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Dell Confirms Tablet PC

by Terrence O'Brien on May 23, 2007 at 08:54 AM

DellDell has confirmed that it will be entering the Tablet PC market later this year with a laptop/tablet hybrid based on its Latitude line of business notebooks. No further details were provided.

So, has the Tablet PC's day finally come? It's certainly a cool idea: Being able to write on a computer screen as if it were a notebook and have your chicken scratch converted to type sounds like something right out of the future.

But the technology has been slow to catch on. Windows XP Tablet PC Edition wasn't great and seemed like an afterthought. The special screens have been expensive, battery life has been lackluster and the machines have always been significantly more expensive than comparably equipped good old-fashioned laptops.

But things are changing. Screen prices have dropped, battery life has improved and Vista's tablet features are nicely integrated into the operating system.

The technology has arrived, but it remains to be seen if there's consumer demand to match. Yes, the concept of a notebook PC that you can actually use like a notebook is a compelling one, but it seems like more of a gee-whiz product than something we'd really use -- at least for now.

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Tags: dell, laptop, tablet

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