According to a recent report by the Examiner’s Daryl Deino, computer bigwig Hewlett Packard (HP) is prepping a WebOS-powered tablet – likely an upshot of its $1.2-billion acquisition of smartphone maker Palm last week –, which might be launched in the third quarter of this year.

While earlier reports revealed that HP was removing Windows 7 from its much-hyped Slate tablet, “industry insiders” reported this weekend that the company’s WebOS-based – called the HP Hurricane – is scheduled for a third quarter release.

Noting that the development of HP’s Slate tablet has apparently been discontinued, Deino said: “We first speculated that since HP bought out Palm, they would come out with a webOS tablet. An insider at HP now tells us that a webOS tablet under the code name ‘HP Hurricane’ could be released the third quarter of this year.”

About the projections with regard to the forthcoming HP Hurricane tablet, industry analyst Paul Mueller told the Examiner that though the device appear to be “really interesting”; it runs almost as “slow as a turtle.”

Nonetheless, saying that that webOS is a stupendous operating system for a tablet, Mueller added that, going by the rumors making rounds, the HP Hurricane might turn out to be “a killer device.”