The idea is simple: Take a full-fledged Windows XP Professional notebook and add a pen-shape electromagnetic stylus, touchscreen display, and the software to make it all work. This is the Tablet PC in a nutshell. The first generation, with models from Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Viewsonic, and others, will begin hitting the market this month.

Worker, presenter, painter: Acer's Tablet PC changes to suit your needs.


It's a regular laptop whose display swivels for presentations and folds back on itself to form a tablet. It'll be available by the end of this year at about the same price as a comparably equipped laptop. It'll also weigh less than 3 pounds and get 3 hours of battery life.