The pricing on the Dell Tablet. I was hoping for a cool tablet at a reasonable price. Nope, not this time.

Fred

So many to choose from on the new releases,
but I think the Intel Stealy was the biggest disappointment, castrating power for a piddle more battery life by "fixing" performance instead of allowing the user to have full throttle control, only thing that saved it was the newer graphics chip but still lacked balls for full Windows Vista performance.

By far,without a doubt, the biggest disappointment of the year was the death of Marc Orchant. He was a leader in many ways, one of which included showing through blogs, books, and podcasts, how to improve your work and personal life practices using tablets and other mobile tech devices. There can not be anything more disappointing than the loss of such a fine human being.

Latitude XT, after viral videos of buzzsaws, pinata's, etc Dell promised to unleash a new category killer in the Tablet market. We were left with a unit that is $1000 more than any comparable model from other manufacturers and the biggest feature isn't even ready to use but coming soon.

I guess we know who really hit the buzz saw this year, and why Dell has stayed away from TabletPC's until now. They have no idea how to make money in the space, except by charging $1000 more and delivering less. Reminds me of IBM's old PC model, charge more, do less and tell everyone they should pay more because of the logo.

Since Dell XT is already taken I'd have to say the HTC Shift. I'm not sure if we can even call it a 2007 device, which in itself is a disappointment. The concept of a dual OS device was so intriguing, but it is expensive, unusable from a battery life standpoint, and the Windows Mobile side of things is dubious. This was a disappointment.

Although I'd have to add Hugo Ortega's sabbatical to the list too! Where are you man! Get to work!

Battery life.

Yet another year has gone by and while chips get faster, memory and storage gets bigger, PCs get smaller, battery life is the same old, same old. Promises of better battery compounds or fuel cells haven't gotten out of the lab.

To paraphrase Kanye West, I'll I'm looking for is Lighter, Longer, Faster, Stronger.

Merry Solstice,

Dave

The HP TX1000 series. Great notebook at an excellent price point but a horrible tablet pc.

htc shift.

first big wow, then piece by piece only bad news..

I'm going to say it!
The iPhone.
Here's why: no MS Exchange compatibility and no 3g. Because of those two missteps, I've been locked out of (what I understand to be) one of the most exciting developments in mobile technology this year.

Withdrawal of Motion's LE1700WT slate. Competition in the slate form factor area has simply disappeared. For those of us who see the slate as the "true" incarnation of the tablet concept, 2007 has been a crushing disappointment... and there's not much to suggest that 2008 is going to be any better...

For me, it's Intel's A100/A110 chip. I had my heart set on buying Q1 Ultra but when I realized how slow it ran due to the A100/A110 chip, I wanted nothing to do with it. Let's hope that Intel will redeem itself with the Silverthorne CPU.

ASUS R2Hv - did not address the screen issues. Or anything other than processor speed.

I'm nominating the lackluster performance of the OLPC project because it represents a major defeat for the tablet form factor. The XO offers great mobility (thanks to the optional pull-string generator), pen and touch input (on a wide touch panel), and a slate mode. It's more tablet than laptop. But since there's no interest in tablets, the XO got smacked by low-priced laptops of traditional design.

I'd have to say the HTC Shift, just from the amount of hype and misinformation about the initial specs, to the disappointment of reality and shaky launch. Yet another misconceived mobile device.

I am not sure if I am allowed two options, but it would be:

1) battery life of a tablet pc
2) Windows vista SP 1 (too much deja vu with the first struggles of XP, feel familiar?)

The lack of buttons on the hp 2710p - what were they thinking? even the idots at Dell knew enough to put buttons on their "Canyonero" tablet pc.
The lack of dedicated graphics,
The general lack of performance in low power chips.

has to be the htc shift - pitiful battery life, and limited implementation of the windows mobile portion. but i think its the continued high price of the second gen umpc's that's the biggest disappointment.

A tie between Dell tablet price and the Toshiba R400 without wireless usb (and the price)

Tablet PC itself is still a major disappointment this year.

Vista
Shift

No improvement in battery life or a comerical fuel cell tech

Marc's passing is for sure the year's biggest loss/disappointment. Nothing else comes close obviously.

That aside, Hmmmmm, so many to choose from here! Lenovo's lead times, Motion's LE1700, delays in the new iPAQ line, battery life in general, Dell's tablet pricing, Vista's quirks, and on and on. I suppose a list can be had for any year. This year my vote goes to Lenovo's extended lead times... such a great product shouldn't be soooooooo hard to get. A very close second: Dell's stratospheric tablet pricing... what are they thinking?

Vista, Vista, Vista.... what a disappointment.

I curse at it almost every day I use it. From weird sleep and wake-up behavior, to incessant security alerts, to generally lethargic performance --- who said "Windows Me" was a once in a lifetime mistake for Microsoft?

I urge all of my colleagues to avoid Vista with a ten foot pole. Hey -- in my own way I have finally become a MS evangelist... for XP! - Tom

HTC Shift

I would say HTC Advantage. I really hoped it to come with Flash drive instead of HDD. Also, it should have come with microphone. HTC advantage=total disappoinment

Dell XT pricing. What was our best hope for an affordable Tablet dashed.

it's a shame, however it has to be said. The biggest disappointing of the year goes to DELL XT Tablet PC

a shame :(

by the way, it still December 31st here. :P it is 19:35, hope all of my participations count ;)

Vista

Without a doubt, Vista is the big disappointment. It promised so much for the mobile / tablet user, and then just crapped out with constant disk thrashing, erratic wake-up behavior and overall sluggishness. While I absolutely love it on my desktop in 64 bit with 8gb of RAM - I've removed it from my mobile PC's and gone back to stable XP. (Which is all the more attractive with the SP3 improvements.)