Tablet PCs come of age

There was much talk a few years back about how the computer was going to do away with the book, for both writing and reading.

Paper is not going to go away soon, if at all, but if anything is going to kill off the book it will surely look something like the Tablet PC.

Specifically it will probably be just a little smaller than two Tablets I have been looking at over the past few weeks: Motion's LS800 and the Fujitsu-Siemens' Lifebook P1510.

They are significant for two reasons: they use second-generation Centrino technology, which is more powerful and efficient than that used on early underpowered Tablets; and they are as portable as a book, which is more than you can say for most notebook PCs.

You'll be able to read the reviews here when they're published, but here I want to write about what is common to all Tablet PCs, particularly the interface.

At one point I was using the LS800 as my only working platform. As it has no integrated keyboard I used the pen interface for everything, including writing articles. The first and most important point is that it is possible.

I worked on Fleet Street in the days of hot-metal printing, when we had to handwrite articles a paragraph a page, which was then sent to a different typesetter to get it in metal as quickly as possible.