Tablet PC Blogs

Are you asking how one would define it in layman's terms or the precise technical specifications it must meet before it's considered a full-fledged tablet PC as we know it? In the simplest of techie terms I'd call it a fully functional notebook-style PC with an integrated pen digitizer. For example, an Airpad wouldn't count because it's just a glorified thin client to me.

But whenever someone in the family, for instance, starts asking me about it, I always sum it up as a complete computer where they added a magnetic pad behind the screen for sensing the pen. I know that's only half of it, but I like to talk to someone about it without them having to learn new terminology every other syllable. I don't have to go through that much trouble explaining it at school, though, most of the people asking it like that already have some technical inclination, given we're in the computer technology program.

I am asking for a definition that someone on the streets would understand - without jargon, funny sounding words, or technical ideas.

It'd be pretty tough to define it without at least some funny sounding words. After all, it is a funny concept, in that it strays quite a bit away from conventional computing as the mainstream has been used to for the past couple decades (the keyboard and mouse combo). It's a strange concept to someone who has never seen or heard about one.

I recall a TV ad for the Toshiba Satellite Tablet PC (or whichever one was aimed at the masses) that I think called it, "the PC that works the way you do" which pretty much sums up the main idea of the tablet PC; although, that particular phrase says nothing specific about it, and it sounds more like a marketing buzz phrase that can probably be construed to fit anything that falls under the description of a PC.

You're right, this is pretty tough.