Alice’s Worst Nightmare

No, not me in a speedo… Although… Nah… Microsoft wants to wrench Tablet PCs out of the niche marketplace and into the mainstream! To do that, new tablet format factors are being developed that will see the (not so) little buggers (any more) drop into the $1500-$1600 –and that, according to Microsoft, should make them only $100 (or so) more expensive than comparable notebooks. First up for the consumer market will probably be the Toshiba Satellite R15-S822 at about $1599.

Yes, we know that Averatec marketed a $1350 Tablet PC in mid-2004. But did you know that the MS folk in Redmond took their corporate credit card, went down to the local COSTCO, and bought out the inventory?

Even with Microsoft offering Windows XP PC Tablet Edition (or maybe because of it?), PC World pegs Tablet sales as maybe a “blip” on the chart. (See? All you folk expounding the virtues of Tablets? You’re all there are.) The key market indicator here? Dell. Those folk have no interest in marketing a tablet PC at all and, trust me, if there was a buck to be made off of it, Dell would sell it.