Day 261 of being a Tablet PC owner has arrived. This entry will be more philosophical than informational, but I’ll quickly update my usage at home and in the business:

At home, I’ve been using the Tablet PC a lot recently as a TV remote via Slingbox, which I think is a great way to utilyze a slate Tablet. Also cool for taking the TV with you, quite literally. No, it’s not an ink-friendly app, but then it is the type of app which doesn’t have to be ink-friendly to be useful on the slate.

For the first time in business I used the slate to sketch a building I was doing a quote on. Turning the pen over to erase really helped me draw in the dimensions and note the area. A year ago I would have used a legal pad. In fact, the office still sent me with a yellow pad which I am happy to say I never used. Resist the yellow pad!

Anyway, what I really want to comment on was Tablet-related news yesterday. Uber Tablet PC skeptic, and Microosoft hound, Mary Jo Foley reported that some market researchers are revising their projections for Tablet PCs downward. Foley based her information off an eWeek article that seemed to have at least one glaring hole in it, from my perspective at least.

Take for instance this quote: “Some of tablets’ toughest troubles are pricing and marketing. Although costs have come down, the machines still command a premium of about $100 over traditional notebooks.”

About $100 over traditional notebooks? No way.

Based on what I’ve seen prices are more like $250-500 over comparable notebooks in the convertible Tablet class and $500-1000 more for the higher end slate tablets (like the ones Motion Computing sells). I paid roughly $2,500 for the M1400 and I could have purchased a notebook with similar size and specs (60 GB harddrive, 1 GB RAM, Centrino) for around $1,500. I might have had to pay a little more for the battery life, which I’m still getting around 4 hours with the M1400, but IMO, there’s no comparison pricewise except maybe in the very low end Tablets. For example, I saw the Avaratec at the local Megastore for $999 USD. Looked like it might have been the floor model which was looking more than a little weathered. That’s the most inexpensive Tablet PC I’ve ever seen in a retail environment. Online, I’ve seen tablets for as low as $799 (after mail-in rebates).

tablets have failed to woo mainstream business users and consumers as quickly or as easily as initially expected, market watchers say. The machines, which have caught on in areas such as health care and education, are thus likely to remain trapped in those niches for some time to come, forecasters now say.

This is definitely an extreme, unlikely and impractical (from a business) point of view but I wish they didn’t sell convertible Tablet PCs.

I know Scoble and others are all giddy over their convertible Tablets but I think using the Tablet PC as a convertible is like carrying around a typewriter with a legal pad to take notes. Sure, blogging and other keyboard-intensive activities are inefficient with a slate and I suspect as long as the convertibles continue to outsell the slates, there will not be a whole lot of incentive for developers to fix that situation. Nor will there be a huge drive to develop ink-enabled applications because, well, hey the number of people using that type functionality is pretty small.

It’s the same reason you walk down the Mac software aisle at CompUSA and see a small row of software compared to the rows and rows of Windows software. Macs continue to sell despite being more expensive than Windows machines, although the Mac Mini has certainly become an attractive option for the lower end PC market to consider.

The whole point of the Tablet is to use ink, isn’t it? Why buy a Tablet PC convertible if you want to spend most of your time typing? If you are docked up with a slate you can easily get the desktop experience, but when you are on the move, in a meeting, giving a sales presentation, moving around, lugging a device, why use a keyboard? Have you ever tried to walk and type? It’s not comfortable or natural. It is much more comfortable walking and make handwritten notes. Ever taken your laptop to the gym and tried to read something on it while riding a cycle? I have. Forget about it. The slate, however, is just like a legal pad or a really thick magazine and is meant to be carried and used. Using a convertible just weakens the overall experience for both yourself and prospective buyers who will invariably ask: “why shouldn’t I just buy a more powerful laptop for the same money?”

Bingo.

I understand that there is a convenience in having a convertible over a slate, but after 261 days of owning a slate, I am even more convinced that the only type of tablet to buy is a slate. And I think that’s the same feelings most mainstream business owners and users have that don’t take a lot of handwritten notes. They say: if I’m going to buy the tablet, I should buy the slate, and if I buy the slate, will I use it enough to justify the purchase? But wait, why don’t I buy a convertible, it’s not much bigger, but then wait, for the money I can just get a more powerful and perhaps even smaller laptop?

It’s not so bad being a niche product for artists, those in the medical and research fields and salespeople (still an outstanding tool for them) and perhaps the uber mobile geeks. The only thing bad about this is we will always pay more for the niche privilege. Mac users accept that and some are even arrogant about it. I sure hope most Tablet users don’t get arrogant, but I’ve already experienced one arrogant Tablet PC user — and Microsoft labeled the guy an MVP, go figure!

But as long as we Tablet PC owners have to pay more for the hardware and niche product, we should not only expect but demand higher quality support and services.

This is one area that isn’t getting enough press, IMO, the support and services. Recently there was a stir about Microsoft not requiring the OEMs to include the installation disks for adequate reinstallation/recovery which spawned a petition effort. Mary Jo Foley and the rest of the media didn’t pick up on that — at least that I saw anyway — at least to the same degree that they ride this whole: “projections are down for the Tablet PC future.”

Is it always the big story claiming something Microsoft did is a failure? That’s been the Xbox battle cry for quite some time and they have resisted the bullets and have built that into an exciting, vibrant gaming platform. Good for them. Where’s the story admiring their persistance in this area?

Meanwhile, Microsoft is standing by their February tablet sales results that they were pleased and encouraged by. I don’t really care about future projected Tablet sales numbers as a user, nor do I care if something I bought is a “niche” product, but I do care greatly if I pay premium dollar and the service/support by the vendor is lacking.

This brings me back to Motion Computing who has still not come out with any official plans for their M-series customers — at least that I’ve heard (somebody please correct me if I’m wrong) — for purchasing accessories, including batteries, beyond December 31, 2007. I’m not going to shut up about this any time soon, Motion, so somebody, anybody, tell all of us customers that it isn’t so, that you will support your customers by selling accessories, specifically batteries, well past 2007.

Bottom line: if you pay more, you deserver more. You can’t pay more and get less. That’s the reason I left the restaurant business in 1994. The company I worked for kept wanting to jack up the prices and cut the menu. You can’t tell senior citizen regular customers who are on a fixed income that they should pay more for less. As a manager — a pawn for the corporation — I was faced with doing that on a daily basis. No thanks, I’m gone. I got out at the right time, that company has tanked badly since then.

And there is the primary reason Tablet PCs aren’t selling to the masses. The perception from the masses is that they won’t get the bang for the buck and you know what? Unless they are in one of the ink-friendly niche market, they probably won’t. Not yet.

• Tulalip Casino using Tablet PCs
• Wendland on Tablet PCs: “I like it. But I’d never buy one.”
• Article ponders: Will Tablet PCs ever become mainstream?
• Laptops now outselling desktops says study
• Don’t buy a new Tablet PC, buy an older model instead or keep waiting
• New widescreen Gateway Tablet PC weighs 6.9 pounds!