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.

See Gizmodo’s YouTube sneak of Microsoft’s kick-ass Courier and see HP’s already realized tablet that left the gate long before Apple.