Those of us at Dinarius have long seen tablet shaped, touchscreen personal computers as the next step in what most users would prefer. Our darling was the Gateway M280. Despite the sense that tablets make, few folks bought in to it. The industry swallowed R&D on tablets and UMPC’s (another brilliant next step that went largely unadopted) and instead found a public ga-ga for smart phones.

Since regularly updating the site, Apple, HP and, today, Microsoft, have all announced plans to reintroduce tablet PC’s to the more savvy, statistically more tech-friendly, masses.

The Apple Tablet, still only speculated by the most “insiders” of tech insiders, is thought to be a giant iPhone or iPod touch.

The HP DreamScreen is thusfar, the only real product that exists. It is not multitouch, but resembles a digital picture frame with remote control. See it here at VentureBeat.com and marvel at how much smaller it is than this Pavilion tx2500z touchscreen tablet.

Today, the net among techs is on fire with the following:

Microsoft has long been fiddling with projection touchscreens, tabletop touchscreens, and seem to have decided that DUAL touch screens that work wickedly well in tandem is the way to go with Courier shown in the video above, “projectwood.” Since there are NO standard protocols for how to yet touch a touchscreen to activate different features or abilities, don’t be intimidated. It’ll come.

Can the above reintroductions to tablet PC’s invigorate a public historically put-off or just not aroused by carrying information and the Internet around in anything larger than a wallet? I hope so.