There’s a lot of folks out there in Internet Land who picked up an HP TouchPad on the cheap just so they could eventually run Android on it. We posted a rundown of RootzWiki’s Alpha 2 version of CyanogenMod 7.1 for the TouchPad, with generally favorable results – it’s amazingly stable for an alpha release on hardware that doesn’t officially support it. The hardworking folks at RootzWiki have released a third alpha version, fixing various bugs and performance issues.

Naturally I downloaded and installed Alpha 3 right away. I can definitely see some improved speed and stability; nothing major, but it’s noticeable. A lot of the animations and other little details that make Gingerbread distinguishable from Froyo are now present. The WiFi issues I experienced while testing Alpha 2 seem to have been fixed, but it’s too soon for me to give an accurate rating of battery life, for better or worse. We’ll be posting a new feature once CyanogenMod for the TouchPad reaches the beta stage.

Many of you may be wondering when an Ice Cream Sandwich build will be made available, now that the source code is out. Well hold your horses: the unofficial name of Alpha 3 is “I KNOW ICS SOURCE WAS RELEASED” EDITION [sic]. The best guess for a stable release of the CyanogenMod 9 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is early next year, and it’ll probably be at least a few weeks after that before the TouchPad team can get it up and running. However, there is a working Android recovery system included in the CM7 mod, so maybe someone will get it up and running even before then.