Sometimes it takes a long time for an acquisition to bear fruit for a buyer. More often than not, the benefits of a transaction come up far short of those promised in gushing deal-announcement press releases and conference calls.

With its rash of big-ticket deals last year, worth a total of nearly $7.8 billion, Hewlett-Packard Co. raised eyebrows with the high prices it paid, especially in light of a series of controversies that plagued its management suite and brought into question the discipline of its board of directors.

But in at least one instance, HP has quickly integrated an acquired technology into an important new product, one that will help it battle with established players in a competitive market and, more importantly, play a part in helping to move beyond its corporate missteps.

In a splashy event in San Francisco Feb. 9, HP unveiled its tablet, the TouchPad. That the Palo Alto, Calif., company is one of the first to market with this technology is a victory in its own right.

But another coup for HP is the fact that the software that makes up the guts of its new products does not leave it beholden to Microsoft Corp., with its Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system, or Google Inc.'s Android.

Instead, it can count itself as more of a peer to those two technology giants, at least in the rapidly expanding mobile devices world, as it has its very own, well-regarded webOS mobile operating system, courtesy of Palm Inc. As HP executives have said numerous times, webOS is the main reason HP shelled out $1.2 billion for Palm, and it has paid off by enabling HP, like Apple Inc. and its industry leading iPad and iPhone, to build a mobile platform of devices and the software it all runs on.

Naturally, a product announcement hardly guarantees success, especially in the fast-moving tablet market. Apple's iPad was the first to hit the shelves, launching in April 2010, and is the clear leader in the market for these devices.

In the nine months after it debuted, Apple's first tablet sold more than 14 million units. Since then, Samsung introduced its Android-powered tablet and has sold 2 million units. More are on the way, including a new tablet from Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. (the mobile device unit of the former Motorola Inc., which split in two last month) set to launch in March, as well as devices from Dell Inc., Lenovo Group Ltd. and others. By the time HP actually gets the TouchPad on shelves this summer, Apple will have already introduced its iPad 2, which is predicted to have many if not all of the features offered by HP's device

But it's a big market. Research firm iSuppli Corp. projects tablet shipments to reach more than 240 million in 2015, a 12-fold increase from today's sales.

Whether it is a resounding success or not, the implementation of the mobile operating system acquired from Palm is an important piece of good news for HP, and is part of a building wave of positive headlines for a company that slogged its way through a tough 2010.

Last month HP revamped its board, bidding farewell to four longtime directors and replacing them with five new faces from a variety of disciplines. They include former eBay Inc. chief Meg Whitman, Booz & Co. CEO Shumeet Banerji and former Alcatel-Lucent SA CEO Patricia Russo. This followed the appointment last November of new HP CEO Léo Apotheker, the former SAP AG chief, who promises to bring a welcome software focus to the tech giant.

The former board leaves a trail of flubs behind it. Never mind the gaffes of 2006, when the board improperly used private investigators to probe leaks to the media. It was the removal of former HP chairman and chief executive Mark Hurd, who was pushed out in August following a sexual-harassment investigation and still got as much as $53 million in severance, that most recently highlighted the old board's clumsiness.

Then there was the hostile battle with Dell for storage technology provider 3Par Inc., in which HP ended up paying 3 times the target's stock price before the bidding war started. The deal, which was announced after Hurd departed, gave the impression of a board that had lost the discipline instilled by its former chairman, who, until he was removed, was widely lauded for setting HP on an even keel of cost-conscious efficiency.

Has HP put all of its gaffes behind it? That's yet to be determined. But with a new CEO, a refreshed board of directors, and some important new products that could help justify some of HP's high-priced M&A, the company is at the very least moving in the right direction.

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