Are Tablet PCs destined to flop, just as their predecessors have?
For all the hype about the rumored Apple Tablet, the ‘will they or won’t they’ about Microsoft’s Courier tablet, and a host of actual tablet announcements such as Lenovo’s IdeaPad U1 and theDell’s still unnamed slate, everyone seems to have forgotten one tiny, little fact: tablets have been around forever and have never, ever lived up to their buzz. Back in 1987, Go Corp. was the first company to really try to get tablet-based computing off the ground. It quickly crashed. Then, in 1993, Apple tried to make a go of pen/tablet-based computing with the Newton. It flopped. In 2000, Microsoft started toying with the idea of a dedicated tablet. Guess what happened to all its plans? They too all pretty much came to nothing. (For a look at the deluge of tablet PCs announced at CES 2010 see: Tablets Steal the Show at CES) The first company to get anywhere with a tablet was Palm with its PDAs (personal digital assistances) in 1996. While they were wildly popular in their day — I still have my o
