One big downer in today's news is the fact that there won't be any OTA updates of original Pre units to WebOS 2.x. That means I can't take it for a test drive on my Pre to see if it's worth staying on the WebOS platform until the Pre 3 comes out. That's very disappointing.

Apparently they haven't ruled out some other means of getting 2.x onto the Pre via a desktop update, but given their history of promises broken ("Flash on the Pre in Fall of 2009", "Pre 2 will be a significant upgrade", "Pre owners will get 2.x as an OTA update") I find it hard to believe they'll be eager to allow power users to install the OS update when they can instead use it to entice people to buy the Pre 2 now (or the Pre 3 when it comes out.) The best hope is that someone in the WebOSinternals homebrew community makes it happen, but that's no sure thing, either.

It's just really disappointing to see them backing off another commitment, especially now that they're under the HP ownership. I'm not saying it's a definite sign of things to come, but my hope was that HP taking over would lead to a more consistent, customer-friendly strategy where they meet deadlines and deliver on promises. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case.