Tablet PCs: Ready for Prime Time PC Magazine - Print Article
Tablet computers—machines that mimic the traditional uses of pen and paper, letting you input data by touching a stylus to a screen—have been around for decades, but they've never really caught on with the public at large. The first tablet, introduced by RAND Corp. in 1964 and later marketed by Data Equipment Co. as the Grafacon, was manufactured at a cost of $18,000 and could be used only in tandem with large mainframe systems.

Though the next three decades saw portable tablets at far lower prices—some very heavily marketed—this type of device remained something of a novelty item. Its appeal was limited to insurance inspectors, health-care workers, and inventory managers. And even then, it was used sparingly.

Today, this could be changing. In November, after more than a year of hype and publicity, Microsoft introduced an operating system specifically for tablets, Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, in hopes of bringing tablet computing to a much wider audience. So far, more than a dozen hardware manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon, shipping tablets with the new OS.
http://www.pcmag.com/print_article/0,3048,a=38349,00.asp