home screen with the swipe of a finger, or stacked on top of each other for related tasks.

"WebOS shows you your activities in the form of cards, not a sea of application icons on numerous home screens," HP said in a statement, an apparent swipe at both Apple's iOS and Google's Android OS.