Here’s my take, hunches, best guesses, and coin flips for 2008.

• Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) will dominate the conversation for the first half of the year. What happens in the 2^nd half is anybody’s guess.
• Call it Ultra-Mobile PC, call it UMPC, call it Origami. Call it what you will, but by the end of 2008 call it in its dying throes. The ultra mobile vision will remain, but in other devices. 
• Unlike Rob, I don’t see Dell re-evaluating their price point on the XT Tablet PC so soon. The high price point is consistent with the markets they have been targeting from the beginning. If the prices drop it will be a year from now at the earliest.
• Apple will not market a Tablet PC in 2008.  Instead it will be a communication device that takes advantage of the iPhone’s features as well as the Back to My Mac features for users to grab their data on the road. Because it will have a touch interface and be able to take advantage of InkWell, Tablet PC aficionados will call it a failure.
• Touch will again be a dominate feature and news story. The real question is will anyone develop an application that makes it more than a fancy way to play media, turn pages, or manipulate photos. Or is that enough?
• Multi-touch is still a ways off. Someone, somewhere, needs to develop a real use for it on the Tablet PC and mobile devices.
• With the exception of the MID and whatever Apple will do in 2008, next year’s headlines will be about technologies that change or provide new content delivery methods, similar to the Amazon Kindle.
• Microsoft’s marketing will continue to be mediocre at best and miss the mark more than it will hit.
• DRM will continue to cripple operating systems and content delivery methods. Most consumers won’t notice. Those that do will root for Amazon, Walmart, and Independent music producers to keep putting the pressure on.
• New releases of new products across the board will slow down in 2008. Some consumers will remember Apple’s iPhone price drop form 2007, companies will try to get a better handle on delivery inadequacies. Consumers are starting to notice that their voices can be heard, and companies will start to slow things down a bit, to hopefully improve on what they eventually release.
• The word “open” will get bandied around a lot. As in Google’s efforts to make mobile devices more open with its Google Android mobile OS. The word open will lose all meaning in the marketing miasma.
• OneNote 2007 will continue to remain a secret.
• The Asus Eee PC story is just getting started. It will have much more impact in 2008.
• The companies to watch in the mobile space who will have the greatest impact will be Apple, Nokia, HTC, Asus, and Google.
• HP, Toshiba, and Lenovo will continue to dominate the consumer Tablet PC space, although we probably won’t see anything really new until 2009. Fujitsu nees to make some noise here.
• Inking on Tablet PCs will continue to remain the ultimate niche in a niche product.
• There will be a major Internet outage or Bot Attack in 2008, prompting all sorts of chaos and howling. This will lead to a renewed interest in client apps vs. the cloud.

Loren Heiny has gotten his hands on the Toshiba M700 Tablet PC. Nope. It didn’t come with touch enabled. Loren can fill you in on that part of the story. He can also fill you in on the amount of CRAPWARE that Toshiba installed on the device, despite some assurances that they’ve reduced the CRAPWARE load on the Tohsiba M700.

This is one of the first reports I’ve seen with someone hands on with the M700, so I’m looking forward to hearing more of what Loren has to say.

I just got off the phone with Kevin Roberts, Toshiba's Product Manager for the M700 Tablet PC. He called to tell me they had noticed that I, and many others, had canceled our M700 customized orders because we thought we we had ordered an M700 with Touch + Active Digitizer, when in fact we were just ordering the Active Digitizer option only. Needless to say, a lot of folks, including yours truly, were confused, and Kevin apologized on behalf of Toshiba for not making it clearer.

Toshiba has now corrected the "build-to-order" page and have clearly indicated that touch is an optional upgrade for $50. Kevin also updated me on shipping times for the various configurations:

• Active Digitizer only configurations will ship in two weeks to three weeks
• Active Digitizer + Touch configurations will begin shipping in mid-January

I'll be placing my order again this weekend - thanks for correcting this, Toshiba.

Better late than never. That can be said for Dell finally entering the market this week, and the fact that this podcast is a couple of days late!

In Podcast #42, Warner and I sit down to chat about Toshiba's M700 Tablet PC, Dell's Latitude XT Tablet PC, the impact that Marc Orchant has had on our lives and work, and also say congratulations to Mickey Segal, our November Forum Member of the Month.

• Download GBM Podcast #42 here ( MP3, 47:16, 43.67mb )

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Here are the show notes:

• Toshiba M700 Tablet PC
• Dell Latitude XT Tablet PC: Announcement, Community coverge, Editorial on Pricing
• Mickey Segal's LS800 Sportcoat
• CES 2008 Tablet PC and UMPC Community Meetup

Well, thanks to some sleuthing by GBM reader Yolonda Villa, I've just confirmed with Toshiba that customized M700 Tablet PC orders WILL NOT have touch at this time. Touch will be available as an option in January, though. Any customized orders placed right now will only get the active digtizer and not the multi-mode. I have canceled my order.

Thanks for hunting this down, Yolonda. If you've ordered a customized M700 thinking you were also getting touch, I'd suggest calling Toshiba and canceling your order, and waiting until January.

UPDATE:

Well, thanks to some sleuthing by GBM reader Yolonda Villa, I've just confirmed with Toshiba that customized M700 Tablet PC orders WILL NOT have touch at this time. Touch will be available as an option in January, though. Any customized orders placed right now will only get the active digtizer and not the multi-mode. I have canceled my order.

Thanks for hunting this down, Yolonda. If you've ordered a customized M700 thinking you were also getting touch, I'd suggest calling Toshiba and canceling your order, and waiting until January.

I've been seriously considering the purchase of a high-end desktop or iMac, as a compliment to my OQO Model 02. However, when I saw the specs and the pricing on Toshiba's M700 Tablet PC, I knew I couldn't do any better than a desktop replacement Tablet PC priced at about what I was prepared to pay for a high-end desktop.

So, I went to ToshibaDirect and placed my order tonight for the M700 Tablet PC. Here is what I got for $1874 via the customization page:

• T7700 2.4 ghz Core 2 Duo ( no ULV stuff here ). The $300 upgrade to 2.6 ghz wasn't worth it to me. 2.4 ghz is a good sweet spot.
• 2 gb ram
• 120 gb 7200 rpm drive ( no 4200 rpm junk on this machine )
• 1 gb Turbo RAM
• Bluetooth
• Internal DVD SuperMulti (+/-R double layer) drive
• 12.1" WXGA 1280 x 800
• Plus, I get all the multi-mode touch / active digitizer goodness that I've come to enjoy with my evaluation Lenovo X61.

Toshiba says they'll be shipping it to me in the next 8 - 10 days!  Meanwhile, we are still waiting for Toshiba to get Sierra a review unit so she can do the InkShow. If, by chance, my own unit gets here first, I'm going to send it straight to Sierra instead, so she can do her very first InkShow! Isn't that nice of me? She'll be able to do a direct comparison to the HP 2710p.

So, stay tuned - lot's of M700 goodness coming your way!

Yesterday, I had an interview with Toshiba's Kevin Roberts, the Product Manager for the M700 Tablet PC. We talked about some changes they have been implementing to make their business-class computers as efficient as possible. One of the big things they've done is to remove all the trialware that used to come pre-installed on their business-class computers, what we lovingly call "crapware". For those of you who have used the M200, M400, etc, you know how much stuff Toshiba threw in there.

Although he didn't have actual comparison numbers between a clean machine and trailware based machine, he did tell me that as a result of creating an image with no trialware, they have seen double-digit drops in the number of processes between the two, thus resulting in a cleaner, more efficient running computer. This is a great thing for small businesses, as they typically don't have the IT resources to create custom clean installs. Great move, Toshiba! This makes the M700 Tablet PC all that more enticing.

This change is being implemented in the Satellite Pro, Portege, and Tecra line of computers.

Toshiba and Dell both ratcheted up the pace of Tablet PC news with their respective releases of new Tablet PCs this week. I’m sure we are going to be hearing lots more about both in the days to come. The Dell news was expected and the Toshiba news was quite a surprise. I know we’re anxious to be getting our hands on review units of the both so we can bring you GBM InkShows of the newest Tablet PCs on the market. So far from what I’ve seen the coverage has been pretty enthusiastic about both entries. There is also a theme emerging that Dell has priced the new XT too high. That theme is especially prominent on the Direct2Dell blog in the comments. It will be interesting to see how that shakes out, given Dell’s statments that consumers aren’t really their target market.

In the meantime, Lora Heiny has a nice round up of the early coverage, so if you just can’t wait to read more you might want to check out her list of links here.

And Linda Epstein has hands on pictures of the Dell XT on TabletPC2.com. When you take a look at the pictures, notice the size of the power adapter. That’s small.

There’s a new Tablet PC in town. With anticipation focused on Dell’s soon to be released entry into the Tablet PC marketplace, Toshiba is catching everyone by surprise today with the announcement of a new Tablet PC in the Portege line. Toshiba is rolling out its 9th generation Tablet PC, The Portege M700. The M700 is the first Tablet PC Toshiba offers with a touch screen LED backlit display. Combining what looks like features of the M400 and the R400, with an Intel Core Duo T7500 processor running at 2.2GHz, Toshiba looks to be aiming at those that what a little more power in their Tablet PCs. Here at GBM we’re hoping to get our hands on a review unit soon (we’re on the list), and will be looking forward to spending some time with the M700 at CES as well.

Prices for preconfigured models listed in the press release are $1799 with Vista Business, and $1699 with XP. Here’s a link to a virtual tour of the M700. (We’ll be updating other links in this post as they come online.)

Mitchell Oke over at Gear Diary just posted a detailed review of the Toshiba Portégé R400. I've always like Gear Diary's reviews; I've been reading Judie's stuff for years. This is no exception, and the short video that Mitchell provides gives a great overview of the capabilities.

The seriously cool wireless dock appears to work quite well. I was surprised by that, but it encourages me to think that maybe the technology will trickle down into a reasonable price point.

Speaking of price, this is one spendy system. The review model topped out at over $4000, including the top-of-the-line system, dock, and accessories. I didn't think anyone still paid $4000 for a computer. Wow.

I had an opportunity to try out an R400 very briefly and frankly, it didn't seem like a $4000 (or even $3000!) system. Too plasticky for me, particularly the keys. One seriously nice feature, though, is the fact that the digitizer pen comes standard with the Wacom felt nib. I fell in love with the felt nib on the pen, but I can buy the felt tips for Wacom pens for a lot less than this system ($4.95 for a 5 pack).

We haven’t heard much lately about Toshiba’s R400 Tablet PC and Wireless Dock combo, and in my opinion, that is probably due to the steep price point. But Popular Science has recently named the R400 with Wireless Dock among its Best of What’s New 2007 Awards.

Via Tablet PC Talk

Sports fans, sports teams, and Tablet PC folk will be interested in this.  AgileSports has teamed up with Toshiba, using Toshiba’s M400 and R400 Tablet PCs. Three students developed a system called Huddle to help their university team (Nebraska) get the edge on the field. Their plan is based on the fact that most teams are on an equal footing when it comes to physical conditioning and training, and that mental training and preparation are the next frontier where teams can develop an edge.

The Huddle system uses Tablet PCs to:

• Draw on top of video using digital ink
• Diagram plays
• Communicate effectively
• Track performance goals

There’s more info on Toshiba’s site about this and here’s the link to AgileSportsTech.com, which looks like the site is still under development.

Now, here’s a thought. If we started seeing athletes and coaches using Tablet PCs on the sidelines and in the ubiquitous sports programming features that show them reviewing video, I’d bet that would help bump up the exposure a bit.

 Since the release of single sticks of 2GB of RAM I have enthusiastically grabbed a handful and attempted to put them in every Tablet PC and Ultra Mobile PC known to man! So in keeping with my theme I am on a RAMpage and not afraid of very much at all.

Here is the history:

• How to: Upgrade Q1 Ultra to 2GB RAM
• Motion LS800 does 2GB
• 2Gig stick and I'm not afraid to use it
• Does your Slate have 4GB inside? Mine does.

On this occasion the Patient is my latest device, the Toshiba R400. Before I tell you the results I better give credit where credit is due. This morning I had a visit from my close mate, Dr. Neil Roodyn, and part the reason was to see his Toshiba M400 and a pair of 2GB sticks of RAM he had sourced. Long story short, a couple of minutes later and four screws and one cover plate, we had 4GB of RAM inside his M400. You may have heard however that Windows does not see all four gigs so why bother you might ask. Well the why bother is very easy because on Neil's M400 he was able to see 3.3GB of RAM - and that can't be a bad thing.

I was moved by this event to take some action of my own; staring at my R400 with 2996MB of RAM inside I questioned why I hadn't tried the second 2gigs. The reason is simply that I followed the advise of one of my friends (not always smart) who had told me that Windows cannot see past 3GB. Having proved this to myself on the Sahara i440D I could see little reason to disprove what I knew - until Neil and his M400 that is. So as soon as we finished our chat, and all I could see was the back of Neil's head I reached over to my RAM box, grabbed a new 2GB stick called RAMbo (believe it or not) and made my way to the R400.

On a previous upgrade of the R400 all I did was remove one of the 1GB sticks of RAM and placed a 2GB stick in its place. The RAM slot to do this is very accessible via the underbelly of the machine so it is literally a 2 minute task. The second RAM slot (which is actually the Primary Slot) is hidden under the keyboard and takes a little longer. So two screws and a cover plate later I had successfully reached the Primary RAM slot, which housed a single 1GB stick, and replaced it with a new RAMbo 2gig module. A quick shutdown and a rather rapid reboot and I new all was good! What was interesting was the "before and after" Windows Experience Index score.

See for yourself:

Toshiba R400 Windows Experience Index before RAM upgrade

Toshiba R400 Windows Experience Index after RAM upgrade

Toshiba is going to release a Limited Edition 32GB USB Flash Drive that will be ReadyBoost Enabled. The target is December. They’ll be releasing smaller capacity versions (1–8Gig) in October. Of course the 32Gigger will cost you a bundle at $665. The real question in my mind is will the Vista ReadyBoost issues get solved by then? Not much point if those issues aren’t solved.

Via Gizmodo

Well that didn’t take long. Yesterday we posted about the rather expensive prices of the Toshiba R400 Tablet PCs that are compatible with the new wireless dock and the rather steep price tag of the dock itself. Seems like the price dropped a bit rather quickly. Looks like the SKU R400–S4933 (the option listed with the dock) has dropped from $3999 to a still pricey $3699. The dock also dropped a bit to $499. Still too rich for my blood.

I’m guessing not too many folks rushed out and made an order yesterday.

Thanks, John for the tip.

Get ready to check those credit card balances and swallow hard if you’ve been waiting for the Toshiba Wireless Dock for the Toshiba R400 Tablet PC. We knew these were aimed at the high end market but yikes! Part numbers and prices for the R400’s that are compatible and include the Wireless Dock option include:

• R400–S4834: $3079
• R400–S4835: $3149
• R400–S4933: $3999

On the Toshiba site you can find those part numbers now but without the Wireless Dock included (except for the one with the $3999 price tag) so I’m not sure if they all can be ordered with a dock as an option yet. And remember, not all R400’s are compatible with the Wireless Dock.

Talk about Sticker Shock, it looks like the Wireless Dock will set you back another $850. Not really an impulse buy now is it. More info on those new units here.

Looks like Linda has recovered from the Pink Floyd experience and has posted up a nice review of the Toshiba R400 Tablet PC.  There are some great photos and close up pictures of the Tablet PC in the review!

The Toshiba R400 is not the fastest Tablet PC on the block, but it is the most elegant and sophisticated and it does have the best display I have ever seen on a Tablet PC.   The ink experience is excellent and it's a pleasure to use.   In a world where first impressions are important, The Portégé R400 is one of my all time favorite Tablet PCs.

The R400 is not for everyone, It's not intended to be.    The Toshiba Portégé R400 Tablet PC is for those who are confident enough in their life not to have the need to to boast about how much power they have.    It's for those who appreciate elegance, style and sophistication.   For Those who want to make an impression when they walk into a room. It is an is excellent choice the busy professional who wants a Tablet PC that is a reflection of who they are. 

I think we're spoiled with the dual core processors cause the Core solo 1.2 processor doesn't sound that good to me.... especially in a device this big!