"...a couple of grad students at USC's business school who hate their tablets...it's gotten so laptop-friendly there, that people with tablets never use the inking feature...." .... will the Tablet PC only succeed in a convertible form, sheepishly masquerading as a "laptop with benefits"?... via [Tabula PC]

According to Microsoft's Andrew Dixon, with whom I spoke on Tuesday, right now both slates and convertibles are selling equally well / poorly, but the slates are clearly going into vertical markets (medical, insurance) while the general market is going for the convertibles. As the general market outstrips the vertical early adopters, the majority of machines with Tablet technology will undoubtedly be convertibles. That's okay with me. My next Tablet will be a convertible but I bow to no one in my fanaticism for the technology.

There's very little compelling ink-based software today. Essentially, OneNote, MindManager (which we just gave a Jolt Award to), and ArtRage. Much, much more is needed. Some is already in the pipeline (xThink MathJournal, for instance, is no secret), some has hopefully been spurred closer to reality by the $100K contest, and much is waiting in the heads of entrepreneurial software developers watching the market develop. It only takes 2 programs to make a platform: one killer app and one killer game. Neither has shipped for the Tablet PC.