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Tablet launches - and confusion awaits with SmartDisplay?

About the only details still waiting to be revealed at today's launch of the Tablet PC by Microsoft "and partners" will be the specific pricing on specific models from Toshiba, Acer Viewsonic, Fujitsu, HP, Sony, PaceBlade, Motion, and NEC - amongst others.

The only other surprise would be if IBM actually launched a Tablet version for its ThinkPad range - something it has very conspicuously not talked about.

But the main interest for mobile data users will be whether this product causes too much confusion in the market for users to understand the Smart Display concept when it launches early in 2003. How can Microsoft explain a product aimed at the $300 market, which looks superficially the same as the Tablet, at $2,000?

The Tablet itself has not only been shown to press and analysts since June, but has actually been reviewed - sometimes in beta-test software form, but now, even in final release code, by several sites. It has been reviewed in its keyboard-equipped format, as well as its slate format, and Microsoft, at least, is enthusiastic. Founder Bill Gates has even predicted that most PCs - desktop and portable - will run this operating system within five years.

Key to the Tablet, is hand-writing recognition. The Tablet can recognise ordinary scribble from most users, either recognising as they write, or storing their scrawls as 'ink' to be recognised later.

All reviewers agree that it works surprisingly well. However, "surprisingly well" still leaves a question mark over how much it's worth. The same applies to voice recognition. It works, surprisingly well; but well enough for people to pay extra, to ensure that all PCs have this feature built in?

It's clear, if you understand the technology, that the Tablet has to cost more than an ordinary notebook. The on-screen digitiser is new hardware; so is the electro-magnetic pen; so is the physical linkage which allows the screen to be turned around. And more importantly, all these things are still made in small numbers - not for another year can they be expected to drop significantly in price.

But it is also clear that pricing is going to be higher than simple hardware extras might account for. An awful lot of today's sub-£1,000 notebooks have bigger and nicer displays than the typical Tablet PC, where XGA (1024 by 768 pixels) will be standard, with perhaps only Toshiba launching a bigger display Tablet. There are portables with 1600 by 1200 pixels. In that context, something with only XGA resolution is going to be seen as anything but a premium product.

And around the time the market becomes aware of Tablet, Microsoft will launch Mira, or Smart Display. That is aimed at the kitchen user - someone who wants a portable display so that they aren't tied to the "den" while the family is watching TV - with a low budget. The trouble is, from the user's point of view, it's going to look very similar. It's a slate-sized piece of gear, with a pen.

Inside Smart Display is just a low-powered Windows CE device and a wireless LAN connection. It can't do character recognition - it has neither the processor power nor the data storage needed to hold that massive handwriting database (hundreds of megabytes) and track pen movement - but physically, it looks confusingly like the same piece of kit.

The result will be - inevitably - a huge price pressure on the Tablet; and unless builders respond, sales could falter exactly at the moment when Bill Gates wants to see them soar.