The 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has brought a new wave of innovative, slender touchscreen tablets PCs and electronic reading devices to the marketplace.
Some of these tablets will allow you to surf the Web, watch movies and play casual games without the need to rely on a bulky laptop and its traditional keyboard. Other gadgets focus on features such as reading for long periods of time without killing the batteries and without eye strain, e.g. the Kindle 3G Wireless Reading Device.
7 In Tablet Pc
Although Apple's iPad tablet computer is still the market leader in the emerging market for tablets, it probably won't be for long, due to its price. Analysts think the new Apple tablet to be launched around March / April could cost anywhere from 0 to ,000, and probably will be a fully functional computer, rather than a more passive device for reading books and watching movies. That could help justify the higher price tag.
In contrast, the tablet design unveiled by Freescale at 2011 CES in Las Vegas could sell for as little as 0.
In anticipation of Apple's launch of iPad 2, Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, showed off at 2011 CES a new Hewlett-Packard tablet PC running Windows 7 with a full-color touch screen displaying videos and books.
At the 2011 CES, Lenovo (the Chinese computer manufacturer) showed an innovative tablet PC called the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid Notebook. It appears to be a regular laptop, until the screen pops out of its shell and it becomes a slender, glossy touchscreen tablet running a Linux-based operating system.
Spring Design, a Taiwanese start-up, showed off at 2011 CES a dual screen e-book device, the Alex e-Reader, that has a 3.5-inch color display and a 6-inch black-and-white display. This reading device, which is expected to be out in February 2011 and cost 9, could display book and video hybrids.
Many more tablets are expected to be launched this year. In a new 5-year forecast just released, Forrester Research said it expected tablet PCs to grow as fast as MP3 players in the United States, and projected that 82 million Americans would own tablet computers by 2015.