When Dell CEO Michael Dell took the stage at Oracle OpenWorld, what he said regarding Hewlett-Packard was quite surprising.  You’d think that since Dell and HP are direct competitors, Dell would be jumping with joy with HP’s plan of abandoning the PC business.

During his speech, Dell did not outright say that HP should stay in the PC business.  He said it in a subtle way.  Dell said that only 5% of the world’s microprocessors go into servers and storage and 95% go into PCs, and there is reason to stay in the business.  He added that “Dell is an end-to-end solutions company,” offering hardware that ranges from the biggest computer servers to low-priced PCs for business and consumers.  Simply put, money is in the PC business.

But Dell’s unsolicited advice may not be necessary as the “spin-off” announcement was made by Leo Apotheker, who is now long gone from HP.  HP’s new CEO Meg Whitman will make a decision regarding the PC business by the end of October.  Analysts are saying that Whitman might probably push through with Apotheker’s plan, as some still doubt Whitman’s capability to run the company.

But even as HP’s software/hardware businesses may one day become distant relatives, we have more proof that webOS is still part of the family.  HP’s webOS team launched a Weekly App Hack, as posted on their blog.  App developers will have one week to develop an app based on the specific theme/code.  Entries must be submitted to the App Catalog no later than 11:59PM PST, 7 days after the theme is started (If it comes out on Wednesday, it’ll be due by 11:59pm the following Tuesday night).

The point of this is to encourage developers to think out of the box and develop in some fun and exciting new directions, and to give developers a head start by presenting them with new code to work with.  More importantly, it’s an indication that HP’s encouraging developer activity around its platform.

But HP’s Autonomy deal is still garnering a lot of criticisms as analysts with JPMorgan Chase, said the deal “sets an unfavorable precedent for future acquisitions to come.”  Analysts estimate that the deal is equivalent to 10 times the company’s trailing 12-month revenue and 20 times its trailing 12-month maintenance revenue. Previous software deals were clinched at multiples of 4 to 6 times revenue and 7 to 10 times maintenance revenue.  Analysts added that those kinds of multiples, the analysts say, favor target companies, not H.P.’s shareholders.

Also, according to analysts, they expect Whitman to “to make a series of acquisitions over the next five to 10 years to become a full-fledged, one-stop I.T. shop.” And last year’s deals for ArcSight ($1.5 billion) and 3Par ($2.3 billion) were also “expensive,” according to JPMorgan.

Analysts gave H.P.’s stock an underweight rating and stated that, “unfortunately, we think that the rodeo ride at H.P. is not over.”