There is an excellent article covering Microsoft’s confusing Tablet PC on my favorite tech news site, The Register. The Register also points to a review of Acer’s Tablet PC and an initial take on the Tablet PC on Pen Computing’s web site.
As I said earlier, unlike The Reg, I don’t believe that this is a separate category. History shows that specialized semi-PC’s don’t sell well and that everyone wants full-power PC’s in more-compact form factors.
It feels like the industry is going to take a long time to work out the details on this product category. Microsoft has never been able to deliver products that people (as opposed to corporate IT departments) want to use. Meanwhile, I’m hopeful that Apple’s Inkwell technology signals they’ll show the industry the way out of its confusion.
Until the industry gets this right, online publishers should focus on getting their sites to work right on the real computers of the future.