I really want to like the tablet PC. It's a rare flash of innovation in the notebook market. It does things no laptop can. And at this point, as a journalist who makes his living off high tech, I'm in favor of anything that can sail the industry out of these doldrums. Well, almost.

For the past few weeks, I've been using one of the latest and most interesting tablets to hit the market, the NEC Versa LitePad. What makes the LitePad stand out is its design. It's thinner and lighter than the tablet PCs that were first out of the gate late last year, weighing just a tad more than two pounds. And it doesn't straddle the fence between tablet and notebook; it is a slate, period, meaning that it doesn't have an attached keyboard. Having used LitePad extensively both at work and at home, I've found that the tablet PC has its uses, but not the ones that Microsoft and its hardware cohorts intended.

Write product; wrong market
Early on, Microsoft downplayed the notion that the tablet was a handwriting-recognition device. Instead the company pitched it as a business ultraportable with added handwriting features for the "knowledge worker." The theory was that you could use it at your desk or on the road like an ordinary notebook, but you could also take it to meetings and scribble notes.

	I've found that the tablet PC has its uses, but not the ones that Microsoft and its hardware cohorts intended.

That sounded good, but I quickly found that writing out notes by hand on the slippery screen isn't very efficient. Oddly, the problem isn't the handwriting recognition built into Windows XP Tablet Edition, which worked fairly well in my case. It's just that typing notes has become a whole lot faster and easier. Of course, you can't make sketches easily using a keyboard, which is why ads for gadgets like the tablet PC always show some young exec drawing a chart, usually depicting revenue going through the roof. But how many people sitting in meetings actually draw charts and graphs? If you have the numbers, all it takes is a few clicks in Excel to create a real chart that's a whole lot easier to read and use.

That's not to say that tablets aren't great solutions for certain niche markets, such as health care. But frankly, who cares? Tablets were already big in these markets long before Microsoft came to bat. Just ask Fujitsu. My point is that I'm not convinced the tablet PC works as a mainstream business product--at least not the slate design.