@ne_one
An Athlon 550 consumes too much power. A tablet that runs out of electricity every 2 hours is useless. If you have to keep in constantly plugged in to use it, might as well be a desktop.
As for software, people have specific needs for software and it differs between what they might have on their PC and what a tablet is good for. Browsing the web, checking your e-mail, IMing with your friends are things that any computer can do. I don't specifically see the the likelyhood of the need, for example, for using tablets to perform complex scientific computations on the spot, or whatever. Games, internet, home office, and stuff like that is what might be useful for these things. An Athlon 550 is fine -- but if it cuts into my "free from cords" time, forces the makers of the machine to make it heavier, or need a fan (louder), or more expensive, I'm not interested. It's better if you can take it with you and use it on and off all day without worrying about having to charge it anywhwere but home. Better still if you don't have to charge it every day, but every other day. And a 10-12 hour battery life would do that for you.
It's true that these things will get more powerful. But it's exactly now, while the industry is in its infancy, that a smaller/faster OS will make a difference, because the hardware just isn't there yet. Smaller, faster software lets me make a smaller, longer-lifed, cheaper, more convienent tablet.
As for software, why not alternatives? Are you saying it needs to run W2K (or whatever) + Office? Why not Linux + StarOffice? I realize that these are equally big as Office, but my point is that it is possible to use alternatives for common tasks. They don't really have to be that big. I use all four every day at work. StarOffice and MS Office are, for everything I do, interchangable, as are IE and Mozilla. My point is, why not work on more efficient software for the common things? Basic things, like browsing and other internet stuff, and "officey" stuff (in the broadest sense of the word), including things like keeping recipes and CD collections organized, alarm clocks and calendars going, and so on, can be done without needing even as much as an Athlon 550. And, after all, "cheap" must also include the software licenses, which is probably a big part of why these things are still $1500-$2000. An OS that came with the common stuff that a tablet might be used for is that much more useful. Tablets don't necessarily need to replace desktops for people who need more powerful solutions and don't need them to be portalble. Yet another reason for these to be cheaper -- at these prices you would choose one of these as a replacement for a desktop PC, unless you were rich.
Imagine the one extreme. The Gameboy advance, at $69, is a complete computer, with memory, external storage, software, an interface, and so on. It's quite specialized, and small, and good for only one thing. (on a plus note they are quite rugged actually, I've dropped mine a few times, and there appears to be no problem) Now imagine these tablet PC's, at the other extreme. I'm claiming that there's middle ground here, middle ground that still lets you take advantage of most of the good points of both systems (cheap, powerful, flexible, rugged) ground that the AmigaOS fits into quite well. A tablet at less than half the cost of these current tablet PC's, which is rugged because there's no moving parts, and useful because, for example, you could bundle it with some software to handle the common tasks, but cheap because it would need only 64MB of ram, and a 250Mhz cpu, or whatever. It's price that's keeping these tablet's from taking off. People don't need another PC, even one with a more flexible form factor.
