m • pad 15.6″ Tablet Rocks Scroll Wheel, Dedicated Buttons & MultiTouch

There is a new tablet in the works that is designed with productivity in mind. It is called the m • pad and is designed by Volker Hübner of Germany. It has a 15.6″ OLED display with multi-touch and a pressure-sensitive stylus. There seem to be ports for USB, Ethernet and Firewire, according to Slashgear. The dimensions are 430x280x25mm.

It looks like a beautiful device, great for design and creative work. On the left edge there is a scroll wheel and a set of buttons for common computer tasks like …

• Escape
• Space
• Apple’s CMD button
• Enter
• ALT
• CTRL
• Shift
• Volume + and –

Above the wheel are four buttons with the 12 function keys (3 on each button) and below are four more buttons each sharing 3 functions as follows:

• Quit, Undo, Redo
• Home, Delete, End
• Cut, Copy, Paste
• New, Save, Open

The stylus pops up from a housing that looks like it slides into the right side. On the bottom there are hinged feet to raise the device at an angle or possibly on all four. The design is meant to be reversible for both left and right handed users.

With designs like this, maybe the Tablet PC is not dead after all! We have no idea about the price or availability of the device. It looks to be focused on the professional creative types, like designers, artists, etc.