I disagree here. Multi-touch is not what sold the public on the iPhone. It was Apple's name, first of all, and then the UI and hardware design. Many people were not even aware the iPhone had multitouch capability until AFTER they purchased it. Likewise, this claim by CNET that multitouch will be the thing that breaks Tablet PCs into the mainstream is more "this year's killer app!!!" speculation. Consider practical tablet PC usage (something apparently CNET hasn't done): either the tablet PC is sitting on a desk in laptop mode, or one is using the tablet as a slate notepad, with pen in one hand and the other hand HOLDING the unit. The possible situations wherein multitouch COULD be used are limited to those times when the tablet is sitting on the desk, in slate mode. Even then, there are only so many things you can do with your fingers before you need to get the keyboard or pen out. Even on-screen keyboard touch typing can only handle one key at a time (because computer keying is based on mechanical typewriter technology), so multitouch will do nothing for typing on a tablet. OK, so you can zoom and rotate. How much work will anyone get done zooming and rotating stuff?

well i could see two finger scrolling, like what apple has on their macbooks...

as in, fire up firefox, IE or any other browser, put two fingers on the screen and move up or down to scroll.

but beyond that, i dont know.

i think the real issue is that one tries to shoehorn the desktop metaphor onto the slate, something that just dont work as the small screens make the buttons and stuff all to small...

The feature which pushes Tablet PCs into the consumer space will be an operating system optimized for tablet usage. (WinXP Tablet is not it. Vista is not it. OS X as it exists on iPhone and iPod touch come much closer.) Consumers like the iPhone and iPod touch not because of the nifty hardware features, but because they are easy to use. A multitouch tablet running an operating system which doesn't thoroughly take advantage multitouch is going to do only as well as any Tablet PC does now.

What's compelling about the Apple products is not that they're at the forefront of computer hardware. Consumers buy them because they are easy to use. Their operating systems take full advantage of their hardware.

I think what CNET is trying to say, and doing it with a real stretch of a connection and not making it very clear, is that consumers are going to come to expect touch capabilities from their products. Obviously in the cellular market, that expectation has risen dramatically because of the iPhone and it's multitouch (read:touch) capabilities. Well once that expectation starts looking for touch capabilities elsewhere, as it could start to do possibly depending on the MacBook Air - though that too is a stretch, hoping someone using a multitouch trackpad goes, "Hmm I wish I could fold this flat and use my fingers on the screen" - tablet PC manufacturers could start doing something unheard of, advertisingm and expanding into the consumer market. The price point has gotten low enough on some models, namely the Gateway and HP. And HP's ad campaign seems like it would fit perfectly into showing what a tablet can do.

On a side note, the lack of advertising is really killing the tablet pc buzz for consumers. I personally only found out about them because there was a presentation about OneNote on while I was channel surfing and I saw the man writing on his screen.

An interesting aside: the new Verizon Voyager phone is getting a lot of buzz because it includes touch (a feature which has led most pundits to call the Voyager the "iPhone killer"), but then added A KEYBOARD, which folks are saying is the feature that makes it BETTER than the iPhone. I know with my Chocolate phone, the touch features are a nuisance; I can't wait for the Voyager comes out so I can get a reduced price on the Envy, which has no touch at all. So clearly touch isn't bowling folks over from the practical standpoint, just the "gosh wow" factor, which tends to wear thin over time.

Why do tech people keep trying to re-invent the wheel? The mass market does not want to learn any new way of writing for pen iput nor do we want to learn to type with our thumbs. What UMPC's need to have to become mainstream is the simple touch type keyboard. I've played with an Iphone and while it might be ok for viewing that is NOT what most would want for an input for a UMPC.

The old HP Jornada 720's and Psion 5mx/Revo's proved that a easy to use touch type keyboard can be desinged to fit in a jacket pocket as those devices were about 6.9" to 7.3" long, and 3.6" in depth, and were .90" to 1.2" thick. That is the form factor that is needed.