you are not being realistic.

Tablets, by Apple or HP, are designed to be as light as possible and provide a decent battery life because people who buy them, will be carrying them around and will neither put up with electronic dumbbells nor will they be searching for wall outlets to which the device can be connected. therefore, both the CPU and GPU must be relatively "humble" and spare the battery from the stress to which Alienware lappies are usually subject.

there will never be a Tablet with the latest CPU and Graphics plus the biggest HD..... just as there will never be a sports car there will be suitable to both carry the family to the beach, the horse to the vet, and the hottie lover to a restaurant in Monaco.

for around $500 and less than 2lbs,
there's the soon-to-be-released HP Slate:

http://geeksmack.net/hardware/1162-hp-slate-specs-reported
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/18642

i have a TC1100 and will get a tm2 next! :-) i agree with you 100%. i cannot see myself using a regular laptop anymore. a TabletPC covers all bases. and it's great for reading! be it online news, comic books or ebooks!

most of those people dissing the TabletPC have never used one. the only reason why Tablets never got popular is because Dell, HP, Lenovo and Fujitsu never cared (or gave a damn) about promoting the technology! Apple's fanfare over the iPad will payoff with the selling of zillions of units (despite the lack of a real OS or USB!). Apple can sell a fridge to an eskimo!

now it's too late for Dell and the others.... iPads will become synonym of Tablets and no one will ever know that other manufacturers have been making Tablets for more than 5 years.

Apple wasnt the first to make MP3 Players, but they marketed the iPod heavily. on the other hand, Creative, who is one of the pioneers on the field of MP3 devices, has been relegated to oblivion....

the story will repeat itself with the Tablets. being the first to produce something is pointless if no ones knows about it.

i, too, have a TabletPC. it's an old HP TC1100 that shall be replaced with a new HP tm2 sometime this year. when working on it, i only need to switch to laptop mode if i'm coding HMTL or C#. for any other task, i use one of the 2 following features (built-in WinXP Tablet Edition):

- hand-writing recognition (it works very well).
- dictation (works ok coz i'm not a native English speaker).

more affordable?! from Lenovo?! you're are kidding, right? HP has been making Tablets for years and, unlike Lenovo's, they have been truly affordable. compare the tablets below. both are current and have similar specs.

- Lenovo Thinkpad X200 Tablet ($1,500).
- HP tm2t ($950).

and HP is cooking up another Tablet to be released this summer. this new one will be a slate (ie, no physical keyboard). it was briefly showed by Ballmer during the last CES. no doubt the iPad will sell like hotcakes. Apple's hype can sell fridges to Eskimos! however, if there's a company with any chance of competing with Apple on this category, this company is HP! period!

i'm glad Apple got into this market. competition is great. it will lead to cheaper tablets from all manufacturers.

agreed. the only tablet worth my money is the HP tm2t! that's a real computer, not an overpriced toy.

cut the guy some slack.... maybe all he wants is to keep track of how many times his photo has appeared on the news or on the package of some gadget.

mass-adoption is a security liability. it must be feared as much as holes and bugs in software. how does it feel to be in Microsoft's shoes? go ahead, fanbois. mod me down.

Barks' work has been inspirational for Spielberg and Lucas...

from Wikipedia:

those comics were of a remarkable quality! they expanded both my knowledge of history (Greeks, Romans, Vikings, etc) and vocabulary immensely. it was also through Barks' stories i learned English (painfully translating word-by-word with a dictionary). it's sad that those characters and stories got so over-simplified for the "Ducktales" cartoon.

for more info on Barks works, check out:
inducks.org
BarksBase

hasnt MS advised on making a clean install? i guess this is a great way to show people that a clean install is named "clean" for a good reason!

From TFS:

worry not. Microsoft and Adobe will find a way to offset that....