There’s been quite a lot of buzz about Apple’s event and the predicted announcement of a tablet/slate. People forget that tablet PC’s and UMPC’s have been around for the last 3 – 5 years or more. Here’s the HP Slate announced recently at CES.

I use to have a Viliv X70 but the screen was too small and the form factor was too thick. It was great having a full blown WinXP machine with a 5-second boot up from sleep mode and a standby time of days. But the 7-inch WSVGA (1024 x 600) display was just too small for this resolution and made the UI a chore to deal with.

A 10-inch screen with a thin form factor is my sweet spot for a tablet. I’m currently using a Lenovo X300 (13.3” screen ultra thin-and-light) laptop for my daily carry, and a Lenovo W500 (15.4” widescreen display with 512MB ATI FireGL V5700 discrete graphics) for my workhorse laptop. I am looking forward to this next generation of tablet PC’s that seem to hit the sweet spot for me regarding screen size and thickness, and for use as a daily carry.