That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.   It reads as follows:

2010 will see some interesting and useful developments in the tablet / e-book reader space.  The concept of a thin, light, portable device with a decent screen size (i.e. a letter sized piece of paper) and long battery life to read things on – such as newspapers, magazines, books, the web – is quite compelling.

There are a few products on the market already – such as the Kindle.  In my view the tipping point to widespread adoption will be colour screens that can render glossy magazine resolution, the ability to get web content via wifi rather than just over a cell network, and a low enough price point.  At least that’s what I’m holding out for.

To some extent this is vapourware -  but there is a lot of activity and potential competition in this space.  Consider:

Several Slaw articles have mentioned the Kindle and e-book readers like the Sony reader.

Another entrant announced within the last few days is the  JooJoo, formerly known as the  Crunchpad.  This one is rather controversial.   The  story behind it (feuding developers) is as interesting as the product itself.

Of course there is the much anticipated Apple tablet - which many predict will appear some time in 2010.

Microsoft has shown a concept called the Courier.

And top that off with a publishers consortium that is working on digital publishing standards.

Take a look at this Wired article.   

That article is a few weeks old, but was referred to in this post from yesterday about Apple’s upcoming announcements.

I’ve thought for years that the touch screen tablet form factor was a winner – the problem is that the price has always been too high, and the performance never that great. The netbook phenomenon has shown that people will respond to “good enough” if the price is right. And smartphones – as great as they are ( I really like my Sony Ericsson X1) – don’t quite cut it as a computer because the screens are just too small to replace a laptop. The Amazon Kindle is intriguing – but the black & white screen, its limited use as a book reader and tethering to a phone network, not to mention the fact that it is not available in Canada – all factor against it.

I have been using Windows 7 at work for a week (which of course has touch screen capability built in) and noticed that the changes to the taskbar at the bottom are clearly designed to be touch screen friendly. And it is much faster than Vista and has features that enhance productivity.

I’ve been toying with getting a netbook for use for various members of my family (myself to read the online version of the London Free Press instead of the dead tree version, my wife to take to volunteer meetings, my son to take to class) – but with Windows 7 upcoming for netbooks, the new tablet rumours from both the Apple and Wintel camps, and the new CULV chips – it’s hard to know what to buy, or how long to wait to buy!

So here’s what I want. A touchscreen tablet running Windows 7 similar in size to a netbook. It needs some kind of keyboard for data entry – but perhaps a screen based one is good enough. Graphics performance sufficient to play video cleanly. At least 2 gig ram. Modest hard drive. Several hour battery life. DVD drive would be nice – but perhaps creates too much of a price/size/weight penalty. And priced under $300 (well, OK – maybe $400) Can.

And can I have that now please?  Or at least by the October 22 Windows 7 launch?